Lupemban culture

The Lupemban (or Lupembien ) is a spätmittelpaläolithische (late Middle Stone Age ) to frühjungpaläolithische (Late Stone Age) industry in Central Africa ( Congo Basin ) and Angola as well as potentially with however small, poorly datable inventories in West Africa. However, it has left to South Africa and Sudan traces. The Lupemban has come up with and out of the Sangoan developed and forms a complex nexus of so-called woodland group (based on the current landscape Ökosituation, because during the last Jahrhundertausende changed sub-Saharan Air several times crucial, as it is assumed under the influence of various cold - and warm periods in the Northern Hemisphere and their interstadials ). It was formerly classified as very much younger than today, when we thus still attaches a start for about 300,000 BP, in Spätacheuléen. Named is the techno complex after the station Lupemba at Kasai in Angola. (For technical terminology with the distinctions complex, industry and inventory as well as the tool categories ( modes ) m1 to m5 see Prehistoric terminology and systematics. )

Periodization and support

Periodization: John Desmond Clark ( in Volume 1 of his Cambridge History of Africa from 1982 /89) and others had previously thought that Lupemban is primarily a phenomenon of Jungpleistozäns and thus ceiling in time especially with the Eemian Interglacial and the first phase the Würm glacial period or with the potential climatic effects on sub-Saharan Africa, so humid and warmer first, dry and 6 degrees colder then. Overall, there was one distinguished by the inventories, especially in the equatorial region 3 stages of Lupemban:

Last reviewed: Due to much further back gerückten dating to approximately 300,000 BP Lupemban discoveries in recent years to be revised especially for the first two phases had completely reassessed and Clark's current division into three phases in the late Middle Palaeolithic and Upper Palaeolithic had. The classic Lupemban industries are then now not so much seen as a reflection of certain environmental conditions, such as the impact of European Würm interglacial period, but rather as local manifestations of a very widespread technological tradition, whose specific properties at least partially depended on each available material. Environmental factors may well have played a role in the tool typology as a framework for human activities and their possibilities to cope with the environment by means of specific tools. In the meantime, you can see not only the Lupemban as a kind of mosaic, which consists of variations in the context of a wide-ranging overall image and less than contrast between the two clearly defined culture zones Lupemban and Tschitolian, the so also with his yes especially mikrolithisch certain inventories in this context heard. Recent research has since confirmed both the wide spread as the importance of Lupemban industries during the late stages of Middle Pleistocene and early the Jungpleistozäns. The central role of a tool type, the blade tip, at the cultural association is thus also obsolete. Rather, the Lupemban now plays a critical role in interregional transitions, such as the transition from simple rough core tools of the microliths of Tschitolian. Lupembanzüge therefore find themselves in Namibia, and also the North African Aterian could well have a closer relationship to Lupembam than with widespread European or Levantine Levallois- tool traditions.

Carrier: It is possible that here also, at least in the early phase even representatives of Homo rhodesiensis as in Sangoan, who were then still widespread across sub-Saharan Africa and paläoanthropologisch as a possible link between early Neanderthals and archaic Homo sapiens are interpreted. Probably but here's already an early form of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) the bearers of culture, especially as it was on East African Fund Porc Epic place at Dire Dawa an associate human mandible with almost modern form. Based on this later dating of the hominid from Broken Hill (now Kabwe ) are newer amino acid dating of accompanying the remains of the mammalian fauna ( battle remains in the local cave of 25 large mammals, 5 of them now extinct savannah forms were ) located roughly with the beginning of the Eemian warm period covered. Because of the especially in the rain forest areas hardly existing hominid is a clear statement to make but here hardly. In addition, the Fund is able somatically very heterogeneous, and Sapiens types to mix it up with Neanderthaloid forms. Especially in the western Congo basin there is no hominid ( the acidic environment of the rain forest floor triggers bone on ), so that the person responsible for the Lupemban and Tschitolian people type remains unclear. Occasionally, it was assumed was the type closer to the present, especially dark-skinned inhabitants of West Africa as the Bushmen ( Khoisan ) of the east and south, where it is now, however, knows that the genetic differences between the two groups are not so great. The relationship to today's pygmies is rather unclear; However, they appear to have physical elements of both groups.

