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.
History of shamanism
In a excavation of a Mesolithic archaeological site, Star Carr located in North Yorkshire, England, evidence of shamanism can be found in the archaeological findings. The Mesolithic period or otherwise known as the Middle Stone Age dates between 10,000 BC and 4000 BC. At the Star Carr excavation site they found twenty one adult red deer skull parts where there was evidence that these skull parts was deliberately carved and shaped to make it possible for them to be worn on the head of humans with archaeologists suggesting these were used on special occasions or for shamanic practices. This was suggested due to the fact that a characteristic part of shamanic rituals was the headdress's seen on shamans as part of the ceremonial costume where is was believed that headdresses had the effect of increasing concentration in shamans when they are in meditation or performing spiritual ceremonies. To this day Star Carr plays a vital role in understanding the history of shamanism especially from a western point of view due to limited historical records as they have not been able to be preserved throughout time.