Early humans showed ‘modern’ signs
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 is a beach party thrown
by people who were not 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 is 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 (three to five kilometers) 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.
Washington, Thursday, AP |