Middle Stone Age
The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Later Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of particular MSA stone tools have their origins as far back as 550–500,000 years ago and as such some researchers consider this to be the beginnings of the MSA. The MSA is often mistakenly understood to be synonymous with the Middle Paleolithic of Europe, especially due to their roughly contemporaneous time span, however, the Middle Paleolithic of Europe represents an entirely different hominin population, "Homo neanderthalensis", than the MSA of Africa, which did not have Neanderthal populations. Additionally, current archaeological research in Africa has yielded much evidence to suggest that modern human behavior and cognition was beginning to develop much earlier in Africa during the MSA than it was in Europe during the Middle Paleolithic. The MSA is associated with both anatomically modern humans ("Homo sapiens") as well as archaic "Homo sapiens", sometimes referred to as "Homo helmei". Early physical evidence comes from the Gademotta Formation in Ethiopia, the Kapthurin Formation in Kenya and Kathu Pan in South Africa.
Border Cave
There was unusual stratigraphic and radiometric control at Border Cave, and these data indicate that Border Cave was not always inhabited. Border cave was occupied at different points in time, and each occupancy modified the sediment at Border Cave. One particular sedimentary sequence of interest was the early age of the Middle Stone Age at about 95,000 B.P., which was originally believed to align with the Upper Paleolithic. Instead, the Middle Stone Age at Border Cave was found to extend to the beginning of the Late Interglacial. A number of sedimentary sequences on the interior and the coast, including the Klasies River Mouth site in the southern Cape, the Bushman Rock Shelter, and Florisbad, support this sedimentary pattern presented at Border Cave. Additionally, a late Middle Pleistocene age for the earliest Middle Stone Age follows the uranium-series date of 174,000 B.P.