Sangoan

The sometimes known as Epi - Acheulian designated Sangoan (formerly also Tumbian ) is a variant of Jungacheuléen in Central, South and East Africa with rather small unique tracks in West Africa. It has probably developed from earlier Acheulian types and was formerly often referred to as "intermediate complex" between outgoing old and the beginning of Middle Palaeolithic viewed using the center of the Congo Basin, where the Sangoan - finds are the earliest traces of man in general. The intermediate concept is left now though. Named the meantime, however, is controversial and in dating the beginnings far up to 400,000 BP laid back Techno Complex after the archaeological site Sango Bay on the west coast of Lake Victoria in Uganda, where it was first discovered in 1920. (For technical terminology with the distinctions complex, industry and inventory see Prehistoric terminology and systematics. )

Periodization and support

Periodization: The Sangoan, which also includes the inventories referred to as " Charaman " sometimes after a reference in Zimbabwe, in the European sense of time about mittelpaläolithisch and technologically corresponds approximately to the local Mousterian, but with massive ranges of the Lower Palaeolithic (Early Stone Age) Spätacheuléen to which it is sometimes also provided. It ranges in tropical central Africa to the beginning of the Epipaläolithikums with the Techno complexes of the type of Lupemban with which it mixes starting at about 250,000 BP or overlaid - a Lupemban locality in Central Zambia has been dated to 250.000/170.000 BP - and of the following Tschitolian. Sangoan and Fauresmith industry were formerly grouped together as First Intermediate, so as an intermediate phase between the Early and Middle Stone Age. (The " Second Intermediate " called it the interphase between Middle and Later Stone Age). They tried to find complexes that characterize south of the Sahara, which roughly coincides with the outgoing Lower Palaeolithic and Middle Palaeolithic of North Africa, the Near East and Europe can be parallelized as intermediate phases during the subsequent Later Stone Age approximately corresponds to the zirkummediterranen Upper Paleolithic. The name is now also left due to the increasingly visible heterogeneity of the ancient complexes largely, especially since you can no longer speak of an actual hand-ax industry during Sangoan as in Fauresmith because equal time also neighboring non- Acheulian inventories, partially still associated with Acheulén - types occur and it is problematic especially when Sangoan a whole, year hundreds of thousands of long period using to define only a single device type. In addition, once previously missing apart from the gradual reduction of bifaces, concrete transitional forms between the Acheulian and the Middle Stone Age or Sangoan. However, there seems to have been a very long transition period ( up to 150,000 years), in which mixed both industries and partial and regionally superimposed so that Early and Middle Stone Age to separate much fuzzier than previously thought. The same is also true for the transition to the Later Stone Age in sub-Saharan Africa.

The carriers were hunters and gatherers who lived primarily apparently, judging by their tool inventory in forests or on the edges. It was assumed earlier, before one knew much earlier reaching dating, the beginning of Sangoan was zusammegefallen with the beginning of the last interglacial, the European Eemian before 130,000 BP roughly. However, a too close connection with Climate Change, with stone-age cultural phenomena, particularly in sub-Saharan area is now commonly seen critical, especially as the individual complexes, especially Acheulian and Sangoan, are not so sharply separated, as such an interpretation would require this, and the impact of European cold and warm periods are controversial to the equatorial region only because of Pluvialproblems and locally very different geographical, topographical, geological, etc. data. The question of the carrier is only partially answerable because of the very heterogeneous paleoanthropological image for this early period. The tools from Broken Hill (now Kabwe ) is about to be allocated with skull fragments from Lake Easy and there maybe the Sangoan tool finds associated in Levallois and suggest that this is at least in the early and middle period of a Homo heidelbergensis -like shape or could have acted homo rhodesiensis, a suspected Intermediärform between Neanderthals and archaic Homo sapiens, which should have been at that time widespread in sub-Saharan Africa. Main finding place is Kabwe (formerly Broken Hill ), near which also tool inventories were found that are attributable to the Sangoan, and their age determination showed by means of amino acid dating of 110,000 BP. However, the anthropogenic assessment is due to the given especially in today's rainforest regions poor, based on the most acidic soil conservation conditions, practically exclude the hominid, extremely difficult.

