Seafood and Meat Eating by Modern Humans 200,000 to 10,000 Years Ago | Early European History And Religion

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MEAT-EATING BY MODERN HUMANS

huge sea snails found in Blombos Cave in South Africa

Ewen Callaway wrote in NewScienceLife: “Chemical signatures locked into bone suggest the Neanderthals got the bulk of their protein from large game, such as mammoths, bison and reindeer. The anatomically modern humans that were living alongside them had more diverse tastes. As well as big game, they also had a liking for smaller mammals, fish and seafood. “It seems modern humans had a much broader diet, in terms of using fish or aquatic birds, which Neanderthals didn’t seem to do,” says Michael Richards, a biological anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and the University of British Columbia in Canada.” [Source: Ewen Callaway, NewScienceLife, August 12, 2009]

Modern humans are believed to have consumed more calories and protein than his predecessors because they needed more energy to maintain their large brains. Even though our brain accounts for only 2 percent of our body weight it eats up 20 percent of the energy our body produces. Ancient men at Dolni Vestonice and Pavlov in the Czech republic ate a lot of meat. They cooked stews and gruel in pits lined with hide and heated with hot rocks.

Researchers investigating early modern humans at El Juyo Cave in Spain used to periodically get to together and feast on food eaten by the ancient people they were studying. The main courses consisted of venison, salmon, oysters and mountain goat. Wild greens were served as a side dish and fermented honey drinks were served to get everyone loosened up. At the cave the researchers discovered 1,000 identifiable seeds, including grasses possibly used for bedding or teas, wild pansy, rosemary, and raspberry. [Source: Kenneth Weaver, National Geographic, November 1985]

Early humans seemed to stick with a pretty consistent diet regardless of environmental changes: They regularly ate a relatively higher proportion of plant-based foods. Researchers figured this out by studying the tiny, microscopic dings and dents on ancient teeth. [Source: Maanvi Singh, NPR, April 29, 2016]

Seafood Consumed by Humans 164,000 Years Ago in South Africa

In an article published in Nature in 2007, researchers found evidence of harvested and cooked seafood — along with reddish pigment from ground rocks and early tiny blade technology — at Pinnacle Point overlooking the Indian Ocean near South Africa's Mossel Bay dated to between 176,000 and 152,000 years ago. "Together as a package this looks like the archaeological record of a much later time period," study author Curtis Marean, professor of anthropology at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, told Associated Press . [Source: Seth Borenstein, Associated Press, October 17, 2007|]

Seth Borenstein of Associated Press wrote: “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."”

“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."

Paleolithic Snail Eating

There is evidence that around 150,000 years ago humans ate land snails on a regular basis in what is now Libya. According to Archaeology magazine: Evidence for this comes from tens of thousands of snail shells documented in Haua Fteah Cave. Some of the shells have holes indicative of drilling, which broke the suction that holds snails secure and made it possible to suck them out. Patterns in the deposits suggest that early humans turned to snails, which can be laborious to collect, during times when other sources of food were hard to come by. [Source: Samir S. Patel, Archaeology magazine, January-February 2016]

Thirty-one thousand years ago there is evidence of snail-eating in southwestern Spain. A team of researchers excavating Barriada Cave recently uncovered a hearth that contained the shells of roughly 150 snails that had been cooked on a bed of coals — the earliest evidence of people eating escargot. [Source: Zach Zorich, Archaeology magazine, January-February 2015]”

By this time, Neanderthals had disappeared from the area and the population of anatomically modern humans had grown to the point where they had to hunt for new food sources. Team member Javier Fernández-López de Pablo of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution says that this type of snail, Iberus alonensis, is still considered a delicacy in the region, but not by him. “To be honest,” he says, “I don’t like them too much.

