Ancient ‘Lucy’ Species Ate A Different Diet Than Previously Thought

this is a couple of days late…first published may3 2010
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Steak Dinners Go Back 2.5 Million Years

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Archaeologist Unearths Earliest Evidence of Modern Humans Using Wild Grains and Tubers

On this day ten years ago…
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Early modern humans cooked starchy food in South Africa, 170,000 years ago

IMAGE: Hypoxis angustifolia growth habit. view more
Credit: Prof. Lyn Wadley/Wits University

Eurekalert.org

News Release

The discovery also points to food being shared and the use of wooden digging sticks to extract the plants from the ground

University of the Witwatersrand

The inhabitants of the Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains on the Kwazulu-Natal/eSwatini border were cooking starchy plants 170 thousand years ago,” says Professor Lyn Wadley, a scientist from the Wits Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (Wits ESI). “This discovery is much older than earlier reports for cooking similar plants and it provides a fascinating insight into the behavioural practices of early modern humans in southern Africa. It also implies that they shared food and used wooden sticks to extract plants from the ground.”

“It is extraordinary that such fragile plant remains have survived for so long,” says Dr Christine Sievers, a scientist from the University of the Witwatersrand, who completed the archaeobotanical work with Wadley. The underground food plants were uncovered during excavations at Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains (on the border of KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa, and eSwatini [formerly Swaziland]), where the team has been digging since 2015. During the excavation, Wadley and Sievers recognised the small, charred cylinders as rhizomes. All appear to belong to the same species, and 55 charred, whole rhizomes were identified as Hypoxis, commonly called the Yellow Star flower. “The most likely of the species growing in KwaZulu-Natal today is the slender-leafed Hypoxis angustifolia that is favoured as food,” adds Sievers. “It has small rhizomes with white flesh that is more palatable than the bitter, orange flesh of rhizomes from the better known medicinal Hypoxis species (incorrectly called African Potato).”

The Border Cave plant identifications were made on the size and shape of the rhizomes and on the vascular structure examined under a scanning electron microscope. Modern Hypoxis rhizomes and their ancient counterparts have similar cellular structures and the same inclusions of microscopic crystal bundles, called raphides. The features are still recognisable even in the charred specimens. Over a four-year period, Wadley and Sievers made a collection of modern rhizomes and geophytes from the Lebombo area. “We compared the botanical features of the modern geophytes and the ancient charred specimens, in order to identify them,” explains Sievers.

Hypoxis rhizomes are nutritious and carbohydrate-rich with an energy value of approximately 500 KJ/100g. While they are edible raw, the rhizomes are fibrous and have high fracture toughness until they are cooked. The rhizomes are rich in starch and would have been an ideal staple plant food. “Cooking the fibre-rich rhizomes would have made them easier to peel and to digest so more of them could be consumed and the nutritional benefits would be greater,” says Wadley.

Wooden digging sticks used to extract the plants from the ground

“The discovery also implies the use of wooden digging sticks to extract the rhizomes from the ground. One of these tools was found at Border Cave and is directly dated at circa 40,000 years ago,” says co-author of the paper and co-director of the excavation, Professor Francesco d’Errico, (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Université de Bordeaux, France and University of Bergen, Norway). Dr Lucinda Backwell (Instituto Superior de Estudios Sociales, ISES-CONICET, Tucumán, Argentina) also co-authored the paper and was a co-director of the excavation.

The plants were cooked and shared

The Hypoxis rhizomes were mostly recovered from fireplaces and ash dumps rather than from surrounding sediment. “The Border Cave inhabitants would have dug Hypoxis rhizomes from the hillside near the cave, and carried them back to the cave to cook them in the ashes of fireplaces,” says Wadley. “The fact that they were brought back to the cave rather than cooked in the field suggests that food was shared at the home base. This suggests that the rhizomes were roasted in ashes and that, in the process, some were lost. While the evidence for cooking is circumstantial, it is nonetheless compelling.”

Discoveries at Border Cave

This new discovery adds to the long list of important finds at Border Cave. The site has been repeatedly excavated since Raymond Dart first worked there in 1934. Amongst earlier discoveries were the burial of a baby with a Conus seashell at 74,000 years ago, a variety of bone tools, an ancient counting device, ostrich eggshell beads, resin, and poison that may once have been used on hunting weapons.

