Prehistoric Sicilians not fond of seafood

Adam Khor

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/prehistoric-skeletons-reveal-first-sicilians-avoided-seaf

Wibbs

""In prehistory, marine resources were never really exploited intensively by humans living in the Mediterranean basin," Mannino said." Funny that Neandertals before them did and the only place so far found that they did was around the Mediterranean.

One theory reckons why we outcompeted them was because we exploited seafood and they didn't. Here's a link to one such study. The glaring problem I have with that study is with the samples picked. Of course you're gonna see more seafood in creatures living near the sea when compared to creatures living inland. The moderns they tested seemed to be more biased to coastal regions, whereas the archaics were more inland(and from different periods with different climates)

Galvasean

Obviously we didn't exploit the seafood because the aquatic apes beat us to it!

Adam Khor

Galvasean wrote: »

Obviously we didn't exploit the seafood because the aquatic apes beat us to it!

It did cross my mind XD

Capt'n Midnight

slightly off topic but during a lot of history people avoided the coast because of piracy and slavers

Rubecula

You think the same applied in prehistory too? No reason why not of course, just something I have never considered before. Almost like a Conan The Barbarian story, with prehistoric pirates.

I would have thought sea food would be more pronounced myself, although I am biased because I like seafood, it tastes so good. I know in some parts of the world ancient middens sometimes show a predominantly sea food diet. (Northern Britain, southern areas of North America for examples.)

Adam Khor

Rubecula wrote: »

You think the same applied in prehistory too? No reason why not of course, just something I have never considered before. Almost like a Conan The Barbarian story, with prehistoric pirates.

I would have thought sea food would be more pronounced myself, although I am biased because I like seafood, it tastes so good. I know in some parts of the world ancient middens sometimes show a predominantly sea food diet. (Northern Britain, southern areas of North America for examples.)

Remember how one of the recent links I posted was about Neanderthals being probably sea-faring people too? Maybe thats why humans avoided the coasts Homo sapiens pirates are bad enough...

Galvasean

Neandertal pirates? Now there's an idea...

Capt'n Midnight

Then again in tidal areas shellfish did provide an easily accessible year round food source.

The trick to removing limpets from a rock is that they only grab on after they are touched, so a short sharp blow will easily remove them.


And people on the Antrim coast still eat seaweed (yuck , yellowman is much nicer )

Rubecula

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Then again in tidal areas shellfish did provide an easily accessible year round food source.

The trick to removing limpets from a rock is that they only grab on after they are touched, so a short sharp blow will easily remove them.


And people on the Antrim coast still eat seaweed (yuck , yellowman is much nicer )

The eat it in Wales too. I think they call it Lava Bread but I am not sure on the spelling.

Wibbs

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Then again in tidal areas shellfish did provide an easily accessible year round food source.

Yea there's a native American saying among coastal tribes, "when the tide is out, dinner is served". It would seem odd for people not to exploit it. These modern Sicilians not exploiting the local food is a bit of an outlier alright.

It's why I always thought the "neandertals didn't dig their seafood" an odd claim, especially given most that they were looking at were living well inland. Not exploiting inland waterways I can understand more. It requires more effort and gear for the most part. If you're a person that needs near double the calories of modern folks to get by then that effort might quickly drop to "my arse", when bigger game is all around you, especially in colder climates. AFAIR Eskimos didn't bother much with inland waterways even when they're in their area.

Neanderthals living in southern Spain in a very similar environment were eating land mammals and chowing down on shellfish(even leaving behind specific tools to open the shells) and seals and dolphin. Actually on the latter score... The studies drop in "seals and dolphin" and are surprised at their findings they ate them. I'm more than surprised, I'm gobsmacked and am asking different questions. Like how the feck did they hunt a fully marine animal like dolphin? OK you might be able to sneak up on a seal basking on a beach, but how did they hunt and catch an animal who never comes on land and tends to stay well out from wading distance and is mighty fast and strong and mostly runs in pods?:eek: That's the question I'd be asking.

Traps? I doubt your average dolphin would fall for that. Nets of some nature? Well they did have twine/rope as they had hafted weapons but I dunno. Then again they targeted birds for their feathers and how did they catch them? Either by chucking something at them at a distance or snaring them. Boats and harpoons of some nature? Possible IMH. Harpoons nigh on a given, even if they were hunting them from the shoreline. Now the usual response to that notion might be "oh the build of their shoulders didn't really allow for throwing". Well considering the earliest known javelins were fashioned by their ancestors Homo heidlbergensis 400,000 years ago and their shoulders were the same. Beautifully made too. Preservation of wood that old is vanishingly rare mind you, so I reckon we're missing huge chunks of the jigsaw.

