Structured Abstract
INTRODUCTION
A record of the regular exploitation of aquatic foods has been lacking in Hn Europe.
By contrast, marine resources feature prominently (alongside personal ornaments, body painting & linear-geometric drawings) in the archeology of Last Interglacial Africa.
A competitive advantage scenario of human origins is that the habitual consumption of aquatic foods (the fatty acids they contain favor brain development) underpins the acquisition of modernity in cognition & behavior.
The resulting innovations in technology, demographic growth & enhanced prosociality would therefore explain Hs’ out-of-Africa expansion with regard to both dispersal process (along coastal routes & to S-Asia first) & outcome (the demise of coeval non-
modern Eurasians).
A corollary of this view is that the paucity of marine foods at Hn coastal sites is a genuine reflection of their subsistence behavior.
RATIONALE
Europe’s Atlantic façade boasts resource-rich coastal waters comparable to those of S.Africa. From Scandinavia to France,
but any evidence for the Last Interglacial exploitation of marine resources would have been lost to subsequent icecap advances & postglacial submersion of the wide continental platform.
Conversely, the very steep shelf off Arrábida, a littoral mountain range 30 km S of Lisbon has enabled extant & submerged shore-lines to be preserved short distances apart.
Gruta da Figueira Brava (one of Arrábida’s erosion-protected, seaside cave sites) provides a singular opportunity to investigate:
did any considerable Last Interglacial accumulations of marine food debris ever exist in Europe?
RESULTS
Throughout the Figueira Brava archeological sequence (~86 to 106 ka), there is evidence of a settlement-subsistence system based on regular exploitation of all animal resources offered by the coastal environment:
large crabs, marine mollusks, fish, marine birds a mammals, tortoise, waterfowl, hoofed game.
The composition of the food basket a the structure of the deposit vary as a function of
(i) sea-level oscillation, with implications for the ecosystems that were preferentially targeted,
(ii) frequency of human occupation,
(iii) site-formation process,
(iv) position of the archeological trenches relative to the changing configuration of the inhabited space.
The initial occupations (phases FB1 & FB2), when the sea was closer to the cave (~750 m), include shell-supported accumulations.
These occupations were followed by a period of infrequent use (phase FB3) & a final phase (FB4), when the shoreline was ~2000 m away, but shellfish were again discarded at the site in substantial amounts.
The density of marine food remains compares well to that seen in the regional Mesolithic & the Last Interglacial of S.Africa & the Maghreb,
it exceeds the latter 2 in the case of crabs & fish.
Figueira Brava also documents a stone pine economy featuring seasonal harvesting & on-site storage of the cones for deferred consumption of the nuts.
The stability of this subsistence system suggests successful long-term adaptation.
CONCLUSION
Figueira Brava provides the first record of significant marine resource consumption among Europe’s Hn.
Taphonomic & site-preservation biases explain why this kind of record has not been previously found in Europe on the scale seen among coeval African populations.
Consistent with rapidly accumulating evidence that Hn possessed a fully symbolic material culture, the subsistence evidence reported here further questions the behavioral gap once thought to separate them from Hs.
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The origins of marine resource consumption by humans have been much debated. Zilhão cs present evidence:
in Atlantic Iberia's coastal settings, Mid-Paleolithic Hn exploited marine resources at a scale on par with the Hs–associated MSA of S-Africa (Perspective by Will).
Excavations at the Figueira Brava site on Portugal's Atlantic coast reveal shell-middens rich in the remains of mollusks, crabs & fish + terrestrial food items.
Familiarity with the sea & its resources may thus have been widespread for residents there in the Mid-Paleolithic.
The Figueira Brava Hn also exploited stone pine-nuts in a way akin to that previously identified in the Holocene of Iberia.
These findings add broader dimensions to our understanding of the role of aquatic resources in the subsistence of Paleolithic humans.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaz7943
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