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<< News >> At Monte Verde, Chile, early Americans had a coastal diet

Submitted by bat400 on Wednesday, 14 May 2008  Page Views: 5916

DiscoveriesCountry: Chile Seaweed was an important source of food and medicine at the oldest human site in the Americas, suggests a new report. The findings suggest that these early explorers previously lived along the coast.

Nine species of 'useful' seaweed were found in remains of dwellings at Monte Verde in Chile. The specimens dated from 14,220 to 13,980 years ago. Remnants of these marine plants were found on the edges of stone tools, which the researchers propose were used to cut and prepare the seaweed. Some of them formed parts of 'cuds' — palate-shaped mixtures of plant matter that looked like they had been chewed on but not swallowed, perhaps for medicinal purposes. Several of the edible seaweeds are known to have been eaten by many different cultures over the millennia.

The settlers would have had to travel around 90 kilometres to reach the coast, or 15 kilometres to reach an inland bay to the south. Such journeys hint that the people may have already been familiar with marine resources, allowing them to return to beaches and estuaries at opportune times to harvest the material. And if they were familiar with the coast, perhaps this is because they had lived there while migrating to their new home.

“The easiest explanation is that the people at Monte Verde made their way to South America from Asia by the coastal route,” says archaeologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, the lead author of the report in this week’s Science

For more, see Nature News.

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"At Monte Verde, Chile, early Americans had a coastal diet" | Login/Create an Account | 4 News and Comments
  
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Re: Ancient seaweed chews confirm age of Chilean site by Anonymous on Friday, 03 June 2011
Monte Verde was first discovered in 1976 which is about 500 miles to the south of Santiago. Its a very interesting archaeological site in the fact that it has yielded artifacts of 20 to 30 people living in handful of huts. The site also indicates that the people here survived on extinct species of llama, gomphotheres, shellfish, vegetables and nuts.
http://www.travelfront.com/monte-verde-ancient-charm-of-chile/
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Ancient seaweed chews confirm age of Chilean site by coldrum on Wednesday, 21 May 2008
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Ancient seaweed chews confirm age of Chilean site

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bits of chewed-up or burned seaweed discarded more than 14,000 years ago confirm that people were in Chile at least that long ago and shed light on what their culture was like, researchers reported on Thursday.

The findings at a site 10,000 miles from the Bering Strait add to an almost overwhelming pile of evidence that people were well distributed across the western Americas long before the so-called Clovis culture 13,000 years ago.

And the seaweed picked up at the Monte Verde site provide a direct link to people living in the area today, some of whom also use some of the seaweed species medicinally.

"What we have found ... are nine species of seaweed that are coming from rocky and sandy beaches located about 55 kilometers (35 miles) west of the site," said archeologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who led the study.

"It indicates to us that the people of Monte Verde had a much stronger coastal industry than we thought previously. It indicates to us that we might be talking about people who initially entered into the Monte Verde site from the Pacific coastline itself," he told reporters in a telephone briefing.

The Monte Verde site 500 miles south of Santiago has long been controversial. Discovered in 1977, its contents have been carbon-dated to more than 12,000 years ago -- dates that careful calibration using tree rings and other information suggest are actually more than 14,000 years old.

CONTRADICTING CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

This clashes with the one-time conventional wisdom that humans first crossed from Siberia using a land bridge over the Bering Strait about 13,000 years ago and then spread over the American continents.

But it supports newer genetic, linguistic and physical evidence that suggest this migration took place earlier, at least 16,000 years ago.

And it shows the upper layer of the site was occupied more than 1,000 years earlier than any other reliably dated human settlements in the Americas.

Dillehay believes it supports his theory that early Americans moved slowly down the Pacific coast, learning about the local flora, fauna and other resources as they explored. They would have moved inland a bit as they encountered raging, turbulent rivers full of glacial snowmelt.

Older theories have focused on a human blitzkrieg, in which fast-moving groups spread over the continent quickly as they tracked and wiped out herds of big game.

Some of the seaweed had been pressed into cakes and chewed as quids, like tobacco is sometimes today. Others had clearly been cooked, Dillehay and colleagues said.

"All nine seaweed species recovered at Monte Verde II are excellent sources of iodine, iron, zinc, protein, hormones, and a wide range of trace elements, particularly cobalt, copper, boron, and manganese," they wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.