As a kid I used to try my hand at knapping chert. Now being a kid spearpoints were high on the wishlist. Made a few too and tied them to branches. The one thing that stood out for me is stone tipped spears are very fragile. They're almost a fire once weapon. I'd reckon why the Neandertals didn't throw spears notion came about is because they didn't make em with stone tips because that's longwinded and wasteful, but were all wood affairs which have decayed away, leaving us with the stone tipped stabbing spear points(which should last longer unless they hit a bone on the way in). I think we miss so much and make assumptions becuase of what has survived.

Take modern Native Australians. If they were no longer around and all their wood had decayed, we'd be left with stone tools and little else and their stone tools aren't particularly flash for the most part. We'd know nothing of their throwing spears, or their various boomerangs or their incredibly rich religions and culture We may even think of them as more a primitive sideline, but we'd be missing soooooo much of the amazing and inventive and complex culture(s) they are.

Capt'n Midnight

Wibbs wrote: »

Yea there's a native American saying among coastal tribes, "when the tide is out, dinner is served". It would seem odd for people not to exploit it. These modern Sicilians not exploiting the local food is a bit of an outlier alright.

There are no tides worth talking about in that part of the world.

Ireland has some of the highest tidal ranges in the world.
It's like Bay of Fundy #1, Severn #3 and we aren't too far behind.

It's not just rocky shores, cockle strands would be useful too.

Galvasean

Wibbs wrote: »

Actually on the latter score... The studies drop in "seals and dolphin" and are surprised at their findings they ate them. I'm more than surprised, I'm gobsmacked and am asking different questions. Like how the feck did they hunt a fully marine animal like dolphin?

Happening upon a beached pod perhaps?

Wibbs

Galvasean wrote: »

Happening upon a beached pod perhaps?

Oh sure G, but two things I'd be considering there; 1) strandings are rare. Today apparently they're more likely to happen because of human activity on the oceans, 2) they appear to have been at this source for quite a while. It looks like a sustained strategy for them.

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

The studies drop in "seals and dolphin" and are surprised at their findings they ate them. I'm more than surprised, I'm gobsmacked and am asking different questions. Like how the feck did they hunt a fully marine animal like dolphin? OK you might be able to sneak up on a seal basking on a beach, but how did they hunt and catch an animal who never comes on land and tends to stay well out from wading distance and is mighty fast and strong and mostly runs in pods?:eek: That's the question I'd be asking.

Maybe these were places where the dolphins came to say, I don´t know, give birth, or to shed their skin, kind of like belugas that return every year to the same places to shed their skin? I don´t know how common this is among other species of dolphin, tho.
Still, some animals return to the same places once and again and again despite dangers involved- even intelligent animals like elephants. Maybe these prehistoric dolphins were the same, and so Neanderthals learned that at some moments of the year there would be lots of dolphins arriving to shallow waters... Doesn´t that happen in Japan and in some parts of Europe (what was it? Iceland? I don´t remember...) where pods of small cetaceans arrive to shallow waters in great numbers and keep doing it despite being targeted by local hunters who even wade into the water to stab them to death with knives?
Maybe it isn´t really as difficult as it would appear...

Wibbs

Maybe, but those pods in the Japanese and Iceland hunts are corralled by boats, they basically terrify them into shallower waters. Even if the animals did come close to shore, you're going to have to trap, or hit them at a distance. The fact that other Neandertals targeted birds for their feathers, suggests they had an ability to capture or distance kill small animals anyway.

On the subject of what we may be missing, here's a pic of a Neandertal wood tool they found outside Barcelona

Luckily that site preserves casts of delicate objects. Void below replica above. They've no real idea what it's for, but it was found near a hearth.They also found what appear part of wooden "building" supports, dishes/bowls and a cooking spit tripod kinda thing. Plus it seems this site was used as a temporary type site, maybe a satellite site fr hunting. A prehistoric hunting lodge kinda thing. In France they've found what settlement area with post holes that may be for tents or windbreaks(up to 10m/30ft across), with stone anchors for the posts. Here's a French site on the matter. No English translation I can find sadly so schoolboy Francais(or google translate) ahoy These were most certainly not "cavemen", yet you still get some musing in earnest over whther they had the power of speech.

