Homo Sapiens in Equatorial Guinea during the Middle Stone Age: a paleopedological approach

After centuries of investigation the past of human species remains unclear and provokes large discussions. The prehistory studies in Africa are commonly related to the East and South of African continent, which led to idea that our ancestors avoided rainforest environments and preferred savannas as their habitat. However, there are some findings in other regions, including the ones that were under rainforest vegetation even during Late Glacial. For example, such findings were described in Equatorial Guinea and Ivory Coast, places that according to palaeoecological reconstructions were such a refugium of pluviselva. We conducted our research in archaeological sites of Equatorial Guinea to determine (1) in what environmental conditions Middle Stone Age (MSA) Homo Sapiens lived and (2) how did they interact with the environment. Our research was conducted at the archaeological site Mabewele 1 in Equatorial Guinea. The results of phytolith analysis of the complete sequence have shown that the rainforest most probably had insignificant changes since the MSA, which means that an that period Homo Sapiens inhabited pluviselva. At the same time the complete sequence was composed of several layer of pedosediments of very similar composition. At the lower part of the sequence abundant artefacts were found buried almost in-situ, however since the flakes had a preferential orientation, we expect that they were slightly redeposited before they were buried. Even such shallow redeposition means an erosion which has occurred over exposed land surface with disturbed vegetation. This finding leads us to the question whether this erosion is a sign of human activity or was it related to some natural processes? At the same time, in the studied sequence the artifacts are deposited over the stone line horizon. The stone line in ferralitic soils may be explained by an intense bioturbation process.