Dissemination, dating, tool inventory, environmental

Distribution: The Lupemban together with the Stillbay complex south of Cape Town and the Pietersburg complex in Transvaal (name until 1994, today the four northeastern provinces of South Africa ), the main manifestation of the Mittelpaläolithikums in sub-Saharan Africa. Common to these three complexes Techno occurrence flat retouched, leaf tip-like devices that vary between triangular, oval, heart and almond shaped and symmetrically - doppelspitziger shape. They were found in large numbers in Dundo in northern Angola, but in a secondary location in River gravel. However, it is believed that their presence thereat is tied to specific geological conditions, especially fine-grained homogeneous material. Typological relationship to the older of the Acheulean bifaces are often significantly. Given the much earlier to be applied chronology of Lupemban and certainly the Sangoan, you can not go out as before it, both are cultures, especially the open tree savannas of sub-Saharan Africa have been with the center in Equatorial Africa, as the local wetlands are temporarily become drier and in the expanding savannas new requirements had arisen at the device technology, even if attributed to the Sangoan rather still because of the potentially suitable for woodworking equipment, such as pecking ( use-wear analysis), even denser forest habitats. At least can, however, still find that the Lupemban with the Sangoan probably the roots in Spätacheuléen in common. Environmental factors are keinesweg excluded in the recent research. For the late phase of Lupemban such environmental influences are more detectable. Especially in East Africa finds that occur there along with the very popular here, at least 30000-45000 year old Bambata complex, may show such dependencies that may indicate a more humid climate of the time due to the palaeozoological documents. Findings from Somalia and Ethiopia showed similar indications. Also finds near Khartoum point in this direction and could mean that the Lupemban along the valley of the White Nile stretched up in warm, humid regions. The Sudanese Lupemban or the local analog inventories are also sold a large scale with the Khormusan East Africa in conjunction, one of the last cultures of the Later Stone Age, which will begin at approximately 40/30.000 BP and end at 18/20.000 BP. Moreover, similar forms occur at other sites in the Sudan before ( the Arkin - finding site in Lower Nubia, where the stratum 5, where Lupemban -like Lanceolates were found). Similarly, in Ghana and in the Kalahari, which was then apparently much better life opportunities offered than it is today and where Lupemban tools occur together with Sangoan inventories. A little later inventories can be found among others, along with Sangoan types in Muguruk in western Kenya and in Rwanda and Burundi.

Dating and environment: The Lupemban has started far earlier than previously thought, because there is it when Mumbwa in Zambia and other bodies (eg Twin Rivers in Lusaka in Central Zambia) inventories with Lupemban trains that may be between 250,000 and could be 170,000 years old. But the Lupemban actually closes on to the Sangoan whose periodization, however, was now also transferred back to 250,000 BP and earlier, and possibly to 400,000 BP goes back to its beginnings. A similarly old, over a Sangoan layer stratigraphically isolated Lupemban layer may also 250000-170000 years old, but this place is now relative and not absolute dated since it was not found in an undisturbed location, but in a fluvial gravel layer. Local palynological findings show how to comparable sites in northern Angola, that the former climate was not much different from today. A least 300,000 years old, with reference Mwanganda in northern Malawi is also attributed to the Lupemban and contains almost exclusively side retouched flakes with a few core devices. Limiting these early datings but it must be said that these inventories were mostly found as flotsam in a secondary position, while probably mixed with other types, so that a typologically as chronologically reliable assignment not given or is possible. A certain special case, the findings of Katanda the Semliki River north of Lake Edward near Ishango in the easternmost corner of the Congo Republic is, for whose the Lupemban from the M3 devices typologically relevant inventories an indirectly derived age 170000-80000 years is assumed. The problem here, however, the fact that the local device inventory also finely crafted, barbed harpoon heads of bone were found, their development thus be recognized much earlier than would be the European bone harpoons with soluble stem tip, determines their age with no more than 15,000 years been. The development of bone treatment would be to redefine such. The chronological classification of these so-called Katanda Spearguns is currently the subject of scientific controversy. Even before the radiocarbon dating, so at the upper safety limit measured values ​​, the first time very late dating showed inventories, had since been reduced greatly modern uranium -thorium measurements in conjunction with other findings dated Fund areas. In one of the most important reference about the Kalambo cases to sequence initially had shown 32000-27500 BP. Meanwhile, one assumes, however, that the lower time limit of Lupemban here should be about more than 50,000 BP and that the material is here 300000-400000 years old.

Tool inventory: (For inventory typical periodization see there.) The classic Lupemban inventory is mainly produced in Levallois technique. Features are two-sided surface retouched Twin Peaks, so-called leaf tips ( Lanceolates ), overall very carefully edited two-sided stone artifacts. Among them are the technically outstanding products of Paleolithic device manufacturing in Africa. They were probably used in part as a knife, but mostly good, especially as show as spears and spearheads several distinct Schäftungsmerkmale. The units are rather small. They include in addition to the tools mentioned above all graver, hatchets, side scrapers and blades, back blade and flat discs that were probably used for woodworking. Also core axes occur which resemble those of the Sangoan. The late phase of Lupemban then goes especially in the Congo region in the Tschitolian about the latest phase of the Middle Paleolithic Congo.

The Acheulian / Sangoan - Lupemban - Tschitolian complex

John Desmond Clark identified in his co-edited with John Donnelly Fage " Cambridge History of Africa " two complexes of the Early / Middle and Late Stone Age: a Sangoan - Lupemban and a Lupembo - Tschitolian. The Sangoan forms in sub-Saharan Africa, together with the subsequent Lupemban and the subsequent Tschitolian a culture sequence Acheulean / Sangoan - Lupemban - Tschitolian because both Sangoan and Lupemban as well Lupemban and Tschitolian overlap partially and thus yield two interlocking complexes formed together add to the overall complex Sangoan - Lupemban - Tschitolian. See Sangoan and to Sangoan - Lupemban and Lupembo - Tschitolian complex each main item.

Literature and sources

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