Hominins Ate Elephants' Meat and Bone Marrow in Madrid 80,000 Years Ago

According to the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology: “Humans that populated the banks of the river Manzanares (Madrid, Spain) during the Middle Palaeolithic (between 127,000 and 40,000 years ago) fed themselves on pachyderm meat and bone marrow. This is what a Spanish study shows and has found percussion and cut marks on elephant remains in the site of Preresa (Madrid). It is not clear which hominins consumed the meat and marrow, but you would assume it was Neanderthals as they were established in the region around 80,000, while modern humans didn’t really start to make their presence felt until around 40,000 years ago, [Source: Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, April 24, 2012, Paper: Yravedra, J.; Rubio-Jara, S.; Panera, J.; Uribelarrea, D.; Pérez-González, A. "Elephants and subsistence. Evidence of the human exploitation of extremely large mammal bones from the Middle Palaeolithic site of PRERESA (Madrid, Spain)". Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (4): 1063-1071, april 2012. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2011.12.004]

“In prehistoric times, hunting animals implied a risk and required a considerable amount of energy. Therefore, when the people of the Middle Palaeolithic (between 127,000 and 40,000 years ago) had an elephant in the larder, they did not leave a scrap. Humans that populated the Madrid region 84,000 years ago fed themselves on these prosbocideans' meat and they consumed their bone marrow, according to this new study. Until now, the scientific community doubted that consuming elephant meat was a common practice in that era due to the lack of direct evidence on the bones. It is still to be determined whether they are from the Mammuthus species of the Palaleoloxodon subspecies.

“The researchers found bones with cut marks, made for consuming the meat, and percussion for obtaining the bone marrow. "There are many sites, but few with fossil remains with marks that demonstrate humans' purpose" Jose Yravedra, researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and lead author of the study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science points out to SINC.

“This is the first time that percussion marks that showed an intentional bone fracture to get to the edible part inside have been documented. These had always been associated with tool manufacturing but in the remains found, this hypothesis was discarded. The tools found in the same area were made of flint and quartzite. The team, made up of archaeologists, zooarchaeologists and geologists from UCM, the Institute of Human Evolution in Africa (IDEA) in Madrid and the Spanish National Research Centre for Human Evolution (CENIEH) in Burgos, collected 82 bones from one elephant, linked to 754 stone tools, in an area of 255 metres squared, in the site of Preresa, on the banks of the river Manzanares.

“In the case of the cut marks on the fossil remains, these add to the "oldest evidence of exploiting elephants" in the site of Áridos, close to the river Jarama, according to another study published by Yravedra in the same journal. "There are few records about the exploitation of elephants in Siberia, North America and central Europe", the zooarchaeologist explains.

“The internal organs were what the predator ate first, be they human or any kind of carnivore. The prehistoric signs of the banquet help researchers to find out who was the first to sit down at the table, as the risk of hunting an elephant posed the question as to whether humans hunted it or were scavengers. "This is the next mystery to be solved" Yravedra replies, who reminds us that there is evidence of hunting in other smaller animals in the same site. However, due to the thickness of fibrous membranes and other elephant meat tissues, humans did not always leave marks on the bones. "And for this reason, sometimes it is difficult to determine if humans used their meat".

Turtles Eaten as Snacks by Travelers in Germany 46,000 Years Ago

During a recent excavation in Germany, archaeologists came across some ancient turtle remains. — five shell fragments from European pond turtles. They were unearthed from a gravel pit near Magdeburg, located about 160 kilometers (100 miles) southwest of Berlin, according to an April 25, 2024 news release from the state government’s monument conservation office. Using radiocarbon analysis, they were dated to between 42,000 and 50,000 years old — a time when much northern Europe was covered by ice sheets. [Source: Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald, May 1, 2024]

According to the Miami Herald: European pond turtles require temperatures of at least 64 degrees Fahrenheit to lay their eggs, indicating they may have originated in warmer climates, officials said. Early humans were known to take turtles on the road as a type of provision, according to the release. The “easily-transportable” reptiles could have provided a fresh supply of meat when hunting was unsuccessful. It’s possible, officials said, that Ice Age hunters — perhaps modern humans or Neanderthals — took turtles with them to the cold north of Europe. Evidence for turtle consumption in ancient times has also been found in Israel, South Africa and Spain, according to a 2011 study published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

Feast of Turtles and Steak for 12,000-Year-Old Female Shaman

The world's first known organized feast — or food event of any kind — appears to have been a meal for 35 people that included the meat 71 tortoises and at least three wild cattle held around 12,000 years ago at a burial site in Israel. Jennifer Viegas wrote in Discovery News: “The discovery additionally provides the earliest known compelling evidence for a shaman burial, the apparent reason for the feasting. A shaman is an individual who performs rituals and engages in other practices for healing or divination. In this case, the shaman was a woman. "I wasn't surprised that the shaman was a woman, because women have often taken on shamanistic roles as healers, magicians and spiritual leaders in societies across the globe," lead author Natalie Munro told Discovery News. [Source: Discovery News, Jennifer Viegas, August 30, 2010 ||~||]

