A new study on the Senegalese site of Bargny, led by Eslem Ben Arous and Khady Niang, provides crucial information about the beginning of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) on the west coast of the African continent, some 130,000 years ago.
A new paper released in the journal Quaternary Environments and Humans,led by Dr. Eslem Ben Arous (MSCA Postdoctoral fellow at Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), member of the Geochronology and Geology Scientific program, documents one of the oldest human occupations preserved in the sites Bargny 1 and 3 (Senegal), and associated with classic Middle Stone Age (MSA) in West Africa.
The work involves an international team made of various members from the OSL/ESR dating and Geology labs from CENIEH, the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology (Germany) and Université Cheikh Anta Diop (Senegal).
"Although the Middle Stone Age (MSA) is a crucial cultural period that constitutes a major change in our species, Homo sapiens' evolutionary and cognitive history, vast swathes of Africa such as West Africa have seen less investment in research, in contrast to other regions of the continent", says Dr Ben Arous.
Through a combination of two dating methods, Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) and Electron Spin Resonance (ESR), the age of the human occupation at Bargny was dated to around 130 thousands years, confirming the early presence of MSA occupations along the Senegambian coast around the MIS 6-MIS 5 transition.
"In combination with the associated estuarine environments and mangrove forest already documented in another study published in 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02046-4), the evidence from Bargny adds to the known diversity, and likely complex behaviour, of early human populations living by Africa’s coastlines", explains Dr Ben Arous.
ESR and OSL dating analyses were carried out at CENIEH, and this works is a new illustration of the increasing role played by the Geochronology and Geology Scientific program and the Geochronology labs in refining the chronology of early human migrations across the African continent and beyond.
"This study showcases the expertise and facilities currently available at CENIEH for geochronological studies, which enable to produce high-quality data in accordance to the highest standards, eventually publishable in international scientific journals" concludes Dr Mathieu Duval, senior researcher at CENIEH and co-author of the work.
The investigation received funding from the European Union through the Marie Slodowsca-Curie action (101107408- WATIME ‘West African Middle Stone Age Timeline using ESR dating of quartz’ https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101107408).
