HENNO MARTIN’S THE SHELTERING DESERT A handbook for desert archaeologists Leon Jacobson for man and beast before the land reverts to the arid condition that is so well explained in the book. I first came across The Sheltering Desert in 1963 when the Afrikaans translation, Vlug in die Namib, was prescribed for our Afrikaans matric exam. It was a great adventure tale. Two geologists working in Namibia, Henno Martin and Hermann Korn, decide to hide out in that desert to avoid being interned with other German nationals during the Second World War. They had both emigrated from Germany in 1935 after rejecting the Nazi regime and it was therefore ironical for them to be classified as ‘enemy aliens’. Martin describes the first rains falling on the bare, parched ground as ‘long colourful fringes’ and ‘moving curtains’, although most of the lighter initial showers evaporated before reaching ground. Heavier showers subsequently fell and these brought the animal herds that had ‘smelt the rain’ and followed it from the interior to the gravel plains where the fresh grass was rapidly growing. It is worth noting here that Mary Seeley later calculated that it only took 21 mm of rain in the desert to result in a standing crop of grass. Martin describes the large concentrations of game, such as a single herd of three to four thousand springbok together with numbers of zebra and gemsbok. On another occasion he describes three thousand zebra around a vlei. In general, rain in the desert was patchy and thus encouraged the aggregation of large herds. Fig. 1: A view from the Namib facing eastwards to the Brandberg during a dry phase when the land is bare (Photo: L Jacobson) They camped in various locations in the area around the Kuiseb River canyon and spent two years in isolation except for a couple of rare visits to distant farms for assistance. Eventually, Hermann Korn became seriously ill and they had to turn themselves in to obtain medical treatment for him. Tragically, Hermann was killed in a motor accident years later. Martin’s subsequent German account of their adventures, Wenn es Krieg gibt, gehen wir in die Wüste, was published in 1956. Both German and English editions have been in print since then. Fig. 2: A view during the rainy season from about the same spot as in Fig. 1, but facing to the west. Notice the dense grass cover and also the ‘curtains of rain’ in the background, which are depicted in the rock art at a number of sites in the Brandberg. (Photo: L Jacobson) The desert thus, for a short period, blossomed into a hunter’s paradise. It also provided a rich seasonal resource for indigenous herders and later for European farmers. Eventually the game would disperse, and once the grass had dried out and withered they would trek back to the interior. This pattern was probably one followed by bands of hunter-gatherers. Abundant hunting opportunities and surface water would have meant a less stressful existence and allowed bands to aggregate for social activities. This lesson I learnt aided me in the interpretation of the archaeology of the area. It is not only a tale of great adventure under conditions of severe hardship but for archaeologists it provides insight into the ecological dynamics of an arid ecosystem and how it is possible to survive in such a system. There are many archaeological sites in the Namib and the casual visitor may think that they reflect life in a more humid past before climate change resulted in the present dry phase. Rather, it is the annual rains that turn the desert into a brief paradise Dr Leon Jacobson is affiliated associate professor in the Department of Geology at the University of the Free State. lj.heritage@gmail.com The Digging Stick But there are other interesting observations as well. 22 Vol 31(3) December 2014 Acknowledgements I am grateful to John Shea, Hilary Duke, Alex Mackay and Peter Mitchell for comments on this paper. The ‘fringes’ and ‘curtains’ of rain Martin describes are echoed in the rock art of the Brandberg. During the dry months, when food was scarce and the few animals Martin and Korn managed to shoot were thin and lean, they developed a longing for fat. Animals became an ‘increasing part’ of their dreams and, he says, the ‘distinction between human beings and animals became blurred’. Perhaps this is another clue to the origin of the abundant rock art in the Brandberg, which was probably a refuge area during the dry months of the year. References Binford, LR. 2001. Constructing Frames of Reference: An Analytical Method for Archaeological Theory Building Using HunterGatherer and Environmental Data Sets. Berkeley: University of California Press. Childe, VG. 1951. Social evolution. London: Watts. d’Errico, F, Backwell, L, Villa, P, Degano, I, Lucejko, JJ, Bamford, MK, Higham, TF, Colombini, MP & Beaumont, PB. 2012. Early evidence of San material culture represented by organic artifacts from Border Cave, South Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109:13214–13219. Deacon, HJ & Deacon, J. 1999. Human Beginnings in South Africa: uncovering the secrets of the Stone Age. Walnut Creek: Altamira. Humphreys, AJB. 2005. ‘De-! kunging’ the Later Stone Age of the central interior of South Africa. South African Field Archaeology 13:36–41. Kelly, RL. 2013. The Lifeways of Hunter Gatherers: the foraging spectrum. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Mitchell, PJ. 1988. The Early Microlithic Assemblages of Southern Africa. BAR International Series. Oxford: Archaeopress.. Wadley, L. 1993. The Pleistocene Later Stone Age South of the Limpopo River. Journal of World Prehistory 7:243–296. Wadley, L. 2005. A typological study of the final Middle Stone Age stone tools from Sibudu Cave, Kwazulu-Natal, The South African Archaeological Bulletin 60:51–63. Henno Martin’s book is rich in detail for both archaeologists and ecologists and will definitely repay a careful reading. The enforced stay of the two men in the desert provided an unexpected laboratory of observations that is not possible today given the developments of the last 75 years. Their experiences open an opportunity for a more nuanced understanding of the prehistory of this and other arid areas. Further reading Anon. n.d. Zwei Geologen in der Wüste. www.namutoni.de/ geologen (accessed 17/08/2014). Carr, MJ, Carr, AC & Jacobson, L. 1978. Hut remains and related features from the Zerrissene Mountain area: their distribution, typology and ecology. Cimbebasia (B) 2:235-258. Jacobson, L. 1981. The Brandberg. Rössing Dec. 1981:8–11. Jacobson, L. 1984. Hunting versus gathering in an arid ecosystem: the evidence from the Namib Desert. In: Hall, MJ, Avery, G, Avery, DM, Wilson, ML & Humphreys, AJB (eds), Frontiers: southern African archaeology today, Oxford: British Archaeological Reports International Series 207:75–79. Lenssen-Erz, T & Erz, M-T. 2001. The rain’s hair and the rain’s legs – a cultural-historical essay of a rainy day. In: Eisenhofer, S (ed.), Tracing the rainbow: art and life in southern Africa, 284-291, Stuttgart: Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum. Martin, H. 1956. Wenn es Krieg gibt, gehen wir in die Wüste. Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlags Gesellschaft, Martin, H. 1974 (2nd edit.). The Sheltering Desert. Windhoek: SWA Scientific Society. Seely, MK. 1978. Grassland productivity: the desert end of the curve. South African Journal of Science 74:295–297. Weber, K. 1998. Memorial to Henno Martin. Geological Society of America 29:71–72. ARCHAEOLOGY IN AFRICA ‘Missing link’ fossils may be jumble of species One of our closest long-lost relatives may never have existed. The fossils of Australopithecus sediba, which promised to rewrite the story of human evolution, may actually be the remains of two species jumbled together. At two million years old, they show a mix of features, some similar to the ape-like australopithecines, others more like our genus, Homo. To its discoverers, this hotchpotch means A. sediba was becoming human and that the Homo genus first evolved in South Africa. But a new analysis suggests A. sediba did not exist. ‘I think there are two different hominin genera represented at Malapa,’ says Ella Been of Tel Aviv University. ‘One is an Australopithecus and one an early Homo. We cannot yet tell if the australopithecine remains are distinct enough to call them a new species’. The Later Stone Age is not San prehistory (continued from page 4) archaeological past. Studying living people helps ground archaeological research and the inferences we make about past human societies. But, in doing so, we need to be aware of the broader implications of our claims of long-term cultural continuity based on a narrow range of analogies. Southern African archaeology has accumulated great power for explaining the past, but with great power comes great responsibility. Recent descriptions of San people as representing ‘an archaic fantasy’ by the presidency in Botswana (www.survivalinternational.org/news/6754) highlight the political implications of equating living people with their Stone Age ancestors. Vol 31(3) December 2014 Been studies the spinal columns of ancient hominins, so she was curious when a paper was published in Science last year focusing on the spine of A. sediba. There are fragments from two skeletons at Malapa, a juvenile male and an adult female. Looking at photographs of the vertebrae of the young male, she realised they looked a lot like the vertebrae of the Nariokotome or Turkana Boy, a 1,5 million-year-old skeleton of H. erectus. Like ours, its vertebrae are much wider than they are tall. In contrast, the adult female’s vertebrae are taller, which is a classic Australopithecus feature. She concludes that the 23 The Digging Stick