Humans Ate Grains During the Middle Stone Age
Stone Tools by Grady Semmens, University of Calgary on Eureka Alert
In a recent article in Science, Julio Mercader, of the University of Calgary, discusses his discovery of “starch granules” on surfaces of stone tools dating back to 105,000 years ago at a cave site in Mozambique. In other words, in contrast to the idea that Homo sapiens relied on a cereal-less diet of nuts, roots, and fruit until about 12,000 years ago, humans were probably eating grains way way earlier than was previously thought.
Study area and site location
For his search, Mercader took a sample of stone tools at the site, focusing especially on types that would lend themselves to “processing vegetable matter.” He counted the number of starch granules on the surface of each. Mercader found that 80% of the tools contained starch granules and that the concentration of granules on the tools was much higher than (~270 times) the concentration of granules laying around in the surrounding dirt.
Another compelling detail, is that Mercader found the tools deep in a cave — an unlikely spot for plants to hang out. Given the evidence, it seems very likely that the Middle Stone Age group from Mozambique collected starch plants and deliberately brought them back to the cave site for processing.
Also interesting to note, almost 90% of the starch granules found came from sorghum, a genus of grasses that includes many species still raised for grain, sugar, or liquor.
Based on the evidence from his recent find, Mercader concludes that humans were consuming grass seeds at least as far back as 105,000 years ago!
Personally, I’m looking forward to the discovery of even more sites that shed some light on what our very ancient ancestors chowed down on for breakfast.
Mercader, J. (2009). Mozambican Grass Seed Consumption During the Middle Stone Age Science, 326 (5960), 1680-1683 DOI: 10.1126/science.1173966
December 28th, 2009 at 09:03
Good Post! But where have people been contending that grains were only eaten for the last 12000 years? I have just read a couple of popular books (“After the Ice” being one) that casually assumed grains were eaten certainly at the LGM (20+ thousand years ago.) and gave evidence and references. So I don’t think that there was anything special about -eating- grain more than 12K years ago, what was happening at that point was the selection and deliberate sowing of grain …
December 28th, 2009 at 11:33
Hi Markk,
Much of my information comes from lay sources too, so I don’t presume to be an expert on the diets of ancient humans.
I do have a related article about grain consumption around 12,000 YA (see my post about ancient silos, http://sageofdiscovery.com/2009/09/14/discovery-of-ancient-grain-silo/), but you have a good point, I should learn more about this; you’ve probably figured out I have access to academic journals. It takes a while for me to write a post, so, although I try to do the topics justice, I’m not really a perfectionist.
I guess what I found so appealing about this particular discovery, was the magnitude of prehistory that was being discussed here. This wasn’t a community that existed 20,000 years ago or 12,000 years ago, but over 100,000 years back! Pretty exciting.
Markk, I appreciate your informative comment. Also, I’m interested in the books you’ve been reading; I’ve been looking for something to pick up at the library. Would you recommend “After the Ice?”
Thanks for writing and thanks for reading!