An international team of archaeologists reports the discovery of grass bedding used to create comfortable areas for sleeping and working by Paleolithic humans who lived in South Africa’s Border Cave at least 200,000 years ago.
Vertical field section of 43,000-year-old bedding grass from Border Cave, South Africa. Scale bar – 10 mm. Image credit: Wadley et al, doi: 10.1126/science.abc7239.
Border Cave, which is located in the Lebombo Mountains of KwaZulu-Natal, on the eSwatini border, was occupied intermittently from before 227,000 years ago until 1000 CE.
Paleolithic people inhabiting the cave systematically placed floor coverings of broad-leafed grass above ash layers, set hearths nearby, and occasionally burned their bedding.
Before this discovery, the oldest-known grass bed was 77,000 years old from the Sibudu rock-shelter, also in South Africa, and younger examples were found to occur at other archaeological sites.
The bedding in Border Cave consisted of grass from the broad-leafed plant subfamily Panicoideae and was mingled with layers of ash.
It also incorporated stone debris, burned bone, and rounded ochre grains, all of which were of clear anthropogenic origin.
The ash may have been deliberately used in bedding to inhibit the movement of ticks and other insects.
“We speculate that laying grass bedding on ash was a deliberate strategy, not only to create a dirt-free, insulated base for the bedding, but also to repel crawling insects,” said lead author Professor Lyn Wadley, a researcher in the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand.
“Sometimes the ashy foundation of the bedding was a remnant of older grass bedding that had been burned to clean the cave and destroy pests.”
“On other occasions, wood ash from fireplaces was also used as the clean surface for a new bedding layer.”
Horizontal field view of 200,000-year-old silicified bedding in Border Cave, South Africa. Scale bar – 30 mm. Image credit: Wadley et al, doi: 10.1126/science.abc7239.
“Tarchonanthus (camphor bush) remains were identified on the top of the grass from the oldest bedding in the cave,” the scientists said.
“This plant is still used to deter insects in rural parts of East Africa.”
Modern hunter-gatherer camps have fires as focal points. People regularly sleep alongside them and perform domestic tasks in social contexts.
Border Cave people also lit fires regularly, as seen by stacked fireplaces throughout the sequence dated between about 200,000 and 38,000 years ago.
“Our research shows that before 200,000 years ago, close to the origin of our species, people could produce fire at will, and they used fire, ash, and medicinal plants to maintain clean, pest-free camps,” the study authors said.
“Such strategies would have had health benefits that advantaged these early communities.”
The discovery is reported in a paper in the journal Science.
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Lyn Wadley et al. 2020. Fire and grass-bedding construction 200 thousand years ago at Border Cave, South Africa. Science 369 (6505): 863-866; doi: 10.1126/science.abc7239
