{"id":16076,"date":"2015-04-22T00:13:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-22T07:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-hakamagwp.pantheonsite.io\/features\/brine-revolution"},"modified":"2019-03-18T14:05:04","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T21:05:04","slug":"brine-revolution","status":"publish","type":"custom_features","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/features\/brine-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brine Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some 110,000 years ago, foragers picked their way across a rocky shore in what is now South Africa, winding between tidal pools and beds of slick, glistening rock. For weeks, the small band had relished the thought of the day\u2019s harvest and the feast to follow. Watching each night as the moon waxed in the sky, they had trekked to this shoreline, taking shelter in an old sea cave on the headland. This morning, as the full moon vanished below the horizon and the waves retreated, they walked out on a rocky realm littered with shellfish.<\/p>\n

Moving toward the surf, they scouted expertly for the large, fleshy sea snails that sometimes sheltered in tidal pools, and for the succulent brown mussels that blanketed some of the rocks. Spotting first one dense clump of mussels, then another, they bent to their work, plucking shellfish with quick, calloused hands from the rocks and tossing them onto hide blankets. It was satisfying work, even for the young, but they had to be quick about it. No one wanted to be stranded on the higher rocks when the tide turned. By the time the waves crashed back in, breaking over the shore, they were on the headland with enough food for a small feast.<\/p>\n

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Early humans adapted to the coast by understanding tidal rhythms and regularly harvesting nutritious shellfish in the intertidal zone when it was safe. At Pinnacle Point, large, powerful waves crash to shore at high tide. Photo by Ilja Herb<\/p><\/div>\n

Today, discarded shells from that long-ago meal at Pinnacle Point, some 390 kilometers east of Cape Town, are casting light on a key moment in humanity\u2019s past\u2014when our land-loving African ancestors first turned to the sea for their sustenance. At Pinnacle Point, researchers have discovered shells from humankind\u2019s oldest-known seafood meal, as well as evidence that early Homo sapiens<\/em> mastered the timing of the tides, cleverly exploited coastal ecosystems, and collected colorful seashells for rituals more than 90,000 years ago. Pinnacle Point, says Curtis Marean, a paleoanthropologist at Arizona State University, Tempe, and the site\u2019s principal investigator, \u201cprovides an outstanding record of early coastal adaptation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Pinnacle Point is conjuring up a new, controversial vision of our African genesis. Scientists have long wondered how early H. sapiens<\/em> expanded so swiftly out of Africa, colonizing the world and outcompeting Neanderthals and other human lineages. Marean thinks the answer, or at least part of it, lies not in advances in hunting big game, but in our ability to adapt to life along the coast and to harvest the wealth of the sea. By systematically reaping protein-rich seafood, he suggests in a recent paper in the Journal of Human Evolution<\/em>, H. sapiens<\/em> became more populous, more territorial, and more cooperative in large social groups than other hominins.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s those traits of cooperation,\u201d says Marean, \u201cthat allowed us to expand around the world, develop complex civilizations, and ultimately send people into outer space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The humble shellfish, agrees archaeologist Jon Erlandson at the University of Oregon, Eugene, may have helped kick-start a human revolution. \u201cWhen you add shellfish to terrestrial resources,\u201d Erlandson says, \u201cit\u2019s a broader and more stable food base. And that may have helped accelerate population growth and drive that population out of Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

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On a damp, drizzly, late-November morning, Marean clambers up a steep slope at Pinnacle Point. Energetic and fit at 54, with close-cropped graying hair and a broad, easy grin, Marean has spent his career studying human origins in Africa. It is a highly competitive field littered with big personalities and larger-than-life egos, but Marean remains both down-to-earth and approachable. Today, although the field season has ended at Pinnacle Point and he is about to fly back to the United States for Thanksgiving, he is taking time out to show a Hakai<\/em> Magazine <\/em>photographer around.<\/p>\n

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Marean\u2019s work at Pinnacle Point conjures a new vision of how early humans expanded so quickly out of Africa, outcompeting other human lineages and colonizing the world. Photo by Ilja Herb<\/p><\/div>\n

As he explains later, he first got interested in the South African coast in the mid-1980s. Research suggested that early humans had struggled in Africa during a bitter ice age that began 195,000 years ago and lasted about 65,000 years. As the climate cooled and rainfall tapered off in many regions, deserts expanded, bringing starvation to early human hunters. It was against this bleak backdrop, in all likelihood, that H. sapiens<\/em> emerged in Africa. Marean suspected that at least some of our ancestors pulled through the harsh times in natural refuges along the Western Cape coast, where rain still fell.<\/p>\n

Pinnacle Point would have seemed particularly inviting. In a thin ribbon along the coast, a shrub land known as the Cape Floral Region abounded in wild root vegetables. Studies have shown that more than 2,400 plant species in the region possess starchy underground tubers, roots, or corms\u2014potential food sources that hunter-gatherers have long relished. Almost certainly, early human migrants would have found some of the edible varieties around Pinnacle Point, roasting them for carb-rich dinners. And they could have hunted and scavenged large game. Wildebeests and other similar prey may have migrated through the area, and dead whales or dolphins occasionally washed up on the beaches.<\/p>\n

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Illustration by Mark Garrison<\/p><\/div>\n

But the richest, most reliable source of protein at Pinnacle Point was shellfish. The arid conditions of the ice age had little effect on these species, and modern studies show that their densities would have increased, rather than diminished, as ocean temperatures dropped. So even at its coldest and harshest, the Western Cape coast teemed with food. By adding mussels and other mollusks packed with protein and fatty acids to comfort-food meals of starchy tubers, early humans in the region ended up with \u201can ideal nutrition package during the long, cold glacial,\u201d Marean noted in a book chapter in 2011.<\/p>\n

At Pinnacle Point, people began collecting shellfish casually, dining on the flesh and tossing away a modest scatter of shells 162,000 years ago in a seaward-looking cave known as PP13B. It was humankind\u2019s earliest-known seafood dinner. But no one seems to have made a big deal of it: there was no trace of a party, no celebration, nothing that signified that they knew they were onto something important. It was just a good day of foraging, little more, and Pinnacle Point was just one of many brief stops in their restless quest for survival; the foragers had yet to discover the stunning wealth of the sea there.<\/p>\n

But as time passed, and as subsequent generations roamed the region, observing even minute changes in the seasons and the tides, they seem to have realized that there was far more to Pinnacle Point than often met the eye. By 110,000 years ago, humans regularly camped in PP13B, a spacious cave measuring 30 meters long and eight meters wide, and harvested large quantities of shellfish\u2014especially the brown mussels that clung to the rocky intertidal zone and the white mussels that burrowed under the sand on nearby beaches. Indeed, these early humans collected and ate so many mussels in PP13B that they paved part of the floor some 40 centimeters thick with shell fragments, creating shell middens there.<\/p>\n

How, wondered Marean, did early humans manage to collect such massive quantities of shellfish? What transformed casual beachcombing into a systematic harvest some 110,000 years ago?<\/p>\n