Earliest Known Use of Marine Resources by Neanderthals
Miguel Cortés-Sánchez1, Arturo Morales-Muñiz2,María D. Simón-Vallejo3, María C. Lozano-Francisco4, José L. Vera-Peláez4, Clive Finlayson5,6, Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidal7, Antonio Delgado-Huertas8, Francisco J. Jiménez-Espejo8*, Francisca Martínez-Ruiz8, M. Aranzazu Martínez-Aguirre9, Arturo J. Pascual-Granged9,M. Mercè Bergadà-Zapata10, Juan F. Gibaja-Bao11, José A. Riquelme-Cantal8, J. Antonio López-Sáez12, Marta Rodrigo-Gámiz8, Saburo Sakai13, Saiko Sugisaki13, Geraldine Finlayson5,Darren A. Fa5, Nuno F. Bicho14
1 Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueología, Facultad de Geografía e Historia, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain, 2 Laboratorio de Arqueozoología, Departamento de Biología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain, 3 Fundación Cueva de Nerja, Nerja, Malaga, Spain, 4 Museo Municipal Paleontológico de Estepona, Estepona, Málaga, Spain, 5 The Gibraltar Museum, Gibraltar, United Kingdom, 6 Department of Social Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 7 Departamento de Geodinámica y Paleontología, Facultad de Ciencias Experimentales, Huelva, Spain, 8 Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Universidad de Granada, Armilla, Granada, Spain, 9 Departamento de Física Aplicada I, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Agronómica, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain, 10Seminari d'Estudis i Recerques Prehistòriques, Departamento de Prehistoria, Historia Antigua y Arqueología, Facultad de Geografía e Historia, Universidad de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, 11Departamento de Arqueología del Spanish Scientific Research Council, Barcelona, Spain, 12 Grupo de Investigación Arqueobiología, Instituto de Historia, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, Spanish Scientific Research Council, Madrid, Spain, 13 Institute of Biogeosciences, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan, 14 Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal
Abstract
Numerous studies along the northern Mediterranean borderland have documented the use of shellfish by Neanderthals but none of these finds are prior to Marine Isotopic Stage 3 (MIS 3). In this paper we present evidence that gathering and consumption of mollusks can now be traced back to the lowest level of the archaeological sequence at Bajondillo Cave (Málaga, Spain), dated during the MIS 6. The paper describes the taxonomical and taphonomical features of the mollusk assemblages from this level Bj19 and briefly touches upon those retrieved in levels Bj18 (MIS 5) and Bj17 (MIS 4), evidencing a continuity of the shellfishing activity that reaches to MIS 3. This evidence is substantiated on 29 datings through radiocarbon, thermoluminescence and U series methods. Obtained dates and paleoenvironmental records from the cave include isotopic, pollen, lithostratigraphic and sedimentological analyses and they are fully coherent with paleoclimate conditions expected for the different stages. We conclude that described use of shellfish resources by Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis) in Southern Spain started ~150 ka and were almost contemporaneous to Pinnacle Point (South Africa), when shellfishing is first documented in archaic modern humans.
Citation: Cortés-Sánchez M, Morales-Muñiz A, Simón-Vallejo MD, Lozano-Francisco MC, Vera-Peláez JL, et al. (2011) Earliest Known Use of Marine Resources by Neanderthals. PLoS ONE 6(9): e24026. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0024026
Editor: Carles Lalueza-Fox, Institut de Biologia Evolutiva - Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Received: July 1, 2011; Accepted: August 4, 2011; Published: September 14, 2011
Copyright: © 2011 Cortés-Sánchez et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: The results presented derive from research carried out under the sponsorship of the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal) and the European Science Foundation (III Community Support Framework). F. J. Jiménez-Espejo acknowledges funding from the Institute of Optics (CSIC) “JAE-Doc” postdoctoral program. This work also was funded by Projects CGL2009-07603, CTM2009-07715, CSD2006-00041, CGL2010-15810 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación), 200800050084447 (MARM), Project RNM 05212, and Research Groups HUM-143 and RNM-0179 (Junta de Andalucía). This work is a contribution to the IGCPs 526 (Risks, Resources, and Record of the Past on the Continental Shelf) and 567 (Earthquake Arqueology and Palaeoseismology). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
* E-mail: fjjspejo@ugr.es
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