Ancient World Review

The Risky Paleo-Diets Of Our Ancestors

Hunting, foraging and scavenging for food must have been incredibly risky for prehistoric people. Plants can be toxic -- certain types of mushrooms, for instance -- and animals can get infected with all sorts of diseases and parasites. Scavenging the rotting, flyblown carcasses of dead animals sounds particularly dangerous, especially if you eat them raw. Even if you don't catch a fatal disease, just getting sick could slow you down enough to make you vulnerable to exposure and predators. Hunting itself was a dangerous activity and there were other risks involved with eating meat, fish, seeds and so on:

"You'll be healthier if you ate as your ancestors did. At least that's the promise of some modern fads such as the 'caveman' or paleo diet—characterized by avoiding processed food and grains and only eating things like meat, fish, and seeds. But a new study suggests the food some early humans in Norway ate may have not only been unhealthy, but downright toxic. In some cases, these people may have consumed more than 20 times the levels of dangerous metals recommended for humans today." Source: Science Magazine (2020).

It's unclear when people first started to cook meat and plants and even more unclear how the discovery was made, but cooking would have reduced the risks of bacterial and parasitic infection to a certain extent. In any case, the prehistoric diet sounds fantastically dangerous, especially before the invention of fire, and early humans also had to worry about becoming food themselves.

120,000-Year-Old Bone Tools Used To Work Leather & Fur Discovered In Moroccan Cave

"Scientists on Thursday said artifacts unearthed in a cave in Morocco dating back as far as 120,000 years ago indicate that humans were making specialized bone tools, skinning animals and then using tools to process these skins for fur and leather." Source: Reuters.

"The items from Contrebandiers Cave [aka Smuggler's Cave], located roughly 800 feet (250 meters) from the Atlantic coastline in the town of Temara, appear to be the oldest-known evidence for clothing in the archaeological record, they added."

According to SciTech Daily, this study "details more than 60 tools made of bone and one tool made from the tooth of a cetacean, which includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises." Marks on the tools show that they were used to "scrape hides to make leather and pelts to make fur". (Science Daily) The researchers also found evidence that people were skinning carnivores for their fur.

Note: Researchers have found evidence that homo sapiens was living in Morocco over 300,000 years ago. A detailed 2012 (?) survey of archaeological work at the cave with maps, diagrams and photographs of the site can be found here (PDF).

Using stone and bone tools to make clothing from hides looks like a laborious process.

Ancient DNA Rewrites Early Japanese History

Video from 2018. Part two here.

"Ancient DNA extracted from human bones has rewritten early Japanese history by underlining that modern day populations in Japan have a tripartite genetic origin—a finding that refines previously accepted views of a dual genomic ancestry." Source: Phys.org.

"...The Japanese archipelago has been occupied by humans for at least 38,000 years but Japan underwent rapid transformations only in the last 3,000 years, first from foraging to wet-rice farming, and then to a technologically advanced imperial state."

Video from 2015.

"The previous, long-standing hypothesis suggested that mainland Japanese populations derive dual-ancestry from the indigenous Jomon hunter-gatherer-fishers, who inhabited the Japanese archipelago from around 16,000 to 3,000 years ago, and later Yayoi farmers, who migrated from the Asian continent and lived in Japan from around 900 BC to 300 AD.

"But the 12 newly sequenced ancient Japanese genomes—which came from the bones of people living in pre- and post-farming periods—also identify a later influx of East Asian ancestry during the imperial Kofun period, which lasted from around 300 to 700 AD and which saw the emergence of political centralisation in Japan."

Prehistoric Humans "Ate Bone Marrow Like Canned Soup" 400,000 Years Ago

"Researchers have uncovered evidence of the storage and delayed consumption of animal bone marrow at Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv. The research provides direct evidence that early Paleolithic people saved animal bones for up to nine weeks before feasting on them inside the cave." Source: Science Daily (2019).

