My Personal Journey and Research
Earth and Environmental Sciences
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There were always female role models.
Firstly my Mother – not a scientist but shared all the little steps – taught me perseverance.
Never problems – always challenges
Having grown up in rural South Africa, there were not many human friends. Living close to nature, the archaeological ruins of the Bantu people led to an interest in archaeology. The interest was laid down early as there were iron-age and copper fragments in the areas nearby – my playground was in Kruger National Park, a natural laboratory.
I grew up with African culture which is ‘not to be competitive’.
I also grew up without knowing about evolution. In South Africa, evolution was a no-no subject: evolution started in 1652 when Jan Van Riebeck arrived in Cape Town.
Archaeology was selected at university as it started with ‘A’ – first on the list! My theme of research – where did we, as Homo sapiens, come from?
The first role model was LUCY – ….considered to be the mitochondrial ‘Eve’. A 1987 publication in NATURE showed that we all came from Africa – we all share the common mitochondrial genes. Therefore all my fossils were female role models.
The concept of time was interesting – when to determine ‘time’ - a specialist niche. Radio carbon dating didn’t go back far enough, but now there was OSL - optically stimulated luminescence. It relies on subtle changes in sand grains due to the decay of tiny amounts of radioactive elements present in all natural deposits. The energy of some of these reactions is stored and only released when light strikes the grain. If the sand is buried then the energy is trapped and can be released revealing how long the sand, and the human artefacts it was associated with, were buried. I first started studying in the University of Stellenbosch (RSA) then moved to Aberystwyth (in Wales). Without maths or physics, I became a scientist. When I was going to do my PhD, I thought I had to do physics because I needed it to be a scientist. But my mentor said: no, you don’t need to be a physicist…just be a scientist.
I learnt a most important lesson: Learn from every mistake you make. Improve the accuracy of decisions.
About networking: In Blombos Cave, there were artefacts signifying dance and trance, and other special motifs. These indicated initiation rituals created with finely crafted tools. To date them, we needed a new method, which was OSL, and we can now use this method to trace back millions of years (Science 2002; Vol 295, pp. 1278–1280). This new dating method allows us to reassess where we came from.
Evidence indicates that from an early age we communicated in symbols. Even shell beads were non-functional symbols, a way of ‘showing off ’. When we have social networks there is a transmission of ideas.
In Europe evidence exists of complex lifestyles 195,000 years ago and from there we obtain our first sign of modern cognitive behaviour. There are no driving environmental or climate factors over time, but constant population expansion and contraction, with random isolation sometimes leading to regression. An example of this is the pattern of development in the CLIC languages – they can be mapped to isolated linguistic communities.
For my L’Oreal fellowship, I will be revisiting the subject of when we colonized Australia; when the indigenous people colonized Australia, their impact and changes. Research for my QEII Fellowship will be on Neanderthals – were they as clever as Homo sapiens? The research will be carried out at UOW, where there is a sense of family, feeling, caring. And as I progress, I remember the advice from my mentor, Lesley Head: to remain humble and just enjoy!