Quickies
Kambiz Karami at Anthropology.net (a most interesting blog to follow) mentioned this week that Libyan pottery remains, maybe as old as 10,000 years ago, have provided the oldest evidence of vegetable cooking of we know of, at least in pots (see below for the disclaimer). The remains indicate cooking of vegetables and meat and are associated to pictures of people gathering plants, as well as grinding stones (hand mills) with remains of such provisions.
Ref. Nature Plants.
Oddly enough, just two days later, he contradicted himself, mentioning that the charred remains of nuts and seeds from Palestine, dated from 780,000 years ago, actually provide the oldest evidence of vegetable cooking, even if it's clearly a more primitive way of cuisine and not yet at all the "refined" stew of ancient Libyans, which won them three stars in the Paleo-Michelin Guide for Nomads and five pitchforks in Popular Mesolithic Cuisine.
Ref. PNAS.
Update (Jan 4): origin of Libyan and West Asian pottery could be Sudan
Jm8 mentions it in the comments, referencing to Anthromadness. I would need more data to judge (the ref. paper is behind paywall) but it does sounds as probably correct to me, being Sudan/Nubia one of the earliest Mesolithic areas in the Western half of the Old World, one that is way too often and unfairly neglected but that definitely influenced the Levant prior to the development of Neolithic proper (what should explain a lot of things both linguistic and genetic).
The oldest pottery in Africa comes from a region more to the south, (but may not have so far shown—or been tested for—plant remains).
ReplyDeletehttp://anthromadness.blogspot.com/2016/05/modelling-diffusion-of-pottery.html
That makes some sense to me, as Sudan is one of the oldest Mesolithic (grain-gatherer) areas in the wider West Eurasian area but it is seldom discussed (all the glory goes to the Near East, even if this region was clearly influenced by the Sudan/Nubia Mesolithic, with many implications re. linguistics and genetics).
DeleteThanks for he info, Jm8. That can explain why Libya has such an early pottery. However I feel that the map underestimates the speed of the spread of pottery from China via the Tundra (proto-Uralic peoples carrying Y-DNA N1 and mtDNA C). Some habituals who know better than me on those matters claim that this would be the first ever pottery in West Eurasia (in this case excluding Africa), although it seems less likely to me that it influenced the Near East than the Sudan core, much closer geographically and more directly related via ethno-cultural flows.
There is much older pottery in Japan and China, and in all likelihood some of it was used for cooking. But the African pottery does pre-date European and Near Eastern pottery which seem to be derived from Eastern examples in a gradual western migration of the technology.
ReplyDeleteNobody questions, I believe, that Chinese pottery is the oldest known on Earth (or even that it migrated westward with the proto-Uralic peoples of Siberia), the questions are:
Delete1. Where did the concept of pottery in West Asia and NE Africa originated exactly (and some are claiming it was Nubia, a likely origin for Mesolithic cereal-gathering too)?
2. Was this development independent or influenced by ethno-cultural flows from East Asia? I would lean for independent (no known contact) but it's a question worth considering anyhow.
"European and Near Eastern pottery [seems] to be derived from Eastern examples in a gradual western migration of the technology".
Does it? I really do not see it. The Eastern Asian pottery may have been the first one to reach Eastern Europe or its Western Siberian fringes but how can we make the connection between the taiga and the Fertile Crescent? It's not at all obvious to me. On the other hand, if there was a distinct independent origin in Nubia, the connection seems much much more obvious and simple, associated to Nile archaeological influence on Natufian, the expansion of Afroasiatic languages (and maybe also Nubian-Vasconic ones), that of Y-DNA E1b and other African lineages we find in Neolithic West Asia and its European offshoot, as well as at least part of the so-called "Basal Eurasian" autosomal ghost (which is African-like).
It would not be a direct Mesolithic input from Sudan in any case but rather it should respond to secondary cultural interactions between the Levant and the Nile already well into the Neolithic, interactions of which we know little but we do know must have existed. On the other hand the interactions with Siberia and Eastern Europe in the late PPNB stage (when pottery begins in West Asia) seem most unlikely (but please correct me if I'm overlooking some important clue).
OK, checking some online stuff like this:
Delete→ http://individual.utoronto.ca/lisamaher/PotteryNeolithic.pdf
... and it would seem that the first pottery begins towards the North of the region, what should in principle exclude the African origin. On the other hand it's clearly 1000 years more recent than some African pottery, so the independent African origin of the craft would seem confirmed, even if it probably did not influence the Near East.
It remains open the issue of whether the West Asian pottery development is strictly independent (a mere extension of mudbrick work) or has some sort of Siberian influence. I'd lean for independent but feel free to prove me wrong.