It's been known for a long time that prehistoric people ate bone marrow, but this particular find apparently provides the first evidence that they sometimes saved their bones for later, stockpiling them like canned food. That makes sense, but it's hard to tell how accurate this kind of research is because it involves the interpretation of chop marks on very ancient bones:

According to one of the researchers, "'The most common prey was fallow deer, and limbs and skulls were brought to the cave while the rest of the carcass was stripped of meat and fat at the hunting scene and left there. We found that the deer leg bones, specifically the metapodials, exhibited unique chopping marks on the shafts, which are not characteristic of the marks left from stripping fresh skin to fracture the bone and extract the marrow.'"

Bone marrow must've been a major part of the prehistoric diet:

"Many cultures have used bone marrow as food throughout history. Some anthropologists believe that early humans were scavengers rather than hunters in some regions of the world. Marrow would have been a useful food source (largely due to its fat content) for tool-using hominids, who were able to crack open the bones of carcasses left by apex predators such as lions." (Wikipedia)

Related: How To Prepare Bone Marrow And Get All Of Its Benefits

How Was The Friction Method For Making Fire Discovered?

"The discovery of fire, or, more precisely, the innovation of the controlled use of fire was, of necessity, one of the earliest of human discoveries ... The human control of fire likely required a cognitive ability to conceptualize the idea of fire, which itself has been recognized in chimpanzees; great apes have been known to prefer cooked foods, so the very great age of the earliest human fire experimentation should not come as a terrific surprise." (Thought Company)

Comment: "Conceptualizing the idea of fire" is one thing, but learning how to make it is a completely different matter. The techniques for starting fires using the friction method are well known, but I can't imagine how the basic principle was ever discovered in the first place. After all, prehistoric men couldn't have known that friction would cause heat which would in turn ignite kindling. This isn't intuitively obvious and it doesn't seem like the kind of thing you could just stumble across by accident, though I suppose someone might have noticed that rubbing things together warms them up. In any case, it takes time to make fire this way and the method requires specific materials and techniques.

I can see how a Stone Age hunter might accidentally learn that striking stones together creates sparks which in turn can start a fire. Sparks are a natural byproduct of flintknapping, but I don't see how anybody could inadvertently start a fire with friction. It takes too long, for one thing. The more I think about how the basic principle of this technology could have been discovered, the more mysterious it becomes.

"Successfully creating fire by friction involves skill, fitness, knowledge, and acceptable environmental conditions. Some techniques involve crafting a system of interlocking pieces that give the practitioner an improved mechanical advantage; these techniques require more skill and knowledge but less fitness, and work in less ideal conditions." Source: Wikipedia.

The discovery of how to use friction to create fire becomes even more baffling when you realize that it must've been done millions of years ago, perhaps before modern humans even came along:

"The controlled use of fire was likely an invention of our ancestor Homo erectus, during the Early Stone Age (or Lower Paleolithic). The earliest [?] evidence for fire associated with humans comes from Oldowan hominid sites in the Lake Turkana region of Kenya. The site of Koobi Fora (... dated 1.6 million years ago) contained oxidized patches of earth to a depth of several centimeters, which some scholars interpret as evidence for fire control. At 1.4 million years of age, the Australopithecine site of Chesowanja in central Kenya also contained burned clay clasts in small areas." (Thought Company)

The idea that Australopithecus might have known how to make fire is truly mind-boggling. Apes have been known to make fires, but they cheat by using lighters.

Related: The Discovery of Fire by Humans: A Long and Convoluted Process

Neanderthals Wove String 40,000 Yrs Ago

Coalcracker Bushcraft. The fiber is bark of some kind, I think (see next video).

"An international team, including researchers from the CNRS, have discovered the first evidence of cord making, dating back more than 40,000 years ..., on a flint fragment from the prehistoric site of Abri du Maras in the south of France ... Microscopic analysis showed that these remains had been intertwined, proof of their modification by humans. Photographs revealed three bundles of twisted fibres, plied together to create one cord. In addition, spectroscopic analysis revealed that these strands were made of cellulose, probably from coniferous trees." Source: Science Daily (2020).

Making cordage is a fairly complex activity. It requires manual dexterity, knowledge of plants and trees, and the capability to plan and experiment. And it also implies the need for rope or twine and the mental ability to visualize how it could be used. This discovery provides yet more proof that the Neanderthals were at least as advanced as modern humans.

