Abstract
Climates of equatorial East Africa and subtropical Southern Africa have varied inversely over long periods of time. The high-resolution δ 18O stalagmite record from Cold Air Cave in the Makapansgat valley in South Africa and a similar resolution lake-level record for Lake Naivasha in Kenya have been in anti-phase for much of the last thousand years. A similar relationship is evident in the twentieth century meteorological record. The changes in rainfall in the two regions on multi-decadal to centennial scales have influenced both settlement patterns and livelihoods of Iron Age agriculturalists. The resulting latitudinal gradient of change may have been a significant factor in promoting southward migration of Sotho-Tswana speaking people from equatorial East Africa during the first few centuries of the last millennium and earlier. This would have occurred at times when environments in the north were deteriorating and those to the south were ameliorating.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allan, R. A., Lindesay, J. A., and Parker, D.: 1996, El Niño, Southern Oscillation and Climatic Variability, CSIRO, Melbourne.
Burgess, R. L. and Jacobson, L.: 1984, ‘Archaeological Sediments from a Shell Midden near Wortel Dam, Walvis Bay, Southern Africa’, Palaeoecol. Afr. 16, 429–435.
Dunwiddie, P. W. and LaMarche, V.: 1980, ‘A Climatologically-Responsive Tree-Ring Record from Widdringtonia Cedarbergensis, Cape Province, South Africa’, Nature 286, 796–797.
Hall, M.: 1986, The Changing Past: Farmers, Kings and Traders in Southern Africa, 200–1860, David Philip, Cape Town.
Hall, M. J.: 1976, ‘Dendroclimatology, Rainfall and Human Adaptation in the Later Iron Age of Natal and Zululand’, Annal. Natal Mus. 22, 693–703.
Holmgren, K., Karlén, W., Lauritzen, S. E., Lee-Thorp, J. A., Partridge, T. C., Piketh, S., Repinski, P., Stevenson, Svanered, O., and Tyson, P. D.: 1999, ‘A 3000-Year High-Resolution Stalagmite-Based Record of Palaeoclimate for North-Eastern South Africa’, Holocene 9, 295–309.
Holmgren, K., Tyson, P. D, Moberg, A., and Svanared, O.: 2001, ‘A Preliminary 3000-Year Regional Temperature Reconstruction for South Africa’, S. Afr. J. Sci. 97, 49–51.
Huffman, T. N.: 1989, ‘Ceramics, Settlements and Late Iron Age Migrations’, Afr. Archaeol. Rev. 7, 155–182.
Huffman, T. N.: 1996, ‘Archaeological Evidence for Climatic Change during the Last 2000 Years in Southern Africa’, Quat. Internat. 33, 55–60.
Huffman, T. N. and Herbert, R. K.: 1994, ‘New Perspectives on Eastern Bantu’, Azania 29, 27–36.
Iliffe, J.: 1995, Africans, the History of a Continent, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Lindesay, J. A.: 1988, ‘South African Rainfall, the Southern Oscillation and a Southern Hemisphere Annual Cycle’, J. Climatol. 8, 17–30.
Lindesay, J. A. and Vogel, C. H.: 1990, ‘Historical Evidence for Southern Oscillation-Southern African Relationships’, Int. J. Clim. 10, 679–689.
Maggs, T.: 1984, ‘The Iron Age South of the Zambezi’, in Klein, R. G. (ed.), Southern African Prehistory and Palaeoenvironments, Balkema, Rotterdam, pp. 329–360.
Mason, S. J. and Lindesay, J. A.: 1993, ‘A Note on the Modulation of Southern Oscillation-Southern African Rainfall Associations with the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation’, J. Geophys. Res. 98, 8847–8850.
Meyer, A.: 1998, The Archaeological Sites of Greefswald, University of Pretoria, Pretoria.
Nicholson, S. E.: 1986, ‘The Nature of Rainfall Variability in Africa South of the Equator’, J. Climatol. 6, 515–530.
Nicholson, S. E. and Entekhabi, D.: 1986, ‘The Quasi-Periodic Behaviour of Rainfall Variability in Africa and its Relationship to the Southern Oscillation’, Arch. Met. Geophys. Bioklimatol. 34A, 311–348.
Ogallo, L. J.: 1988, ‘Relationships between Seasonal Rainfall in East Africa and the Southern Oscillation’, J. Climatol. 8, 31–43.
Ogallo, L. J.: 2000, ‘Predicting Drought in Kenya: Prospects and Challenges’, in Wilhite, D. (ed.), Drought, A Global Assessment, Vol. II, Routledge, London, pp. 52–67.
Thackeray, J. F.: 1996, ‘Ring Width Variation in a Specimen of South African Podocarpus, Circa 1350–1937 AD’, Palaeoecol. Afr. 24, 233–240.
Thackeray, J. F. and Potze, S.: 2000, ‘A Sectioned Yellowwood Tree Trunk Housed at the Transvaal Museum, Pretoria’, Ann. Transvaal Mus., in press.
Tyson, P. D., Karlen, W., Holmgren, K., and Heiss, G.: 2000, ‘The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warming in South Africa’, S. Afr. J. Sci. 96, 121–126.
Verschuren, D., Laird, K. R., and Cumming, B. F.: 2000, ‘Rainfall and Drought in Equatorial East Africa during the Past 1,100 Years’, Nature 403, 410–414.
Vogel, J. C.: 1995, ‘The Temporal Distribution of Radiocarbon Dates for the Iron Age of Southern Africa’, S. Afr. Archaeol. Bull. 50, 106–109.
Vogel, J. C. and Fuls, A.: 1999, ‘Spatial Distribution of Radiocarbon Dates for the Iron Age in Southern Africa’, S. Afr. Archaeol. Bull. 54, 97–101.
Webster, J. B.: 1980, ‘Drought, Migration and Chronology in the Lake Malawi Littoral’, Transafr. J. Hist. 9, 70–90. (Received 27 June 2000; in revised form 12 June 2001)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tyson, P.D., Lee-Thorp, J., Holmgren, K. et al. Changing Gradients of Climate Change in Southern Africa during the Past Millennium: Implications for Population Movements. Climatic Change 52, 129–135 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013099104598
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013099104598