63,000–46,000 BCE: (The Mumba Industry Spread to Southern Africa and the Howiesons Poort Interruption — Around 63,000 BCE Tools Characteristic of the Mumba I…

63,000–46,000 BCE: (The Mumba Industry Spread to Southern Africa and the Howiesons Poort Interruption — Around 63,000 BCE Tools Characteristic of the Mumba Industry Spreading from Eastern Africa to Southern Africa Where This Industry Has Been Called the Howiesons Poort Culture, Howiesons Poort Lasting in Southern Africa Only to Around 58,000 BCE When It Was Replaced by Middle Stone Age Technology, Users of Later Stone Age Technology Returning Permanently to Southern Africa from Around 46,000 BCE Onward): Around 63,000 BCE, tools characteristic of the Mumba industry spread to southern Africa, where this industry has been called the Howiesons Poort culture. Howiesons Poort lasted in those areas only to around 58,000 BCE, when it was replaced by the use of Middle Stone Age technology. Users of Later Stone Age technology returned permanently to southern Africa from around 46,000 BCE onward. The Howiesons Poort interruption is one of the most puzzling episodes in the deep history of southern Africa: an advanced lithic technology — geometric microliths, backed blades, complex hafting — appears suddenly around 63,000 BCE, flourishes for five thousand years, and then disappears, replaced by the simpler Middle Stone Age toolkit it had superseded. The Later Stone Age does not return permanently until 46,000 BCE, leaving a twelve-thousand-year gap during which southern Africa reverted to older technologies. The episode suggests that technological progress is not linear — that advanced innovations can be lost, forgotten, or abandoned — and that the permanent establishment of Later Stone Age technology required not a single moment of invention but a sustained demographic and cultural transformation that took tens of thousands of years to complete.