I'll have the Steamed Mussels With Lime & Cilantro.
Posted on 10/17/2007 11:22:47 AM PDT by Pharmboy
In one of the earliest hints of "modern" living, humans 164,000 years ago put on primitive makeup and hit the seashore for steaming mussels, new archaeological finds show.
Call it a beach party for early man.
But it's a beach party thrown by people who weren't supposed to be advanced enough for this type of behavior. What was found in a cave in South Africa may change how scientists believe Homo sapiens marched into modernity.
Instead of undergoing a revolution into modern living about 40,000 to 70,000 years ago, as commonly thought, man may have become modern in stuttering fits and starts, or through a long slow march that began even earlier. At least that's the case being made in a study appearing in the journal Nature on Thursday.
Researchers found three hallmarks of modern life at Pinnacle Point overlooking the Indian Ocean near South Africa's Mossel Bay: harvested and cooked seafood, reddish pigment from ground rocks, and early tiny blade technology. Scientific optical dating techniques show that these hallmarks were from 164,000 years ago, plus or minus 12,000 years.
"Together as a package this looks like the archaeological record of a much later time period," said study author Curtis Marean, professor of anthropology at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University.
This means humans were eating seafood about 40,000 years earlier than previously thought. And this is the earliest record of humans eating something other than what they caught or gathered on the land, Marean said. Most of what Marean found were the remnants of brown mussels, but he also found black mussels, small saltwater clams, sea snails and even a barnacle that indicates whale blubber or skin was brought into the cave.
Marean figured the early people, probably women, had to trudge two to three miles to where the mussels, clams and snails were harvested and to bring them back to the cave. Then they put them over hot rocks to cook. When the food was done, the shells popped open in a process similar to modern-day mussel-steaming, but without the pot.
Marean and colleagues tried out that ancient cooking technique in a kind of archaeological test kitchen.
"We've prepped them the same way," Marean said in telephone interview from South Africa. "They're a little less moist (than modern steamed mussels). They definitely lose some moisture."
Marean also found 57 pieces of ground-up rock that would have been reddish- or pinkish-brown. That would be used for self-decoration and sending social signals to other people, much the way makeup is used now, he said.
There have been reports of earlier but sporadic pigment use in Africa. The same goes with rocks that were fashioned into small pointy tools.
But having all three together shows a grouping of people that is almost modern, Marean said. Seafood harvesting, unlike other hunter-gatherer activities, encourages people to stay put, and that leads to more social interactions, he said.
Yet 110,000 years later, no such modern activity, except for seafood dining, could be found in that part of South Africa, said Alison Brooks, a George Washington University anthropology professor who was not associated with Marean's study. That shows that the dip into modern life was not built upon, said Brooks, who called Marean's work "a fantastic find."
Similar "blips of rather precocious kinds of behaviors seem to be emerging at certain sites," said Kathy Schick, an Indiana University anthropologist and co-director of the Stone Age Institute. Schick and Brooks said Marean's work shows that anthropologists have to revise their previous belief in a steady "human revolution" about 40,000 to 70,000 years ago.
(chuckle)
They do.
Actually, it makes sense to me that somehow somewhere in our background there is a deep and abiding connection to the water, and especially to the ocean. When I was in the seventh grade we had a (boring) project asking us to list the capitals of nations and the bodies of water they were on - practically every nation had a capital on a major body of water. Even out here at the edge of the treeline, just about every little village is either on the river or the ocean. It makes sense to gather food from the ocean if you can - the food is generally good for you and easy to find under rocks and so forth. My mouth watered just thinking about those steamed mussels.
Well, I would have been early if I didn't have to put on my makeup.
Well, ya! Its not like there would have been millions of miles of ocean shore to cherry pick the easy food from....oh, wait...
Nice one...
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Thanks for the pings Pharmboy and Salamander. S, I understand completely. Probably helps if they've torn off their sleeves and ride something with just two wheels (or maybe three), eh? |
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Women gather, men hunt. You can see that demonstrated any time I go shopping with my hubby....
charcoal + lard = Mascara
Figures.
The men were building the fire ... and cooling the beer.
LOL, never thought about it that way, but I that's so true it is freaky. I'm a guy and I shop in a targeted, hunter-like style; whereas, when I have to go to the store with a female cousin, we go in for one thing, but we have to apparently walk down every single aisle just because... Talk about frustrating sometimes. :-)
Not sure how significant that is, but it's sure impressive to me...
This all needs to be put into the larger perspective now.
What was the global climate like, the local climate, was Africa in a drought or was there rainfall?
How about natural disasters about that time period?
Any Tsunamis, major earthquakes, asteroids or volcanic eruptions?
Likewise, what was the assumed population then?
How far had they spread?
It was noted in the article that sea levels were much lower then, so I'm assuming there was some heavy ice cover somewhere on the planet.
Putting all that in context with this group in their location and time period would be useful.
Perhaps it's your preconceptions and not the dating that's a little off. The earliest evidence of anatomically correct modern humans is found in the only places where hills or caves overlook the outer banks islands between South Africa and Ethiopia. Consider the possibility that humans evolved from aquatic primates adapted to life on the outer banks beaches and that other hominids are dead end offshoots who wandered inland during periods of overpopulation.
The use of fire was one of the most important evolutionary steps. It meant that a complex intestinal system perfect for slow digestion of plant products could now gain the high protein advantages of cooked animal products. Higher protein intake from the heavy seafood diet led to larger and more developed brains.
Perhaps it's your preconceptions and not the dating that's a little off.
Possible. I still prefer to take the more cautious approach, especially to dating. I do a lot of radiocarbon dating, and have learned caution.
The earliest evidence of anatomically correct modern humans is found in the only places where hills or caves overlook the outer banks islands between South Africa and Ethiopia. Consider the possibility that humans evolved from aquatic primates adapted to life on the outer banks beaches and that other hominids are dead end offshoots who wandered inland during periods of overpopulation.
Possible. Given discoveries over the past decade or so a coastal adaptation is looking more likely. That such a coastal adaptation involved a true aquatic adaptation is still not widely accepted.
Y'know, because *real* scientists know that fish is brain food. [projectile barf!]Cape stakes claim to origin of modern manThe southern Cape town has been singled out by one of the world's leading anthropologists as the most likely birthplace of modern humans -- thanks, at least partly, to its abundance of fish. Rich pickings of fleshy roots and bulbs, courtesy of the juicy Cape floral kingdom, are another crucial reason why mankind finally progressed past grunting to arithmetic and outboard motors, according to Dr Curtis Marean, who presented his findings earlier this month at the prestigious Nobel Conference in Minnesota in the US. Fossil evidence of Homo sapiens has been found at several sites across Africa, including two 195000-year-old skulls in Ethiopia. But a Mossel Bay site has thrown up the oldest known evidence of "modern" human behaviour -- evidenced by complex tools and dyes used for rock art. This evidence is 164000 years old -- by far the oldest known signs of the kind of collective behaviour considered the hallmark of "modern man"... Ancient stone blades embedded in bones, discarded shellfish and the use of dyes in primitive rock painting suggest complex behaviour -- immortalised in the cave's rocky floor. Remains also point to a princely ancestral diet of whelks, barnacles, mussels and limpets. A major global ice age between 194000 and 125000 years ago meant these prehistoric Africans were eating seafood and expanding their minds at a time when other bands of Homo sapiens in Africa were mostly starving to death, Marean said.
by Bobby Jordan
October 26, 2008
Times of South Africa
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