Distribution, dating and tool inventory

Distribution: with the Fauresmith industry in South Africa from about 200,000 BP about simultaneous Sangoan industry, which is hardly occupied in South Africa, stretching roughly from present-day Botswana to Ethiopia and closes the Sudan and West Africa with one, there especially at the great rivers in Cameroon and Nigeria, as well as on the coasts and in Ghana, however, their inventories have formal differences to the more eastern. Other localities are in today's areas of Uganda, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo ( Zaire until 1997 ), Kenya and Zambia. Apart from the important to the Kalambo cases, important Sangoan inventories found in the Kagera valley west of Lake Victoria, however, not affected by their primary location in the river gravel and thus not as clear as those on the Kalambo cases. In general, there has been in East Africa a few Sangoan sites in an undisturbed location, ie in situ. Similar complexes are also found in Zimbabwe and South Africa. An exception is Muguruk in western Kenya, where an inventory has been discovered in almost undisturbed, but paläozoologisch not datable location that also contains Sangoan types. From the Fauresmith industry, the Sangoan but differs at least in part by its typical rather for forest dwellers inventory with large, heavy equipment presumably for woodwork ( use-wear analysis) while the Fauresmith industry rather for people is characteristic that live in savannas, so that starting from two different populations. However, due to palynological evidence is also that the habitats must have temporarily located in areas at least with rainfall of less than 1000 mm per year, as it is typical for tree and wet savannas and gallery forests, during the Würm glaciation, the rainforests of the previous Eemian warm period may have had supplanted. In the Kalahari, similar to the Sahara at least temporarily, much better living conditions than offered today, as well as many similar stone tools have been found that may be dated as early as the Sangoan culture at least. The Sangoan of today's West African rainforest is also occupied only weak and is found mainly as a complex equatorial Sangoan - Lupemban along the rivers. Whether the Sangoan (as well as the Fauresmith and later Lupemban and Tschitolian ) has been a response to the environmental conditions of the tropical rain forest region and its subsequent semi-arid changes to savannah, remains unclear and is sometimes questioned because of the uncertain Fund position and dating, especially since the changes in the equatorial rain forest are well documented only for the last 20,000 years. But it is believed that even the densest forests were occasionally visited by people. The Sangoan developed, although according to the latest dating much earlier and covered it in his Acheulian transition phase, several hot and cold periods in Europe and their potential sub-Saharan effects, then led, however, in its most concrete forms around 130,000 BP in the upper Pleistocene in the potentially by European Eemian caused climate change and was about in the Congo basin until after the introduction of the Neolithic there continued. Overall, however, one should already assume due to the enormous size of the area and its very uneven topographical and landscape conditions ( uplands, river valleys, rainforests, savannas, coastlines ) through not too direct correlation between this and the artefact morphology and rather individual of certain, each landscape typical characteristics device groups go out as the heavy equipment of the Sangoan, which are believed that they were meant to be used for woodworking, but only a part of the techno complex represent the addition mittelpaläolithisch hardly or does not occur everywhere, while the rest of the inventory also other, includes lighter tools.

Dating: How in the Fauresmith industry are also in the valleys of the Vaal and Zambezi a number of sites known where devices of Sangoan type are bound to younger river terraces as a fund complexes with Lower Palaeolithic characteristics ( particularly in the area of Victoria Falls ). However, the dating is greatly hampered by the lack of associated Faunenfunde; Moreover, it is as in the Bambata and Pomongwe Cave of Matopo Mountains usually very small complexes, however, have an age of up to 250,000 years. At the Kalambo cases where the Sangoan post quem of about 200,000 BP used as a term, was a Sangoan layer, the so-called here Chipeta industry, over the most recent of a series of layers of the Jungacheuléen and therefore seems with 46,000 to BP 37,500 BP too young. But there are also elsewhere younger inventories, albeit with uncertain dating, as in Zimbabwe. It is here at the transition from Sangoan as Epi - Acheulian to no longer associated to the Acheulean Lupemban for about 50,000 BP or earlier. ( However, there are Mumbwa in Zambia and other parts inventories with Lupemban trains that could potentially be 250000-170000 years old. ) Meanwhile case are considered, especially in the Congo region, the Sangoan less than independent cultural stage than as a transitional form of Acheulian - Sangoan - Lupemban complex, which does not necessarily represent a distinct cultural form and is sometimes apostrophized as early Lupemban. Using the amino acid dating here 0.19 million years BP were determined. An occurrence in Rooidam at Kimberley yielded a uranium -thorium dating from about 115,000 years BP. According to the latest findings must ensure that the dating of the beginning Sangoan be greatly moved back into the Endacheuléen into it, according to Phillipson up to 400,000 BP, the. Lupemban of approximately 250,000 They are also not nearly as uniform as previously thought.

