Neanderthal seafood feast

In studies into human evolution, as happens with so many aspects of the world in which we live, the saying «old rockers never die» tends to be true, especially when it comes to dispelling scientific paradigms.

Exploiting marine resources has traditionally been a disputed battleground for different reasons. Firstly, the remains of such activity tend to accumulate in coastal deposits. As a result, in addition to the many factors which contribute to the destruction of a site, we must include the role of fluctuations in sea level. Sea level falls during cold periods when large amounts of water accumulate in glaciers and the polar ice caps, and rise during hot periods when, as is happening now, the ice melts. In this case this is unfortunate given that, for a large part of the last two million years of the Pleistocene, a key moment for human evolution, glaciations caused the sea level to drop even below the 120 metres it currently stands at. Coastal sites from the cold spells were swallowed by the sea as the temperature rose during the last 10,000 years of the Holocene, the inter-glacial period in which we find ourselves. Although there are other, specific problems which complicate studying the remains, such as the often-small size of fishbones and marine invertebrates, the biggest problem for researching the origins of fishing and gathering shellfish is the change in sea level. Thus, finding sites with significant evidence of these activities becomes a kind of lottery.

This poor register, which is only better in the later stages of prehistory, has created a paradigm whereby fishing and gathering shellfish are recent incorporations to the many strategies for subsistence of hominins (bipedal primates) which only our species, Homo sapiens, was able to develop. The main corollary to this paradigm is to consider fishing and gathering shellfish as sophisticated activities, which require a cognitive ability available to only the most intelligent human species.

However, as with the lottery, occasionally you win the jackpot. Thus, since almost 30 years ago, the study of a set of caves on the coast of the Indian Ocean in South Africa offers unmistakable evidence of a systematic exploitation of marine resources by ancient Homo sapiens around 160,000 years ago. In recent years we have been able to add more evidence from Asia and the Iberian Peninsula. The most important case in Spain is Bajondillo Cave (Torremolinos, Spain). Currently located at about 200 metres from the Mediterranean coast, it avoided the damage caused by rising sea level because it is set in a rocky promontory, it offers a unique opportunity to document the use of marine resources during the period of occupation by the so-called «modern humans» (or Homo sapiens) in the Upper Palaeolithic, and by Neanderthals in the Middle Palaeolithic.

Excavations at Bajondillo Cave revealed thousands of fragments of seashells at the Middle Palaeolithic level, the oldest of which has been dated with certainty to Marine Isotopic Period number 6 (in other words, around 160,000 years ago). Taphonomic studies showed that these shells—mostly mussels—had been broken stereotypically and many had thermo-alterations (burns) on the outside. This and other evidence point to humans as gatherers of the rich and diversified mollusc deposits.

Given that modern humans are not documented in Europe until 40,000 years ago, the hominins who generated these levels in Bajondillo Cave —like those in the Gibraltar caves of the same period— were Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis). The fact that the data from Bajondillo Cave is, for all purposes, synchronic with those registered thousands of miles away in modern humans in South Africa (Pinnacle Point, 164,000 years) indicates that the coincidental date shows a clear case of behavioural convergence between two different species of hominins, opening the door for other hominin species to join the «shellfish club».

The findings at Bajondillo Cave therefore question the hypothesis that the expansion into the marine food niche was a particular adaptation unique to modern humans and a reflection of a transcendental change in cognitive ability also unique to our species. They also bring into question the hypothesis that it was by adapting to the coast that modern humans began to spread outside Africa. In fact, the contraction of Neanderthal settlements after this evidence of their early adaptation to the coast also brings into question the expectations of the model of territorial expansion suggested for modern humans.

Paraphrasing what we said in one of our articles, we will finish by concluding that the data gathered up to now about the exploitation of marine resources «reinforce our suspicion that the coastal adaptation, however important it might have been at the locallevel of specific populations, may be yet another overrated phenomenon in the list of behaviors long considered to represent modernity».

Arturo Morales Muñiz is Emeritus Professor of Zoology at the department of Biology from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain). A former General Secretary of ICAZ (International Council of Archaeozoology), and director of the journal Archaeofauna, his current research focuses on the study of archaeological fish remains.

Further reading

Cortés-Sánchez M, Morales-Muñiz A, Simón-Vallejo MD, Lozano-Francisco MC, Vera-Peláez JL, Finlayson C, et al. 2011. Earliest Known Use of Marine Resources by Neanderthals. PLoS ONE 6 (9): e24026.

Cortés-Sánchez M, Jiménez-Espejo F, Vera Peláez JL, Lozano Francisco MC, Morales-Muñiz A. 2019. Shellfish collection on the westernmost Mediterranean, Bajondillo cave (~160-35 cal kyr BP): A case of behavioral convergence? Quaternary Science Reviews, 217: 284-296

Marean, C. 2010. Pinnacle Point Cave 13B (Western Cape Province, South Africa) in context: The Cape Floral kingdom, shellfish, and modern human origins.  Journal of Human Evolution, 59 (3-4): 425-443.

Morales-Muñiz A, Cortés-Sánchez M, Jiménez-Espejo FJ. 2011. 160,000 years ago Neanderthals gathered and consumed marine resources. Science News (A).