Early seafood, makeup found in South Africa

[Al-khiyal]

WASHINGTON, October 17, 2007 - 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.

Early seafood, makeup found in South Africa

[Al-khiyal]

October 17, 2007 -- Everyone today could be descended from a small band of intrepid humans who headed for a South African beach 164,000 years ago to escape harsh desert conditions, scientists believe.

New findings in a cave overlooking the Indian Ocean push back the origins of the evolution of modern humans, revealing how they put on primitive makeup and hit the seashore for a meal of steaming mussels, and show that the resources of the seaside may have been crucial for survival.

While genetic and fossil evidence suggests that humans were anatomically modern in Africa before 100,000 years ago, scholars are not yet able to agree on whether human behaviour and physique developed in tandem. Some believe that modern behaviour arose relatively late and rapidly 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, while others believe that it evolved earlier and more gradually.

Now the latter view is backed by evidence of early humans living on the coast in South Africa, harvesting food from the sea, employing complex tools and using reddish or pinkish brown pigments some 164,000 years ago, as revealed by dating stalagmites and sand grains.

The international team that reports how Homo sapiens marched into modernity in the journal Nature was led by Prof Curtis Marean at Arizona State University, who says: "This population could be the progenitor population for all modern humans."

"At 164,000 years ago in coastal South Africa humans expanded their diet to include shellfish and other marine resources, perhaps as a response to harsh environmental conditions," notes Prof Marean. "This is the earliest dated observation of this behaviour."

The tools also predate the earliest blade technology found so far, which only date to 70,000 years ago. The tools, or bladelets, are "little blades less than 10 millimetres in width, about the size of your little finger," Prof Marean says. "These could be attached to the end of a stick to form a point for a spear, or lined up like barbs on a dart, which shows they were already using complex compound tools.

"And we found evidence that they were using pigments, especially red ochre, in ways that we believe were symbolic."

This suggests that modern language may have been used.

"Together as a package this looks like the archaeological record of a much later time period," he says.

"Archaeologists have had a hard time finding material residues of these earliest modern humans," Prof Marean explains. "The world was in a glacial stage 125,000 to 195,000 years ago, and much of Africa was dry to mostly desert; in many areas food would have been difficult to acquire."

Evidence of ancient climates suggested there were only five or six places in all of Africa where humans could have survived.

In seeking the "perfect site" to explore, Prof Marean analysed ocean currents, climate data, geology and other data to pin down a location where he felt sure to find one of these pioneering populations: the Cape of South Africa at Pinnacle Point.

The cool, dry spell when Africa was mostly desert probably drove small bands of hunter-gatherers towards the sea. "Generally speaking, coastal areas were of no use to early humans - unless they knew how to use the sea as a food source," says Prof Marean. "For millions of years, our earliest hunter-gatherer relatives only ate terrestrial plants and animals. Shellfish was one of the last additions to the human diet before domesticated plants and animals were introduced."

Most of what the team found were the remnants of brown mussels, but they also found black mussels, small saltwater clams, sea snails and even a barnacle that indicates whale blubber or skin was brought into the cave.

Before, the earliest evidence for human use of marine resources and coastal habitats was dated about 125,000 years ago.

"Our research shows that humans started doing this at least 40,000 years earlier," says Prof Marean.

Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London, commented: "These findings from Pinnacle Point give us a rare glimpse of human progress towards modernity in Africa about 165,000 years ago.

"Humans were probably thin on the ground at that time, during a cold and arid phase in global climate, and because the sea level was also lower at that time (because of larger ice-caps), some of the evidence is now under the sea.

"The positioning of this cave meant that it was close enough to the sea to have captured this evidence of early marine exploitation, but also high enough that the evidence was not swept away by later rising sea levels."

Early humans used makeup and ate seafood