In total, 60% of all the remains of rhinoceros accumulated during the MSA were found at a single site, Die Kelders. Similarly low representation was found for elephant and hippopotamus. All sites contain individual specimens of rhinoceros however most faunal assemblages yielded only a few isolated specimens (201 specimens in total, representing 5% of the total sample). To investigate how rhinoceros were potentially hunted/scavenged, we compare the representation of rhinoceros with that of large bovids and zebras in these faunal assemblages across seven sites in the region. Many of these faunal assemblages include evidence of rhinoceros.

MSA sites located in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces of South Africa have yielded extensive faunal assemblages accumulated by anatomically modern humans.

In southern Africa, the Middle Stone Age (MSA), spanning more than 200,000 years, is a critical time period, in which Homo sapiens first appears.

In Venda court speech, the admirable qualities of other animals, such as the crocodile, the elephant and the lion, were also invoked to extol the virtues and magnificence of the chief (Van Warmelo 1971. Moreover, as ethnographic accounts attest, the rhino was not the only animal metaphorically associated with the chiefly position. An analogous leadership metaphor is found among the Zulu, according to which a homestead head had to embody the contrasting but complementary characteristics of a bull (fierceness, authority) and an ox (stability, calmness) ( Poland et al. The cosmology and leadership concepts of African farmers could thus be informed by the behavioural characteristics of both species, aggressive and solitary in the case of the black rhino, and more sociable and territorial in the case of the white rhino.

all the large mammals, the African rhinoceros is the only one in which two closely related species are found with overlapping physical traits and complementary behavioural attributes.

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