A reassessment of the wooden fragment from Florisbad, South Africa
- ISSN: 03054403
- DOI: 10.1016/S0305-4403(02)00245-5
Abstract
Excavations at the Florisbad fossil site in 1952 yielded several pieces of wood from one of the spring eyes at the level of the lowest Peat of the spring mound. One of these pieces was preserved, and appears to have cut marks towards the tip. Clark (Res. Nas. Mus., 1 (1959) 135) described it as part of an ancient throwing stick. The piece has now been identified as a non-local wood, Zanthoxylum chalybeum (Engl.), the kundanyoka knobwood (Rutaceae), which today occurs naturally in Zimbabwe and farther north. As the wooden fragment was associated with Middle Stone Age (MSA) artefacts, it could be as young as 125,000 years or as old as the approximately 259,000-year old cranium. The presence of this taxon so far south implies that there was a southern shift of the vegetation zones.
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