Stone Age culture bloomed inland, not just along Africa’s coasts

Excavations at a rock-shelter inhabited 105,000 years ago turned up possibly symbolic crystals

scientists excavating a rock shelter in the Kalahari Desert

Calcite crystals and other items excavated at a Kalahari Desert rock-shelter (site shown) suggest that people achieved impressive cultural advances far from southern Africa’s coast around 105,000 years ago.

J. Wilkins

Africa’s southern Kalahari Desert is not typically regarded as a hotbed of Stone Age innovations.