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Decades after primatologists reported that chimpanzees make comfortable nests for sleeping, researchers are reporting what looks like 200,000-year-old bedding made by early modern humans, correctly positioned for peaceful sleep in the back of ‘a South African cave.
There have been reports of ancient litter postulated before, including in Israel, but this is the oldest to date.
The cave is high on a cliff in the Lebombo Mountains on the border with eSwatini (formerly known as Swaziland), and is aptly known as the Border Cave. The postulated litter was broadleaf grasses (since fossilized) covered with ash, an international team reported in Science last week.
Surprisingly, Border Cave has been occupied – albeit intermittently – for 226,000 years, until the present day, the team estimates: about 227,000 years ago at 1,000 CE.
Foci and postulated litter were found throughout the Border Cave sequence up to 35,000 years ago, reports article by Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, with colleagues from CNRS from the University of Bordeaux and the University of the Côte d’Azur in France, Higher Institute of Social Studies, Tucumán, Argentina, and Royal Institute of Cultural Heritage, Belgium.
Calling the pile of layered mineralized leaves and ash “litter” is an interpretation, but plausible when you consider that monkeys also recognize the benefits of comfort and build nests, as opposed to getting stuck in a pitchfork. tree. Birds also make nests, among other animals, but they are not our parents.
Who lived in Border Cave? Homo sapiens, says lead researcher and author Professor Wadley, based on human remains including the burial of a baby, although later – around 74,000 years ago – and also the remains of five adults from more than 66,000 years since. The baby is one of the earliest known cases of modern human burial in Africa; it is also one of the first known cases of burial with funerary objects of a kind: shells.
“Homo sapiens originated in Africa at least 300,000 years ago – so 227,000 years ago Homo sapiens. We know that Homo naledi was also in Africa at the same time, but he was not found outside of central South Africa, and the naledi was not found with cultural artefacts, ”explains Wadley in Haaretz.
There is no doubt that the stacked layers of ash and grass that have accumulated over 200,000 years was a deliberate fabrication, so to speak, not the work of a strangely obsessive animal. The pile is at the back of the cave with the fire pit in the front, which would have protected the sleepers from wind and predators – always a good thing.
Smoking in bed
Why would the early humans of Border Cave systematically place the broadleaf grasses on top of a layer of ash?
First of all, these ashes appear to have come from the deliberate burning of old stinking litter and the hearth in the nearby cave.
It is true that at least sometimes the beds can have accidentally burned down due to their proximity to the fireplace. But the team believe the accidental fire was rare because most of the reeds they found were withered and not burnt.
Now, why would the ancients deliberately cover their herbs with ash? “We believe that laying grass litter over ash was a deliberate strategy, not only to create an insulated, dirt-free base for the litter, but also to repel crawling insects,” says Wadley.
No doubt about it, the fine ashes dehydrate and suffocate ticks and other insects that crawl there. The team postulate that the inhabitants of Border Cave may have knowingly burned older litter “to clean the cave and destroy the pests.”
The findings also imply that the cave dwellers were in control of the fire.
Evidence of fire exploitation goes back at least 780,000 years in Israel, a million years in South Africa and possibly as much as 1.5 million years in Kenya, although it is believed that they are remnants of a fortuitous “fire harvest” – helping yourself to a burning bush ablaze with lightning, for example. Maybe 400,000 years ago and in this case, archaeologists believe the hominins – and later, the inhabitants of Border Cave – could start the fire. Or as we would say laymen, turn it on.
In fact, Wadley believes that the Border Cave litter with its insect repellent ash layers is a precursor to a more complex use of fire that archaeologists have identified in the famous Blombos Cave dating from around 70,000 years ago, and a few other human sites in South Africa: namely, heating rocks before turning them into stone tools. It’s much easier to drop snowflakes on a heated rock, Wadley points out. This practice has not been identified beyond South Africa, he adds.
Work in comfort
Could this bedding have served another purpose? He did, in fact: the grass mat was apparently used not only for sleeping comfortably, but also for working. In mineralized grasses and ashes, archaeologists have also found debris from stone tool making, as well as pieces of ocher. The colored ocher could have been used to decorate their bodies or their tools – both have been known in African prehistory for at least 300,000 years.
It makes perfect sense. If you have the choice to park your tush on hard ground or a cushion while laboriously shaping your stone tools, which one would you choose?
The ocher found in the litter is not like the ocher found naturally in the cave, confirming the hypothesis that it had been introduced, either on the body or on tools, the team explains.
Wadley shares that the team discussed what to call this pile of weeds: litter or mat. However, basket weaving involves weaving, and woven, these herbs were not.
Floor mat in Misliya cave?
The second oldest known plant litter, in the Sibudu cave in South Africa, dates from 77,000 years ago. There is, however, provisional evidence of stratification of litter-like plants dating from around 185,000 years ago in Israel – in the Misliya cave on the slopes of Mount Carmel. This work, carried out by researchers at the University of Haifa and the Weizmann Institute of Science, was published in 2012 in the journal of the Paleoanthropology Society.
Like Border Cave, in Misliya also the remains date from the Early Middle Paleolithic. Evidence indicates that Misliya was intensely occupied until the Middle Paleolithic – around 250,000 to 160,000 years ago. Today it looks like a rock shelter, but archaeological exploration has revealed that it was a large collapsed cave, which contained tools, charred plant material, and animal bones with human consumption marks – and human bones. A jawbone dated 177,000 to 194,000 years ago was found at Misliya in 2002, which appears to belong to Homo sapiens and has upset the paradigm of the chronology of evolution of Homo sapiens and its exit from Africa.
The point is, however, that Misliya’s team led by Mina Evron also found partially charred material in the center of the cave which she identified as wood ash, burnt bones, and plant tissue. It could have been a rug or bedding, they suggest, noting similarities to postulated prehistoric litter found at Sibudu and in the cave of El Esquilleu in Spain.
Interestingly, while litter in South Africa and Misliya appears to have been the product of early modern humans, the Spanish example of a repeatedly existing litter area is associated with Neanderthals.
So if apes and hominids made beds, how surprising is it that early humans did too? Putting aside the almost miraculous discovery of such ancient organic material, it’s not a huge surprise, says Professor Dani Nadel of the University of Haifa, who was not associated with research south. -african.
Wadley agrees: “I think we’ll find it anywhere in the world, wherever there is sufficient biological conservation. It’s no surprise to us, ”she said. And so far, it has proven to be quite good at a handful of sites in South Africa, Spain, and possibly Israel as well.
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