Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Klein, Richard G.
• Bird, Douglas W.

Titel

Shellfishing and human evolution

Ist Teil von

• Journal of anthropological archaeology, 2016-12, Vol.44, p.198-205

Ort / Verlag

New York: Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2016

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Elsevier ScienceDirect Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• •The oldest known shell middens date from 128–71ka at opposite ends of Africa.•Prehistoric populations probably used shellfish only as a supplementary resource.•Mousterian and European Upper Paleolithic sites before 14ka contain no true middens.•Large average gastropod size in the oldest middens implies small human numbers.•Gastropod size implies that population growth cannot explain Out-of-Africa 50ka. Southern and northwestern Africa have provided the oldest known shell middens, dating from the Last Interglacial (MIS 5, ∼128–71ka) and the early part of the succeeding glaciation (MIS 4, ∼71–59ka). However, when and if older, suitably situated, stratified coastal sites are found, they are likely to show that routine shellfishing began much earlier, perhaps from the time that people first occupied coasts. Ethnohistoric records suggest that ancient people would have shellfished mainly during twice-monthly periods when the intertidal zone is maximally exposed. Caloric and nutrient return for coastal shellfishing effort can be quite high, but only when the intertidal is exposed, and archaeology implies that like ethnohistorically observed groups, ancient shellfish collectors depended more on terrestrial and marine vertebrates and on plants. Shellfishing can generate highly visible and durable archaeological signatures, and only a few collecting episodes each year could have produced the oldest middens, which span many millennia. Shell middens are so far unknown in European Neanderthal (Mousterian) and succeeding Upper Paleolithic sites, probably because suitably situated sites have yet to be found. Consistently large gastropod size in the oldest known middens suggests that human population growth cannot explain either the occasional presence of “symbolic” artifacts or the innovative burst that coincides with the spread of fully modern Africans to Eurasia 60–50ka.