jueves, 20 de octubre de 2016

Our ancestors chose reeds over grain when quitting nomadic life


Fig 1. Location map of Kharaneh IV and the other sites mentioned.

When ancient hunter-gatherers first began to give up their nomadic life, they weren’t just chasing the grain. Rather than looking for big payoffs from harvesting cereal grains, it seems at least some groups may have been playing it safe.

If so, the transition to sedentary life — the first big step toward agriculture — may have been more complex, and more varied, than archaeologists thought.

The standard view has been that around 20,000 years ago, our ancestors began to stay in one place for long periods so that they could exploit the wild grains growing there, which provided a dense source of energy. After many generations of selection, these grains became the modern domesticated cereals on which most of our civilisations depend.

Archaeologists have had few opportunities to test this view because plant remains from the early stages of this transition are scarce. Recently, however, researchers have begun to use phytoliths — microscopic silica crystals that form in plant tissues and persist for millennia — to investigate which plants would have been around at early archaeological sites.

Cereal monogamy 

Monica Ramsey, an environmental archaeologist at the University of Toronto, Canada, and her colleagues studied phytoliths at the 22,000-year-old Kharaneh IV site in Jordan  [...] New Scientist / Link 2 

1 comentario:

Anónimo dijo...

Muchas gracias. :-) Our ancestors (Homo) have always been waterside, probably at least since the beginning of the Pleistocene, when they evolved big brains (DHA in sea-food), external noses (maladaptive in savannas), very heavy skeletons (typical of littoral mammals), ear exostoses (as in human divers), long low flat skulls (platycephaly) etc., and spread intercontinentally along African & Eurasian coasts, rivers & wetlands (google e.g. econiche Homo). They never lived in dry open plains (as still often anthropocentrically assumed, but physiologically & anatomically impossible, e.g. sweat = salt+water = scarce in savanna). Wetland & littoral diets were very old, e.g.
H.erectus at GBY c 790 ka already dived for waterlily roots & "waternuts (Goren-Inbar 2014 doi 10.11141/ia.37.1), and neandertals had traces of cattails on their handaxes & of waterlily roots in their dental plaque.