Adam Khor

Hmmm... then I really don´t know...

As for the speech thing, it is the differences, more than the similarities, that fascinate me. I remember reading once that Neanderthals would have high-pitched voices due to some anatomical trait I don´t remember, yet other sources say they probably had low voices (which is what one would imagine looking at those huge chests and necks).
What do you know/think about this? (I know, not a lot to do with prehistoric Sicilians and seafood, but I don´t want to start a thread for every question I have 4 you about these guys...:D)

Rubecula

My own belief is that they were just like us ... Varied.

Galvasean

Rubecula wrote: »

My own belief is that they were just like us ... Varied.

If more scientists had the same attitude as you I'd say we'd have far more progress by now...

Wibbs

Apparently there were some sounds they couldn't make that we find easy enough. IIRC their "E" sound was different. I'd reckon they'd sound pretty bassy myself. Like you say with necks and chests(and heads and nasal cavities) like theirs. They have the same FOXP2 gene as us it turns out so close to modern speech is highly likely. Given we do have some of their DNA and for it to survive this long it sound like there was enough jiggy jiggy going on(even if in only one period of time) so chances are we could communicate with each other to some degree.

I wonder how many languages they had. I doubt there was just "Neanderthal" across their very wide range. They were more isolated from each other which would likely kick of local language shifts pretty quickly I'd imagine. Look at the example of Latin in us. Within a century of Rome's fall, the local romance languages had started to diverge and form. They did seem to have different cultures going on too. One bunch hunted birds for feathers, yet others didn't. Along with pigments they had quite the kit to display their cultural identities and allegiances. Then again who knows? Maybe the pigments and bird feathers were for camouflage? That's another possibilty. Going back to missing pieces that don't survive, we have cave paintings of modern humans, but nada(or slightly dubious) in the way of Neandertal cave art. If they decorated their bodies, even tattooed themselves into a walking talking Book Of Kells, we'd have no way of knowing. Hey look at us today, there are many more tattoos which are a self expressive artform than there are paintings in musuems and galleries, yet if humans were to disappear from the records we'd never know about any of it(unless we found a painting of a tattooed bloke of course ).

It's amazing what has been discovered since I first got obsessed with these guys as a kid.

Capt'n Midnight

When you consider communication with gorillas with sign language and parrots with speech then it's probably a given that our ancestors could have had some mutual intelligibility.

Wibbs

Rubecula wrote: »

My own belief is that they were just like us ... Varied.

Very much so. They vary even in appearance over time and location. Early Sapiens doesn't look very much different to Neandertals of the same time. I mean have a look at one of the earliest Sapiens from Ethiopia;



This link describes them. Look at the size of the brow ridges on the lad. They're massive. His forehead is pretty sloping while we're at it and he has a long skull front to back. Pretty large oul hooter on him too(he has flatter cheekbones though). They then reconstruct him like this;



He looks like someone you'd meet waiting for a bus, yet he doesn't look all that different to this Neandertal lad.



Interestingly it also notes post mortem cut marks to remove the meat of the skull, however then says "apparently representing mortuary practices rather than cannibalism". Funny when it's Neandertals we're quick to call Cannibal!...

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

It's amazing what has been discovered since I first got obsessed with these guys as a kid.

May I ask what triggered this obsession?

Wibbs

I think it started when I was about 8 and my school were giving away old dog eared books from the library and while others were grabbing famous five books and the like, being the oddball I grabbed one about ancient man written back in the 50's. Much of the stuff has been updated by more recent science and most of African discoveries were yet to happen(the author argued for Asia as the site of man's evolution) but it was a good enough introduction. Java man and all that lot didn't appeal, but for some reason Neandertals did. I think because they were so close in time and location and humanity, but gone. Then about 2 years later on holidays in France I picked up a Neandertal scraper(though was looking for fossils) and when I held that I was hooked.

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

I think it started when I was about 8 and my school were giving away old dog eared books from the library and while others were grabbing famous five books and the like, being the oddball I grabbed one about ancient man written back in the 50's. Much of the stuff has been updated by more recent science and most of African discoveries were yet to happen(the author argued for Asia as the site of man's evolution) but it was a good enough introduction. Java man and all that lot didn't appeal, but for some reason Neandertals did. I think because they were so close in time and location and humanity, but gone. Then about 2 years later on holidays in France I picked up a Neandertal scraper(though was looking for fossils) and when I held that I was hooked.

