History

The Kuza Cave Culture Centre’s history page features a series of articles exploring human evolution and migration from Africa. Topics include genetic research on human migration, the discovery of ancient burial sites, and the origins of human language.

The articles highlight the significance of Africa as the cradle of humankind and discuss archaeological findings that offer insights into early human behavior and technological innovation. The page provides a detailed look at the contributions of African environments to our understanding of human history.

Here’s how genetics helped crack the history of human migration

George Busby, University of Oxford Over the past 25 years, scientists have supported the view that modern humans left Africa around 50,000 years ago, spreading to different parts of the world by replacing resident human species like the Neanderthals. However, rapid advances in genetic sequencing have opened up a whole new window into the past, […]

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How we discovered the oldest human burial in Africa – and what it tells us about our ancestors

Simon Armitage, Royal Holloway University of London How did human uniqueness first evolve among our ancestors, setting us apart from other animals? That is a question many archaeologists are grappling with by investigating early records of art, language, food preparation, ornaments and symbols. How our ancestors treated and mourned the dead can also offer crucial

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Human evolution: secrets of early ancestors could be unlocked by African rainforests

Eleanor Scerri, University of Oxford Think of rainforests and the picture is inevitably one of a dark and forbidding realm where life is abundant, yet alarmingly cryptic. Rather than the sense of space offered by long, iconic grassland vistas, distance is compressed into tangled webs of foliage, veiling both predators and prey. Diffuse and difficult

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South Africa’s Blombos cave is home to the earliest drawing by a human

Christopher Henshilwood, University of Bergen and Karen Loise van Niekerk, University of Bergen Scientists working in Blombos Cave in South Africa’s southern Cape region have made a discovery that changes our understanding of when our human ancestors started expressing themselves through drawings. They’ve found a 73 000-year-old cross-hatched drawing on a silcrete (stone) flake. It

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Red Sea stone tool find hints at hominins’ possible route out of Africa

Amanuel Beyin, University of Louisville; Ahmed Hamid Nassr., University of Ha’il, and Parth Randhir Chauhan, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali Africa is the birthplace of humanity. From the time of our lineage’s split from the chimpanzee line around 7 million years ago, the continent has remained the primary homeland for successive hominin

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The revolution that wasn’t: African tools push back the origins of human technological innovation

Patrick Randolph-Quinney, University of Central Lancashire and Anthony Sinclair, University of Liverpool Just 20 years ago, many archaeologists believed there was a “human revolution” 40,000-50,000 years ago during which modern behaviours such as symbolism, innovation and art suddenly arose. This was thought to have enabled a major shift in cognitive organisation and probably the advent

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The African roots of Swiss design

Audrey G. Bennett, University of Michigan Design remains a largely white profession, with Black people still vastly underrepresented – making up just 3% of the design industry, according to a 2019 survey. This dilemma isn’t new. For decades, the field’s whiteness has been recognized as a problem, and was being openly discussed as far back

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