At least two of the species are used medicinally by local indigenous people to treat chest and intestinal ailments, Dillehay said.

He said it might be possible to take DNA from the chewed quids, but noted they were highly likely to have been contaminated since they were collected.

Last month researchers reported they had analyzed DNA from 14,000-year-old human waste found in a cave in Oregon.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUKN0839099920080508
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    Re: Ancient seaweed chews confirm age of Chilean site by AngieLake on Wednesday, 21 May 2008
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    I ate a meal this evening with a healthy dollop of Laver (in Wales, Lavabread). When I was growing up we had this frequently.... often, as tonight and last night, with Hog's Pudding... a Haggis-like sausage.
    This processed seaweed is delicious, but many are put off by the slimy, black mushiness of it. If it really IS that good for us, maybe I ought to eat it more often!
    Mine was picked from rocks on North Devon beaches, and processed by my cousin and his wife at Landkey, before being stored in their freezer. I often buy some in local butchers' shops when visiting Barnstaple or my home village, Braunton.
    It is only available fresh when there's an 'R' in the month, otherwise you may buy it frozen.
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Ancient Beachcombers May Have Travelled Slowly by Andy B on Friday, 16 May 2008
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New evidence, more questions. That's the thumbnail of the first new data reported in 10 years from Monte Verde, the earliest known human settlement in the Americas.

Evidence from the archaeological site in southern Chile confirms Monte Verde is the Americas earliest known settlement and is consistent with the idea that early human migration occurred along the Pacific Coast more than 14,000 years ago, but questions remain about just how rapidly that migration occurred.

"If all the early American groups were following a similar pattern of moving back and forth between inland and coastal areas, then the peopling of the Americas may not have been the blitzkrieg movement to the south that people have presumed, but a much slower and more deliberate process," says Tom Dillehay, professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., who led the study.

The journal Science publishes a report on the findings by Dillehay and team of international scientists in its May 9 issue.

"Monte Verde is an iconic site in New World archaeology and Americanist archaeologists recognize its importance," says John Yellen, program manager at the National Science Foundation, which funded the research. "They also agree that Tom Dillehay has conducted an outstanding program of research there."

Most scholars now accept that people entered North America through the Bering Strait land bridge before 16,000 calendar years ago. It is not known whether people colonized the Americas by moving along the Pacific coast, through interior routes or both.

Researchers envision that coastal migration would have been a rapid process, but seaweed samples and gomphothere meat (meat from an extinct elephant-like animal that was widespread in the Americas 12-1.6 million years ago) found at Monte Verde may be signs of slower migration.

Although the site is located 50 miles from the Pacific coast and 10 miles from an inland marine bay to the south, Dillehay and the research team identified nine species of seaweed and marine algae found in hearths and other areas in the settlement. The samples were directly dated between 14,220 to 13,980 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than other reliably dated human settlements in the Americas and indicate that early immigrants could have moved south along the shoreline exploiting familiar coastal resources to get much of their food.

The researchers also found a number of inland resources, including gomphothere meat. The finding suggests immigrants moved back and forth between the coast and inland areas.

"It takes time to adapt to these inland resources and then come back out to the coast. The other coastal sites that we have found also show inland contacts," says Dillehay.

A wide variety of food was found at the site, including an extinct species of llama, shellfish, vegetables and nuts. The findings make it more difficult to determine the rate of coastal migration in the Americas and the specific path of the immigrants.

"We have no hard evidence that people migrated either rapidly or slowly along the coast," says Dillehay. "Most scholars believe that the first people came via the land bridge but the question is open."

Evidence to support the coastal migration theory is particularly hard to find because sea levels at the time were about 200 feet lower than today. As the sea level rose, it covered most of the early coastal settlements. But the seaweed finding, one of the most significant, verifies the migrants' use of coastal resources, making it a likely path.

"Finding seaweed wasn't a surprise, but finding five new species in the abundance that we found them was a surprise," said Dillehay. "The Monte Verdeans were really like beachcombers. The number and frequency of these items suggests very frequent contact with the coast, as if they had a tradition of exploiting coastal resources."

Source:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111530&org=NSF&from=news
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