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25 July 2019 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Leonie Bolleurs
Plant Sciences Congress
At a public seminar, Understanding human evolution through the study of past environments in the Free State, presented by the UFS Department of Plant Sciences, were, from the left, front: Kristen Wroth, Britt Bousman; back: Prof Louis Scott, mentor in the UFS Department of Plant Sciences, and Michael Toffolo.

Florisbad, a thermal spring situated 45 km northwest of Bloemfontein on the edge of a large dry saltpan, is a well-known fossil site that used to be a large lake where giant buffalo, blue wildebeest, and hippos roamed thousands of years ago. Today, this fossil-bearing spring is not only a tourist attraction and a venue for weddings, but also an established quaternary research station that has attracted several palaeo-scientists since the 1930s, following the discovery of a remarkable human cranium and other fauna. 

Studies of past environments 

Three international researchers studying different aspects of archaeology at this and other sites in the Free State, recently presented lectures at the UFS to a multidisciplinary group of academics in plant sciences, geology, geography, and environmental management.

These lectures are part of the ongoing collaboration regarding fossil plant (pollen), fauna, and archaeological studies between the University of the Free State (UFS), the National Museum, and universities abroad.

Florisbad, a key site for understanding the appearance of modern environments as well as modern humans in Southern Africa, is the focus of the investigations of all three visiting scientists, aiming to provide a better understanding of past Free State environments where human evolution has taken place.

Michael Toffolo, a junior research chair from the University of Bordeaux Montaigne in France, focuses on the reconstruction of site-formation processes, palaeo-environments, and ancient human activities based on the study of the micro-morphology of archaeological deposits. He has been working in Southern Africa since 2013. The title of his lecture was: Reconstructing Pleistocene environments in the Free State by looking at the microscopic sedimentary record. 

Fluoride-preserved bones

Florisbad is widely known for the discovery of an archaic modern human skull of c. 260 000 years old. According to Toffolo, the human probably died, and the remains was left at the spring by the hyenas. The bones consequently absorbed fluoride from the spring water, which counteracted decomposition and helped to preserve it. 

Britt Bousman talked about middle and late Pleistocene terraces and archaeology in the Modder River Valley. He has worked in Southern Africa for the past 43 years and started his collaboration with researchers from the UFS and the National Museum in 1985. They have worked together at several sites, investigating palaeo-environments. Bousman teaches Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at the Texas State University. 

While most scientists study early human records in rock shelters, especially those near the coast where seafood was harvested by prehistoric people, he is one of only a few researchers who studies the evolution of early human behaviour in central South Africa in the context of their activities in the open environment. 

“Rock shelters are good spaces for human behaviour,” says Bousman. He believes, however, that the Modder River area is a better space to study how humans have survived on the land under changing climatic conditions in the long term; for example, how they hunted and slaughtered animals. This can be seen from the many artefacts they left, such as spearheads, scrapers, etc. Interesting animal remains were also found, such as the bones of an extinct giant zebra at the Erfkroon site along the Modder River, with a head measuring 63 cm compared to that of a current zebra, which measures 54 cm. The only complete horn core of an extinct giant wildebeest was also found at the site. 

The first chemists

According to Bousman, technology changed in the Stone Age and included the production of more grinding stones, indicating that humans collected plants and grinded them. Observations of modern plant-collecting activities suggested that not many plant foods needed grinding. Bousman proposes that different plant components may have been grinded for medicinal mixtures, therefore these ancestors may have assumed the role of chemists. 

Kristen Wroth, a postdoctoral researcher in the Geoarchaeology Working Group at the University of Tübingen, Germany, presented a lecture on early human-environment interactions and ancient pyro technology. She uses a suite of micro-archaeological techniques such as phytolith (microscopic plant silica) analysis, micromorphology, and FTIR to understand both human and Neanderthal behaviour and to reconstruct how local environments have changed in space and through time.


News Archive

Einstein's gravitational waves as creative as Bach's music, says UFS physicist
2016-02-19

Description: Gravitational waves  Tags: Gravitational waves

Profile of the gravitational waves of the colliding black holes.

Prof Pieter Meintjes, Affiliated Researcher in the Department of Physics at the University of the Free State, welcomed the work done by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) science team.
 
For the first time, researchers from two of the American Ligo centres, in Washington and Louisiana respectively, observed gravitational waves directly, 100 years after Albert Einstein said they existed. "My study field in astrophysics involves relativistic systems. Therefore, Einstein's view of gravity is crucial to me. I consider the theory as the highest form of human creativity - just like the music of JS Bach. Over the past 100 years, the theory has been tested through various experiments and in different ways.
 
“The discovery of gravitational waves was the last hurdle to overcome in making this absolutely unfaltering. I am therefore thrilled by the discovery. It is absolutely astounding to imagine that the equations used to make the predictions about the gravitational-wave emissions when two gravitational whirlpools collide - as discovered on 14 September 2015 by LIGO - are basically Einstein's original equations that were published way back in 1916 - in other words, 100 years ago.
 
“The LIGO detectors have been operational since the early 1990s, but they had to undergo several stages of upgrades before being sensitive enough to make detections. LIGO is currently in its final stage, and is expected to function at optimal sensitivity only within a year or two. To be able to conduct the measurements at this stage is therefore a fantastic achievement, since much more funding will certainly be deposited in the project,” Prof Meintjes says.

Description: Prof Pieter Meintjes Tags: Prof Pieter Meintjes

Prof Pieter Meintjes
Photo: Charl Devenish

The search for gravitational waves by means of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is one of the focus points in research by both Prof Meintjes and PhD student, Jacques Maritz. This involves the study of radio signals from pulsars that might show signs of effects by gravitational waves. They are looking for signs of gravitational waves. The gravitational waves discovered and studied in this manner would naturally vary much more slowly than the signal discovered from the two colliding gravitational waves.
 
The discovery will definitely provide renewed impetus to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Project to use the dispersion of pulsar signals, and to search for the impact of gravitational waves on signals as they travel through the universe. According to Prof Meintjes, the SKA will definitely contribute fundamentally to the Frontier research, which will provide a good deal of publicity for the UFS and South Africa, if significant contributions are made by local researchers in this field.

Video clip explaining gravitational waves

 

  • The Department of Physics will present a general, non-technical talk concerning the recent detection of gravitational waves by the 2 Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatories (LIGO):

Wednesday 24 February 2016
11:00-12:00
New lecture auditorium, Department of Physics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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