27 Jan 2021

The scorching sun was not hot enough to deter me from taking an adventurous drive into Maleshe, which lies about 17 kilometres north of Tsabong, to explore the small but rich Stone Age historic site of Seo Pan.

Driven by the desire to lay eyes on real Stone Age tools, believed to have been used about 250 000 years ago, I was elated and ready to explore more in real life that reading about it from a book or the internet. It turned out to be a worthwhile escapade, which left me with more knowledge on Scientists’ attempt to explain where we come from as a people.

While on site, traversing the low laying silcrete rocks, I noticed the carefully cut spear shaped rocks, and hammers. Images that I had seen years ago in my history books, played out in my mind.

I reminisced burning the midnight oil during school days perusing history books.  It was mind boggling to see first-hand, early Stone Age Acheulian artifacts in Maleshe village, which are believed to have been used by the ancient people who lived before modern human kind-the homo erectus.

The place which was once a cattlepost, is sandwiched between the village and cattleposts where sheep, goats, cattle and wildlife still maneuver to the Seo pan for drinking water and grazing.

Boldly marked a Botswana national monument by the National Museum , the place is not yet fenced.  A curator at Botswana National Museum based at Maleshe and a native of the village, Mr Thuto Kgannyeng narrates that fencing the area to prevent cattle and wildlife from destroying artifacts  is in the plans.

The ground breaking discovery of Seo Pan in October 2000, unearthed silcrete rocks found on the pan ridge during a site location survey. Holding up one of the arrow pointed stone blades, about the size of a hand, the curator narrates that Seo Pan early Stone Age tools were made and used over 250 000 years ago by Homo Erectus, who lived between 1 million years ago and disappeared about 250 000 years ago.

He divulged that excavations were carried out between 2017 and 2018 by a team of international historians from Namibia and Germany, which reflected that there were more artifacts buried on the ground than there were on the surface.

He said while on site, the team explored the lower side of the ridge and the middle of the pan, where they uncovered that there were early Stone Age and middle Stone Age tools such as arrow points, blades and scrapers.  Mr Kgannyeng said their excavation revealed that the middle Stone Age tools were made by anatomically modern humans, who lived between 200 000 and about 400 000 years ago.

The youthful curator further clarified that during that at the time, the homo erectus relied heavily on nature to survive and used available natural water resources such as pans and did not store water in reservoirs akin to modern humans. Research findings show that the stone artifacts were produced on site as there were traces of stone flakes on sight, after they made cleavers and hammers using the core tool.

The curator noted that scientific findings reflected that the inhabitants of Seo, about thousands of years ago survived on wildlife, vegetables and wild fruits, as it was clear that some of the stones were designed to kill and remove skin from the animal and to cut vegetables.

An elder in Maleshe village, Ms Josephinah Gabankalafe explained that the name, Seo comes from Setlharo language version of ‘Go seola’ which means passing by or in transit. Recapping oral history from her great, grand parents, she said they used everything that was available in nature to survive.

Water was very scarce in the past such that when wildlife was killed, the people drank water from animal intestines, and they also used it for cooking.  The water was purified using fresh grass and placed in a tortoise shell. They also ate tubers such as lonhaneng, kwele, tlhokwe, nkiye and mosedi, as sources of water.

Maleshe Kgosi Gabriel Ntau hastened to buttress Ms Gabankalafhe’s words, saying he did drink water from an animal’s intestines.

He said as inhabitants evolved, they began to dig wells as evidenced by a hand dug well at Seo pan, which is still useful to cattle, small stock and wildlife in the area. He narrated that their great, grand parents used to wear animal skins, which they softened with stones, before modernity. 

Kgosi Ntau pointed out that there was an unexplored cave in Maleshe, which they suspect to harbour more history on the Stone Age era, as the ancient inhabitants lived in caves.

Meanwhile, in his book of The Origin of Species, 19th century English naturalist Charles Darwin argued that organisms come about through an evolution process and provided a scientific explanation. He documented that the theory of evolution is the process by which living organisms change over time as a result of changes in the heritable physical or behavioural traits.

The changes, he wrote, allow an organism to better adapt to its environment to help it to survive and have more offspring. Thus, his discovery of theory of evolution by natural selection was hailed as one of the best substantiated theories in the history of science, supported by evidence from a wide variety of scientific disciplines including paleontology, geology, genetics and development biology. ends