The possible discovery of the earliest toilet in Southern Vietnam could give up clues about how Southeast Asia evolved from a traditional hunter gatherer society to a farming community, new research from The Australian National University reveals.
Dr. Marc Oxenham led a team of Australian and Vietnamese specialists on a seven-week archaeological excavation. The team believe they found Vietnam’s earliest latrine when they stumbled across more than 30 preserved faeces belonging to humans and dogs that contained fish and shattered animal bones.
“A detailed analysis of these will provide a wealth of information on both the diet of humans and dogs at Rach Nui, but also on the types of parasites each had to contend with,” Dr. Oxenham said.
Dr. Oxenham said about 4000 years ago, major economic, behavioral and genetic changes led to Southeast Asians swapping a lifestyle of hunting, gathering and fishing for farming.
“These hunter gatherers were highly mobile, always moving from place to place to find food resources. The agriculturists had a more sedentary, stable existence, and because they stayed in one place, they were able to grow crops. And of course, population size grows with a much more stable food source.
“So what we tend to find in places like Southern Vietnam is a lot more evidence of these people in the landscape. Because they were sedentary and the population size was expanding, they left mounds like Rach Nui with evidence of their lives.
“The presence of foxtail millet is really exciting. It not only confirms that this community was growing domesticated crops at this time, but this variety of millet is from China and may provide clues into the origins of farming in Southern Vietnam, and indeed, Southeast Asia as a whole,” Dr. Oxenham said.
Dr. Oxenham added that the menu of the Rach Nui community differed from other Neolithic communities, and, apart from pigs and dogs, tended to include animals found in swampy environments.
Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more, see phys.org.
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