Tool inventory: there are at stone tools in particular nuclear devices that could be used for heavier tasks: three -edged Picken (Pics ) or hacking, so sharp, heavy, hook-like core hatchets or trihedral, the tip section is retouched triangular. The heavy core devices that are present throughout the Sangoan according to their habitat, are found mainly in river valleys and more forested areas, while lighter tools, especially in the more open terrain dominate, such as the Zambezi and Limpopo. The latter were also associated with the so-called Charaman industry, which got its name from an open reference in northwestern Zimbabwe. Both are now but as a continuum, which began to form at the end of the Acheulian. At smaller and their dating by older inventories there are leaf lacy devices as they are so similar is also for Europe. The however, now apparently shrinking classic bifaces are present, which have partially micoquienähnliche forms, as well as splitters and other discount instruments such as knives and side scrapers, many elongated, two-sided machined tips which possibly served as a lance or spear heads and large, flat devices, probably mainly for woodworking. A special, typical also for later Fauresmith industry characteristic is the appearance of developed from discounts blades that are now twice as long as wide.

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 forms with the Endacheuléen in the initial phase overlapping and for this partially emerged or associated Sangoan while in sub-Saharan Africa, together with the later onset Lupemban and the subsequent Tschitolian a but loose and not ubiquitous by far Central and Upper Palaeolithic cultural sequence Acheulian / Sangoan - Lupemban - Tschitolian, in which, however numerous, often only small Techno complexes are stored, which appear as part only local or regional ( especially in South Africa ) or more or less close variants. Examples are Fauresmith, Elandsfontein, Magosian, Stillbay, Sterkfontein, Smithfield, Wilton, Pietersburg, Nachikufan etc. Both Acheulean / Sangoan and Lupemban as well Lupemban and Tschitolian superimpose each other partially or merge into each other and result as two interlocking complexes by geographical regions together to the total complex Acheulean / Sangoan - Lupemban - Tschitolian, without this, however, a consistent cultural development in the narrower sense would dissipate, but rather a mosaic of interregeionalen variant arises. This example from 400.000/250.000 BP still in the waning Early Stone Age and early African Middle Palaeolithic ( Middle Stone Age) onset and in some African ethnic groups with the Tschitolian repertoire lasting up to the 19th century AD Culture sequence may have been due to sub-Saharan environmental changes in the wake of European cold and warm periods from 400,000 BP, in particular the Eemian, the Würm glaciation and subsequent Holocene with embossed. In the last phase Tschitolian this sequence then empties into the partial and regionally evolving Neolithic and / or the Iron Age often occurring without preceding Neolithic and almost always without Bronze Age. If one of this climatic concept as a basis, each new tool groups that might have worn the appropriate environmental changes between tropical forest and open savannah account, even if a parallelism of various support groups in different habitats seems possible here, even a seasonal embossed variance of the same sources were created depends as for hunting in the valley or on the plateau. The earliest phase of the overall development goes back even into Epipalaeolithic and shows forms such as hand axes, which are typical of the Acheulian of the ( Lower Paleolithic ). Core of this complex were Central and East Africa ( with the main archaeological site on the Kalambo cases, southeast of Lake Tanganyika ), but rich foothills until far into South Africa, while West Africa, only weaker and have less prove, by Major Appliances certain tracks, as well as in the core of the Congo Basin due to the poor conditions of preservation and the fact that there permanently rainforest conditions are likely to have prevailed, so that this area was permanently settled until very late neolithic and especially along the rivers, such as the lack lithic findings and the appearance of ceramic suspect there leaves. As a carrier of Sangoan and Fauresmith and possibly even the early phase Lupemban come homo rhodesiensis and Homo erectus or its variants in question, their relationships, however, are still largely unknown, and which finally Homo sapiens followed. The relationships with the ethnic groups who live there today, however, the immigrant there until the Holocene Bantu peoples, the much older Pygmies, Bushmen or San and Khoikhoi ( Hottentots ) are so far unclear.

Literature and sources

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  • John Donnelly Fage (ed.): The Cambridge History of Africa. Vol 2 Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1978/88. ISBN 0-521-21592-7.
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  • David W. Phillipson: African Archaeology. 3rd edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-54002-5.
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