The Dungo is a dry river (oued) that receives a series of tributaries, flowing into a sandy alluvial surface formed by annual discharges.
Over the course of thousands of years, these watercourses have left visible concentrations of artefacts and carving remains in various locations, probably as a result of the dismantling of carcasses of marine animals or medium and large terrestrial animals, such as the ancestors of the ungiris or olongos (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) or even elephants, given the size of the cutting instruments.
The stations were studied from a geological point of view by Dr. Mascarenhas Neto from the Geology and Mines Services of Angola in 1956, by Professor Gaspar de Carvalho who in 1960, who collected several lithic pieces, some of which were offered to the Mendes Anthropology Museum Corrêa in Porto. A study and publication by Dr. Carlos Ervedosa in 1967 resulted in them.
In 1973 (with Dr. Vitor de Oliveira Jorge) and in January 1974 I visited the station where a few dozen bifaces were collected and deposited at the Museu de Arqueologia dos Cursos de Letras, in Lubango.
These were the subject of some typology studies by students of the Literature Courses.
From 1976 onwards, on the initiative of Luís Pais Pinto, new prospections were carried out and years later, Dr. Manuel Gutierrez, under a cooperation agreement with the Center National de Recherches Scientifiques, carried out, together with a team from the National Museum of Archeology of Benguela an in-depth study that included excavations and which resulted in a set of dates attributing the first dates to the Dungo stations (IV and V) (in the photo where we are sitting and on the other side you can see the sandy layer that covers the archaeological layers . half the Dungo mulola) obtained by scientific methods.
That French archaeologist led a team (Claude Guerin, Maria Lena and Maria da Piedade de Jesus) that ended up discovering a place where a blue whale (Balaenoptera sp.) was "disassembled" carried out by a group of hunter-gatherers from the Ancient Paleolithic and who left more than 57 pieces at the site, including bifaces, axes, chips of different sizes and remains of work to obtain utensils, in addition to the remains of the cetacean skeleton.
It should be noted that the site is more than 3 km from the coast and 65m above the average water level, where there should be a beach like Caotinha or Baía Azul.
The animal was dismembered where it washed ashore and must have fed the group for a long period, as the meat could have been preserved dried in the sun or smoked more than 300,000 years ago.
[ in Exploitation of a grand cétacé in ancient Paléolithique: the site of Dungo V in Baia Farta (Benguela Angola) - Gutierrez et al. Contes Rendus de lÁcademie des Sciences IIA pages, 357-362, 2001)
The whale's skeleton discovered by Dr. Manuel Gutierrez's team at the Dungo V station
On Chamume beach, close to the site, several skeletons of whales of the same species can be seen washing up on the coast, even today. It was for this reason that seasonal nomadic groups from the Acheulean and later periods probably maintained themselves for several decades.
From 150,000 years before us, the climate in Angola became progressively drier and the place was invaded by the Kalahari sands that covered the entire coastline until probably Luanda. At the same time, the sea would have progressively lowered its level as the ice caps increased at the poles, leaving the place, previously hit by waves, far from the sea and far above its level.
The traces of economic activity of the hunters- collectors were covered by red sand dunes, even today, in some places, on one side and the other of the Dungo mulola, the height reaches 20 meters above the rock formation where the artifacts are based.
It would probably only become "occupied" in more recent periods of Wilton culture, with the ancestors of the Vassekele or Kuissis around 5,000 before us when the climate became more favorable.