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Written by Gil Yaron
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Saturday, 01 August 2009 |
Have you ever forgotten a cucumber in your fridge only to discover an unidentifiable object in the bottom drawer weeks later? You probably never thought that this mess might some day help scientists gain important insights into our daily lives. But in fact, the prestigious journal “Science” has now published a report by seven Israeli scientists who have been sifting through an ancient “fridge,” of sorts - an archeological dig at Gesher Bnot Yaacov (GBY), next to the Jordan River in northern Galilee. In their publication they claim to have found the oldest hearth outside Africa. The ancient leftovers all around the site may offer clues to our ancestors' lives.
GBY has been well known among archeologists since the 1930s. The humid environment of the Hula Valley swamp and the absence of oxygen have preserved organic material especially well here. Since 1989, about 20 researchers have been sifting through 3.64 cubic meters of earth, carefully cataloguing every fragment larger than 2 mm and recording where it was found. Under the supervision of Naama Goren-Inbar, professor of archeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, they have recovered 23,454 seeds and fruit fragments as well as 50,582 pieces of wood. Many of these objects have been analyzed under microscopes for evidence of burning. The result of this Sisyphean research: The charred fragments were concentrated in two locations. Therefore, the scientists conclude that the fire must have been controlled by humans. Had they been natural fires, such as peat, volcanic or wildfires, all the objects in the area would have been burnt equally.
The layer in which the objects where found indicates their age: They were located four meters above the so-called "brunbes-matuyama chron boundary". This layer is a helpful chronological indicator. Up until 790,000 years ago the earth’s magnetic field was the other way around: The magnetic north was located at the geographic south-pole. Paleo-magnetic analysis can indicate the magnetic fields of various layers and thus determine whether the sediment was deposited before or after the magnetic flip. With this method, Goren-Inbar could date here finds in GBY to approximately 790,000 years ago, making this fire pit the oldest hearth ever found outside Africa, the cradle of Homo sapiens.
That the oldest fire pit be found in Israel should not come as a surprise. Being the only land bridge between Africa, Asia and Europe, the "Holy Land" has always been a thoroughfare for human migration. The oldest stone utensils outside Africa have been found in Ubediyah, only a few kilometers south of GBY. They date back to 1.4 million years B.C. So far, some of the oldest evidence of hearths outside Africa also has been found in Israel: The fires that once warmed the Tanur cave in the Carmel mountain range were last extinguished about 360,000 years ago. But the findings at GBY are some 400,000 years older, potentially changing assumptions about when humans first left the African continent.
Hearths are especially important to archaeologists who study human behavior. Some scientists have come to believe that humans could have migrated to colder regions, such as Europe only after they gained control of fire. It remains unclear who left that palaeontological mess at GBY behind. We cannot know for sure, says Goren-Inbar: “The cleavers at the site point to Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis.” In any case, our immediate ancestors are not to blame: Homo sapiens, who would eventually invent the refrigerator, left Africa only 50,000 years ago.
© 2008 Gil Yaron - Making the Middle East Understandable
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