Osteodontokeratic Industry - The Birth of African Cave Taphonomy

The Birth of African Cave Taphonomy

Amidst the growing contention surrounding the validity of the ODK hypothesis, a young Southern Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) researcher, Dr. Charles Kimberlin Brain ('Bob' Brain) became fascinated with Dart’s work describing prehistory’s ‘predatory ape-men’, and conducted research upon the bone breakage and skeletal element representation patterns expounded in Dart’s writings (see above). Brain (1967) examined the remains of goat bones within Hottentot villages in Namibia, finding that the skeletal element representation patterns, which formed the crux of Dart's support for the ODK culture, were more simply explained by the durability and resistance of certain bone elements to soil-chemical weathering and the consumption habits of carnivores. This stimulated Brain's interest in how such patterns within cave systems might be affected by the weight, density, cortical thickness and size of bones in relation to weathering and erosion processes.

In 1965, Brain took over the directorship of Swartkrans cave (next to Sterkfontein caves) and found a very similar skeletal element representation pattern of fossil faunal remains (including ungulates, primates, large carnivores and hominins) to that of the Makapansgat Member 3 Grey breccia assemblages. This confirmed Brain’s earlier work that skeletal element representation patterns were more likely generated from factors relating to the resilience of bone to weathering, carnivore damage and diagenesis. Further, he found that the breakage patterns from faunal remains at Swartkrans were consistent with large carnivore damage upon bone, such as leopards and hyenas. During Brain's excavations, he found a partial skull-cap of a juvenile Paranthropus robustus (SK 54) bearing two puncture marks (1970). Brain found that these punctures aligned perfectly with the spacing of the canines in a leopard mandible. He then summarized the findings of his research spanning nearly 20 years in the authoritative volume entitled, “Hunters or the Hunted?: An Introduction to African Cave Taphonomy” (1981) (named after Washburn’s famous article, see above), which corroborated Washburn's hypothesis that early Australopiths were not, in fact, responsible for associated fossil accumulations found throughout southern Africa. It instead demonstrated the fact that large carnivore species had played a much more important role in the origination of fossil deposit (especially in the Sterkfontein Valley) bearing Plio-Pleistocene hominin remains, and further that early Australopiths, as Washburn proposed many years ago, were preyed upon by large carnivores and were not actually predators themselves. Subsequently, Brain's work has engendered a body of on-going research critical to our understanding of early hominin species and the ecosystems in which they lived. Brain’s volume contains an excellent summary of Dart’s development of the ODK hypothesis, as well as his detailed refutation to it, which is now recognized as disproving Dart’s ideas of the ‘predatory transition from Ape to Man.’