The Border Cave Heritage Site

Border Cave is a heritage site with a small site museum. The cave and museum are open to the public, though bookings are essential [Olga Vilane (+27) (0) 72 180 4332]. Wadley and her colleagues hope that the Border Cave discovery will emphasise the importance of the site as an irreplaceable cultural resource for South Africa and the rest of the world.

About Hypoxis angustifolia

Hypoxis angustifolia is evergreen, so it has visibility year-round, unlike the more common deciduous Hypoxis species. It thrives in a variety of modern habitats and is thus likely to have had wide distribution in the past as it does today. It occurs in sub-Saharan Africa, south Sudan, some Indian Ocean islands, and as far afield as Yemen. Its presence in Yemen may imply even wider distribution of this Hypoxis plant during previous humid conditions. Hypoxis angustifolia rhizomes grow in clumps so many can be harvested at once. “All of the rhizome’s attributes imply that it could have provided a reliable, familiar food source for early humans trekking within Africa, or even out of Africa,” said Lyn Wadley. Hunter-gatherers tend to be highly mobile so the wide distribution of a potential staple plant food would have ensured food security.

 

 

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Dogs First Tamed in China — To Be Food?

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Why Humans Outlive Apes

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Ancient Humans Dietary Habits Reflected In Bonobo Aquatic Greens Diet

Bonobo’s

Not really an ancient food post…but interesting. JLP

By tommy hunter

Great lakes ledger.com

Bonobos have been spotted doing something interesting in the Congo basin. They are scouring the swamp in search of aquatic herbs that are packed with iodine, a nutrient that is very important for advancing the growth of higher cognitive abilities. That could help scientists understand the nutritional needs and practices of ancient humans. The Bonobo consumption of food rich in iodine is the first-ever recorded by a species other than humans.

“Our results have implications for our understanding of the immigration of prehistoric human populations into the Congo basin,” Dr. Gottfried Hohmann, the lead author of the study comments.

“Bonobos as a species can be expected to have similar iodine requirements to humans, so our study offers—for the first time—a possible answer on how pre-industrial human migrants may have survived in the Congo basin without artificial supplementation of iodine,” the researcher added.

Scientists working on the study have been observing the behavior of separate bonobo communities in the Congo region. The consumption of iodine-rich plants by specific individuals was factored into their observations, something that surprised researchers, due to the will of the primates to actively seek out the particular plants. It was also believed that the region did not have any iodine-rich food sources.

According to Dr. Hohmann, evolutionary theories suggest that early humans have been able to evolve by living in coastal areas. There they could find favorable foods that augmented cerebral functions. Their study suggests that early humans may have triggered their cerebral development by eating some of the same food the Bonobos are consuming now.

Bonobos are not the only species to consume the plants. After this observation, it was reported that some gorillas and chimpanzees also seek out iodine-rich aquatic greens. That proves to be an exciting development, as different primate species are seeking out and finding these essential plants in areas that were believed to be scarce in iodine.

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Ancient DNA illuminates first herders and farmers in east Africa

Genome-wide analyses of 41 ancient sub-Saharan Africans answer questions left murky by archaeological records about the origins of the people who introduced food production — first herding and then farming — into East Africa over the past 5,000 years.

Source: Ancient DNA illuminates first herders and farmers in east Africa

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Earliest evidence of the cooking and eating of starch

New discoveries made at the Klasies River Cave in South Africa’s southern Cape, where charred food remains from hearths were found, provide the first archaeological evidence that anatomically modern humans were roasting and eating plant starches, such as those from tubers and rhizomes, as early as 120,000 years ago.

Source: Earliest evidence of the cooking and eating of starch

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Genetic Analysis Shows Yams Domesticated in West Africa

 

 

MONTPELLIER, FRANCE—Science Magazine reports that a recent genetic survey shows that yams, a key crop in African agriculture, were first domesticated in the Niger River basin. A team led by France’s Institute for Research and Development plant geneticist Nora Scarcelli sequenced 167 genomes of wild and domesticated yams collected from West African countries such as Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, and Cameroon. They found that yams were domesticated from the forest species D. praehensilis. Researchers had believed yams may have been domesticated from a different species that thrives in Africa’s tropical savanna. Previous genetic studies have shown that African rice and the grain pearl millet were also domesticated in the Niger River basin. The finding that yams were first farmed there supports the theory that the region was an important cradle of African agriculture, much like the Fertile Crescent in the Near East. To read about recent research into ancient microbial DNA, go to “Worlds Within Us.”

 

Source: Genetic Analysis Shows Yams Domesticated in West Africa

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