Late Pleistocene Movement of People and Ideas in the Southern Cape, South Africa

During the late Pleistocene (~126,000-11,600 years ago) in southern Africa, we see the emergence of new technologies and an overall expansion of the material culture record of Homo sapiens. These changes have been argued to represent the development of increasingly complex technologies and some of the earliest evidence of behaviors that, later in time, are described as typical of our species. Current arguments focus on increases in cultural connections between groups as a primary driver of these technological and behavioral innovations, but we still have a limited understanding of how people were moving around the landscape, how information was transmitted between groups, or the degree of social interconnectivity present during the late Pleistocene. I address questions including: How did people and ideas move around the landscape? When did complex social networks between groups begin to form? And in what ways did these factors affect the emergence of innovations that contributed to the success of our species?