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preserved marine shells. Diepkloof is currently about 15 kilometres from the Elands Bay –

Velorenvlei shore. (Figs. 2.17 - 2.19).

Added to the discoveries from Blombos, Pinnacle Point and Sibudu, these innovative
technological and symbolic manifestations mean that Howieson’s Poort people were

precocious in pre-empting their modern European counterparts by many tens of thousands of
years.

Some of us have speculated that this is not unconnected to the fact that Howiesons Poort, Still
Bay and some earlier MSA people along the Cape coast were consuming marine foods rich in

polyunsaturated fatty acids long before any of their counterparts in Europe and Asia. Our
brains, the characteristic defining feature of the ‘modern person’, are made up of about 60%

such nutrients, the key to rapid functioning. It seems likely that the brain foods such as
intertidal shellfish contributed to the early appearance of our species by provisioning pregnant

and breastfeeding women with exactly what their young offspring needed to allow them to

grow a larger brain.

Conclusions

On a personal front, John Parkington and Cedric Poggenpoel surveyed the Trappies Kop sites

in the late 1960s soon after the former’s arrival in Cape Town. However, because the rock
shelters still had occupants and appeared to have been substantially damaged by earlier

excavations, we decided to look elsewhere. In the end we began a programme of excavation
in the Cederberg and Sandveld that took us, first, to De Hangen near Clanwilliam and then to

Diepkloof along the Verlorenvlei in 1973. It is the continuation of the Diepkloof excavations

to the present with French colleagues that has allowed us to revisit the interesting Howiesons
Poort issue.

This work has led us to suggest that the southwestern Cape coast, and associated coastal

ranges of the Cape Fold Belt mountains, sits at the heart of the homeland of our species with a
set of accessible marine resources ideal for promoting brain growth and the resultant

promotion of innovative behaviours. Of course, these early humans did not eat lots of

shellfish for this reason; rather they began to integrate more regularly than their predecessors