The circumstantial case for an East to West origin is summed up in an illustration borrowed from Bell Beaker blogger in this post: http://dispatchesfromturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/10/oldest-pottery-now-from-china-rather.html
ReplyDeleteBut the illustration seems very misleading UNLESS you can prove early pottery in Central Asia, what does not come from the data points in the original Bell Beaker Blogger entry at all (nor anything else I know of). There is indeed a route of pottery to Eastern Europe via Siberia but there is no clear connection with West Asia or the Aegean (another of the oldest West Eurasian potteries) at all. We cannot fully discard it but we cannot clearly claim it either.
DeleteHi Maju,
ReplyDeleteI think you're familiar with the discovery of the oldest Homo Sapiens so far that was discovered in Morocco, which is 300,000 years old. The link below shows the skull of the 300,000 years old Homo Sapiens.
https://www.diaridetarragona.com/__export/1496857602099/sites/diaridetarragona/img/2017/06/07/img_jcorbella_20170607-134039_imagenes_lv_otras_fuentes_foto_sapiens_2_figure-11-kqkc-u423244535293mpf-992x558xlavanguardia-web.jpg_525981578.jpg
After looking at the skull of 300,000 years old Homo Sapiens, some people said this oldest Homo Sapiens have the physical appearances of typical black African after judging by the skull. What do you think about it? Does it looks African to you?
I haven't really looked at the matter much but my shallow impression is that the skull shape looks a bit like some "different" Homo sapiens such as Upper Cave 101 or UC1 (Paleolithic China) and Iwo Eleru (Epipaleolithic Nigeria). See here (especially the last image): http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/2011/09/claims-of-nigerian-late-archaic-human.html
DeleteHowever, the Moroccan skull seems heavier and more archaic-looking than these other individuals. Maybe we are before a type of early Homo sapiens or even proto-sapiens (I'd rather lean in favor of this interpretation with all due caution) whose type was gradually lost.
As for being a "negroid" skull type, definitely too archaic and robust for that. It's AFAIK true that the main African (West African?) tendency is towards some traits that we can consider somewhat "archaic" or "conservative" such as dolicocephaly (long skull relative to broadness) and prognathism (more prominent jaws or mouth area) but nothing as marked, at leas not normally. Aslo we're talking of a specimen or population that existed long before the main Homo sapiens population even coalesced (around South Sudan probably), so I strongly doubt there is any direct relation with modern phenotypes.
My tentative interpretation is that these people might belong to a sibling population of the main Homo sapiens one with center in the Upper Nile that probably coalesced c. 200 Ka ago (Omo 1 unmistakably Sapiens along Omo 2, which is more "archaic" looking). They could even be somehow related to two minor Y-DNA lineages present in Niger, Cameroon, Algeria and Morocco that seem too old to really belong to the main Homo sapiens population (A00 and A0), other "archaic" admixture has also been suggested for both the Oldest Western (mtDNA L1) and the Southern (L0d, etc.) branches of the early Homo sapiens expansion still in Africa.
See:
· http://www.pnas.org/content/108/37/15123.full
· http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/2011/05/major-upheaval-of-human-y-dna-phylogeny.html
· http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/2013/03/cameroonian-y-dna-lineage-a00-is-older.html
· http://leherensuge.blogspot.com/2010/03/early-expansion-of-h-sapiens-in-africa.html
If this "archaic" admixture hinted at by Hammer is real (and why not?) then the source populations (species or subspecies?) should be closer to Homos sapiens proper and very difficult to discern from it. This Moroccan population can perfectly belong to one of those sibling populations existing just before the likely bottleneck leading to our main group of ancestors, call them "Homo sapiens sapiens" (the second adjective refers to subspecies, an ill-defined category but sometimes convenient).
So maybe there was a Homo sapiens occidentalis and an Homo sapiens meridionalis which went mostly extinct but left a minor legacy in Western and Southern Africa respectively, and maybe these Moroccan skulls do indeed belong to the first group.
Hi Maju,
ReplyDeleteI think you're familiar with the discovery of the oldest Homo Sapiens so far that was discovered in Morocco, which is 300,000 years old. The link below shows the skull of the 300,000 years old Homo Sapiens.
https://www.diaridetarragona.com/__export/1496857602099/sites/diaridetarragona/img/2017/06/07/img_jcorbella_20170607-134039_imagenes_lv_otras_fuentes_foto_sapiens_2_figure-11-kqkc-u423244535293mpf-992x558xlavanguardia-web.jpg_525981578.jpg
After looking at the skull of 300,000 years old Homo Sapiens, some people said this oldest Homo Sapiens have the physical appearances of typical black African after judging by the skull. What do you think about it? Does it looks African to you?