“Munro, a University of Connecticut anthropologist, and colleague Leore Grosman of Hebrew University in Jerusalem excavated and studied the shaman's skeleton and associated feasting remains. These were found at the burial site, Hilazon Tachtit cave, located about nine miles west of the Sea of Galilee in Israel. According to the study, published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the grave consisted of an oval-shaped basin that was intentionally cut into the cave's floor. "After the oval was excavated, the sides and bottom of the floor were lined with stone slabs lined and plastered with clay brought into the cave from outside," said Munro. ||~||

“The 71 tortoise shells, previously butchered for meat removal, were found situated under, around and on top of the remains of the woman. The woman's skeleton indicates she suffered from deformities that would have possibly made her limp and "given her an unnatural, asymmetrical appearance." A large triangular stone slab was placed over the grave to seal it. Bones from at least three butchered aurochs — large ancestors of today's domestic cattle — were unearthed in a nearby hollow. An auroch's tail, a wild boar forearm, a leopard pelvis and two marten skulls were also found. ||~||

“The total amount of meat could have fed 35 people, but it is possible that many more attended the event. "These remains attest to the unique position of this individual within her community and to her special relationship with the animal world," Munro said. Before this discovery, other anthropologists had correctly predicted that early feasting might have occurred just prior to the dawn of agriculture. ||~||

Harvard's Ofer Bar-Yosef, for example, found that fig trees were being domesticated in the Near East about 11,400 years ago, making them the first known domesticated crop. Staples such as wheat, barley and legumes were domesticated in the region roughly a thousand years later. Full-scale agriculture occurred later, about 10,000 years ago. As agriculture began, however, "there was a critical switch in the human mind: from exploiting the earth as it is to actively changing the environment to suit our needs," Bar-Yosef said. Munro agrees and thinks the change could help to explain the advent of communal feasting. "People were coming into contact with each other a lot, and that can create friction," she said. "Before, they could get up and leave when they had problems with the neighbors. Now, these public events served as community-building opportunities, which helped to relieve tensions and solidify social relationships."” ||~||

Presence of Barnacles Hints Humans in Spain Ate Whale Meat 14,000 Years Ago

The remains of two barnacle species that once lived exclusively on the exterior of whales have been found in a camp fire at the Cueva de Nerja (the Caves of Nerja) in Málaga, Spain, suggesting that humans living in the cave ate whale. How else would they get there?. Researchers from the University of Valencia have dated the charcoal from the fire to between 14,500 and 13,500 years ago. According to the University of Valencia: “Scientists at the University, coordinated by Professor Joan Emili Aura Tortosa, analysed stone artefacts, horn and bone found in the fire along with the charcoal to arrive at the date. The scientific results show evidence of human consumption of whale meat during Prehistory in Europe. [Source: Source: University of Valencia February, 27, 2013]

“The remains of the whale barnacles were found in occupation layers dating to the end of the last glacial maximum and associated with the Upper Palaeolithic Magdalenian period. The association of the remains of barnacles with hunting and fishing equipment made of bone and stone is the oldest indirect evidence of whale consumption though not of whale hunting. The whale may have become stranded on a beach at low tide and hunters would have taken the opportunity to take meat, fat and skin back to the cave for processing and consumption. No whale bones have been identified in Nerja, unlike dolphins and seals, which are represented by various skeletal parts (jaws, teeth, vertebrae , ribs, etc), which suggests the hunters are only using (or able to transport) the flesh and skin of the whale.

“Whale barnacles are crustaceans living on the skin of whales and so their presence within the cave’s archaeological deposits could only be the result of human action, with the coastline during this period lying around 4 kilometers away. Currently, the cave is situated less than 1 kilometers away from the sea. The two species identified have been associated with a type of Southern Hemisphere whale (Eubalaena australis), although there are also suggestions of the barnacles being found on the north Atántico (Eubalaena glacialis). This study also has relevance to palaeoecological studies, as it confirms a significant drop in the temperature of sea water in the region, previously suggested by research surveys conducted in the Alboran Sea, and also alters the distribution of these species of whales in the past.”

big fauna consumed at Blombos Cave in South Africa

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Ancient Foods ancientfoods.wordpress.com ; Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, and various books and other publications.

Last updated May 2024