Seafood helped prehistoric people migrate out of Africa

Date:
June 16, 2020
Source:
University of York
Summary:
A study has examined fossil reefs near to the now-submerged Red Sea
shorelines that marked prehistoric migratory routes from Africa
to Arabia. The findings suggest this coast offered the resources
necessary to act as a gateway out of Africa during periods of
little rainfall when other food sources were scarce.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Prehistoric pioneers could have relied on shellfish to sustain them as
they followed migratory routes out of Africa during times of drought,
a new study suggests.


==========================================================================
The study examined fossil reefs near to the now-submerged Red Sea
shorelines that marked prehistoric migratory routes from Africa to
Arabia. The findings suggest this coast offered the resources necessary
to act as a gateway out of Africa during periods of little rainfall when
other food sources were scarce.

The research team, led by the University of York, focused on the
remains of 15,000 shells dating back 5,000 years to an arid period in
the region. With the coastline of original migratory routes submerged by sea-level rise after the last Ice Age, the shells came from the nearby
Farasan Islands in Saudi Arabia.

The researchers found that populations of marine mollusks were plentiful
enough to allow continuous harvests without any major ecological impacts
and their plentiful availability would have enabled people to live
through times of drought.

Lead author, Dr Niklas Hausmann, Associate Researcher at the Department
of Archaeology at the University of York, said: "The availability of food resources plays an important role in understanding the feasibility of
past human migrations -- hunter-gatherer migrations would have required
local food sources and periods of aridity could therefore have restricted
these movements.

"Our study suggests that Red Sea shorelines had the resources necessary
to provide a passage for prehistoric people." The study also confirms
that communities settled on the shorelines of the Red Sea could have
relied on shellfish as a sustainable food resource all year round.

Dr Hausmann added: "Our data shows that at a time when many other
resources on land were scarce, people could rely on their locally
available shellfish.

Previous studies have shown that people of the southern Red Sea ate
shellfish year-round and over periods of thousands of years. We now also
know that this resource was not depleted by them, but shellfish continued
to maintain a healthy population." The shellfish species found in the archaeological sites on the Farasan Islands were also found in abundance
in fossil reefs dating to over 100 thousand years ago, indicating that
these shellfish have been an available resource over longer periods than archaeological sites previously suggested.

Co-author of the study, Matthew Meredith-Williams, from La Trobe
University, said: "We know that modelling past climates to learn about
food resources is extremely helpful, but we need to differentiate between
what is happening on land and what is happening in the water. In our
study we show that marine foods were abundant and resilient and being
gathered by people when they couldn't rely on terrestrial food."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_York. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Niklas Hausmann, Matthew Meredith-Williams, Eva Laurie. Shellfish
resilience to prehistoric human consumption in the southern Red Sea:
Variability in Conomurex fasciatus across time and space. Quaternary
International, 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2020.04.034 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200616135802.htm

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