"This discovery highlights unexpected cognitive abilities on the part of Neanderthals, who not only had a good understanding of the mathematics involved in winding the fibres, but also a thorough knowledge of tree growth."

Comment: Saying that Neanderthals understood the math involved in making cordage is going too far. You can understand how to make something without having any knowledge of the underlying mathematical or engineering principles.

Also see:

How to make grass rope.

How to make natural cordage from nettles.

The Mysterious Elephant Cave Of Indonesia

"Goa Gajah, or Elephant Cave, is located on the island of Bali near Ubud, in Indonesia. Built in the 9th century, it served as a sanctuary." (Wikipedia)

"...The temple is characterised by menacing faces that are carved into the stone – whose purpose is assumed to be the warding off of evil spirits. The primary figure was once thought to be an elephant, hence the nickname Elephant Cave. Other sources state that it is named after the stone statue of the Hindu God Ganesh (characterized by having the head of an elephant) located inside of the temple."

Video from 2012.

26,000-Year-Old Mammoth Butchering Site Found On Kotelny Island In The Arctic

The evidence is clear that prehistoric humans hunted mammoths in what is now Siberia. This 2016 video, for instance, describes one find that dated back to almost 45,000 years ago.  Butchering these huge animals must have been a difficult and time-consuming job for hunters using stone tools.

"Experts have confirmed that ancient hunters resided on Kotelny, off the coast of Yakutia, at 75°20'N 141°00'E, a remarkable 990 kilometres (615 miles) north of the Arctic Circle. Their butchering tools have been found alongside multiple bones of extinct woolly mammoths." Source: Archaeology news Network (2021).

Note: This is a very harsh and remote region, to say the least, but it must have been teeming with wildlife back in the Stone Age:

"Siberia, and particularly Sakha [Yakutia], is of paleontological significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch, preserved in ice or permafrost. In 2015, the frozen bodies of Dina and Uyan the cave lion cubs were found. Bodies of Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a woolly rhinoceros from the Kolyma River, and bison and horses from Yukagir have also been found. In June 2019, the severed yet preserved head of a large wolf from the Pleistocene [next video], dated to over 40,000 years ago, was found close to the Tirekhtyakh River."

"Ymyakhtakh culture (c. 2200–1300 BC) was a Late Neolithic culture of Siberia, with a very large archaeological horizon. Its origins were in Sakha, in the Lena river basin. From there it spread both to the east and to the west."

Last Mammoths Died On Remote Island

"The last woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean; they died out 4,000 years ago within a very short time. An international research team ... has now reconstructed the scenario that could have led to the mammoths' extinction. The researchers believe a combination of isolated habitat and extreme weather events, and even the spread of prehistoric man may have sealed the ancient giants' fate." Source: Science Daily (2019).

Note: According to this scenario, the mammoths' habitat shrank during the warming that followed the end of the last ice age and a group of the animals ended up isolated on Wrangel Island by rising sea levels. According to Wikipedia, they survived on the island "until 2500–2000 BC, the most recent survival of all known mammoth populations. Isolated from the mainland for 6000 years, about 500 to 1000 mammoths lived on the island at the time."

Video from 2014.

Ice Age Shelter Made From Bones Discovered In Russia (2020)

"Archaeologists in Russia have found a large circle made out of the stuff of horror movies: the bones of mammoths and other ice age creatures that lived more than 20,000 years ago, a new study finds." Source: Live Science (2020).

"Among the remains are the bones of more than five dozen mammoths, as well as bones from reindeer, horses, bears, wolves, red foxes and Arctic foxes, the study researchers said."

Note: Building structures from mammoth and other animal bones wasn't that unusual in the Stone Age, apparently. The 2011 video below, for instance, describes four mammoth-bone huts discovered near a Ukranian village called Mezhyrich:

"In 1965, a farmer dug up the lower jawbone of a mammoth while in the process of expanding his cellar. Further excavations revealed the presence of 4 huts, made up of a total of 149 mammoth bones. These dwellings, dating back some 15,000 years, were determined to have been some of the oldest shelters known to have been constructed by pre-historic man, usually attributed to Cro-Magnon." (Wikipedia)