A team of archaeologists in Israel has uncovered evidence of tortoise bones at the Middle Pleistocene (420,000 to 300,000 years ago) site of Qesem Cave, indicating that early humans enjoyed eating tortoises in addition to large game and vegetal material.
Cut marks on tortoise humerus from Qesem Cave. Image credit: Ruth Blasco et al.
The team, headed by Dr. Ruth Blasco of the Tel-Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology in Israel and the Centro Nacional de Investigacion Sobre la Evolucion Humana in Spain, discovered tortoise specimens strewn all over the cave at different levels, indicating that they were consumed over the entire course of the early human inhabitation.
The bones revealed striking marks that reflected the methods the humans used to process and eat the turtles.
“We show that hominid damage on large tortoise specimens from Qesem Cave is not unusual and that evidence such as cut marks, percussion marks and consistent patterns of burning suggests established sequences of processing, including cooking in the shell, defleshing, and direct percussion to access the visceral content,” Dr. Blasco and co-authors wrote in a paper in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.
According to the team, Qesem people hunted mainly medium and large game such as wild horses, fallow deer and cattle.
This diet provided large quantities of fat and meat, which supplied the calories necessary for human survival.
Until recently, it was believed that only the later Homo sapiens enjoyed a broad diet of vegetables and large and small animals.
“In some cases in history, we know that slow-moving animals like tortoises were used as a preserved food,” Dr. Blasco said.
“Maybe the inhabitants of Qesem were simply maximizing their local resources. In any case, this discovery adds an important new dimension to the know-how, capabilities and perhaps taste preferences of these people.”
The new evidence also raises possibilities concerning the division of labor at Qesem Cave.
“Which part of the group found and collected the tortoises?” Maybe members who were not otherwise involved in hunting large game, who could manage the low effort required to collect these reptiles — perhaps the elderly or children,” said team member Prof. Avi Gopher, of the Tel-Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology.
“According to the marks, most of the turtles were roasted in the shell. In other cases, their shells were broken and then butchered using flint tools,” said team member Prof. Ran Barkai, also of the Tel-Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology.
“The humans clearly used fire to roast the turtles. Of course they were focused on larger game, but they also used supplementary sources of food – tortoises – which were in the vicinity.”
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Ruth Blasco et al. 2016. Tortoises as a dietary supplement: A view from the Middle Pleistocene site of Qesem Cave, Israel. Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 133, pp. 165-182; doi: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.12.006