Cool :>

Its fun how I usually neglected the prehistoric man sections of books when I was a kid (even though I DID read them all, but the ones I read once and again and again were those about dinosaurs and other prehistoric non-humans).
I think it may have had something to do with the fact that according to those same books, it was overhunting by humans that spelled doom for so many of those cool creatures...

Galvasean

I'd say back in the day the idea that man evolved from 'lesser' species would still have been quite the contentious opinion!

Rubecula

Galvasean wrote: »

I'd say back in the day the idea that man evolved from 'lesser' species would still have been quite the contentious opinion!

In some USA schools apparently it still is.

Wibbs

Rubecula wrote: »

In some USA schools apparently it still is.

Yea ain't in it. How some of these creationist yahoos explain away Neandertals is worth a read for the Lulz. That said there was one American creationist guy, a dentist by trade I believe, who went around the world blagging his way in to study the actual fossils in a few museums. His creationist "theory" was that they were the "preflood" peoples who lived to be centuries old and their morphology reflected great age. Daft, yea, however he did make some interesting observations of the bones. A couple of which did seem to suggest some of the remains were of older people than the accepted ages of death for them. NOt fecking centuries old of course, but not the usual 40 years of age at death anyway. I'll try and dig up a link. Dig through the oddball stuff and he does have some interesting takes(and different pics of the skulls and teeth).

The "Old Man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints" always struck me as much older than the mid 40's(at most) applied to him. Like in his 60's kinda thing. Shanidar 1 from another site was supposed to be around the same age and though he was well bollexed(withered arm, blind in one eye, both from trauma), he had a full set of teeth and looks younger than the Chapelle lad. The latter was bent double with advanced arthritis* seems to have a very smooth aged looking skul and barely had a tooth in his head.

That alone makes me wonder about his age. After all look at the dentition in all the other Neandertals we have. They've all got bloody lovely choppers and near perfectly formed dental arches. The only obvious wear being in their front incisors from possible lifetime use as a "third hand". A Neandertal dentist would be near unemployable. So how did oul Chappie end up like a dentists nightmare? Unless Doctor Who was passing by and left him with a hundred weight of jellybabies it does seem odd. He even had pretty severe jaw recession so these teeth had fallen out long before he died.

TL;DR? I reckon oul Chappie was an oulfella ready for a pension. Maybe that's why he was looked after(someone may have had to prepare special food for him), because of his great age for the time and maybe that's why they buried him as a respect thing? Maybe burial was reserved for only special individuals?

I like this reconstruction of him;

Though I'd add more hair...

Oh and Neandertal pirates? You never know... Great image mind you. Dibbs on the film rights if they ever find one buried with a parrot and a missing leg.

I do wish they'd proofread these things though. The stone “mousterian” tools are unique to Neanderthals . Nope they're not. Modern folks used the technique in the Levant and North African regions.





*one researcher posits we may have got that from them, or at least some of the immune response genes we exchanged while advantageous in one way were more likely to lead to auto immune disease. I wonder do any pre jiggy jiggy with archaic moderns have this condition?

Wibbs

Adam Khor wrote: »

Its fun how I usually neglected the prehistoric man sections of books when I was a kid (even though I DID read them all, but the ones I read once and again and again were those about dinosaurs and other prehistoric non-humans).

Funny thing is AK it was dinos that passed me by(gets banned from forum:eek:). Pre cambrian and paleozoic stuff really revved my engines. Dino times were interesting in a way, but not so much and the after the KT boundary age of mammals stuff left me cold, until hominids come along.

Maybe it's down to me hunting fossils as a kid. Ireland is by a long way a Paleozoic geology, so cos I knew I'd never find a dino bone I was "meh"? I reckon if I'd grown up along the Dorset coast I'd bloody love them.

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

Funny thing is AK it was dinos that passed me by(gets banned from forum:eek:). Pre cambrian and paleozoic stuff really revved my engines. Dino times were interesting in a way, but not so much and the after the KT boundary age of mammals stuff left me cold, until hominids come along.

Maybe it's down to me hunting fossils as a kid. Ireland is by a long way a Paleozoic geology, so cos I knew I'd never find a dino bone I was "meh"? I reckon if I'd grown up along the Dorset coast I'd bloody love them.

Whut? How can you possibly not love dinosaurs?? XD

About the dude with bad teeth, maybe he had some sort of infection or something? As in, starts with one tooth, spreads, ruins the entire toolbox...