Human ancestors used make-up and enjoyed shellfish dinners much earlier than previously thought, according to scientists.
The discovery, made by analysing fossilised remains of an ancient beach community in the Western Cape, shows that key elements of modern human behaviour were in place more than 165Â 000 years ago.
Curtis Marean, a palaeontologist at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, who led the latest excavation of a fossilised beach community at Pinnacle Point, says: ‘[Our] evidence shows that Africa, and particularly Southern Africa, was precocious in the development of modern human biology and behaviour. We believe that on the far southern shore of Africa there was a small population of modern humans who struggled through [a] glacial period using shellfish and advanced technologies … It is possible that this population could be the progenitor population for all modern humans.â€
Writing in the journal Nature, Marean describes finding harvested and cooked seafood and tiny, 10mm-wide blades at the caves in Pinnacle Point. These are regarded by scientists as advanced technology for the humans of the time because they could be used to make relatively complex weapons, attached to the end of a stick to form a spear, or lined up like barbs on a dart. Marean also found more than 50 pieces of haematite, a mineral used to create a reddish pigment.
In an accompanying commentary in Nature, Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum in London, writes that the pigment was a significant find. ‘It seems probable that the substance was indeed used for body painting and to colour artefacts.â€
Marean says the diet of the cave dwellers at Pinnacle Point suggests an advanced group of humans. ‘For millions of years our earliest hunter-gatherer relatives ate only terrestrial plants and animals.
‘Shellfish was one of the last additions to the human diet before domesticated plants and animals were introduced.†—