|
Título:
|
Bone marrow storage and delayed consumption at Middle Pleistocene Qesem Cave, Israel (420 to 200 ka)
|
|
Autor/a:
|
Blasco López, Ruth; Rosell, Jordi (Rosell i Ardévol); Arilla Osuna, Maite; Margalida, Antoni; Villalba Mata, Daniel; Gopher, Avi; Barkai, Ron
|
|
Notas:
|
Bone marrow and grease constitute an important source of nutrition and have attracted the attention of human groups since prehistoric times. Marrow consumption has been linked to immediate consumption following the procurement and removal of soft tissues. Here, we present the earliest evidence for storage and delayed consumption of bone marrow at Qesem Cave, Israel (~420 to 200 ka). By using experimental series controlling exposure time and environmental parameters, combined with chemical analyses, we evaluated bone marrow preservation. The combination of archaeological and experimental results allowed us to isolate specific marks linked to dry skin removal and determine a low rate of marrow fat degradation of up to 9 weeks of exposure. This is the earliest evidence of such previously unidentified behavior, and it offers insights into the socio-economy of the human groups who lived at Qesem and may mark a threshold to new modes of Palaeolithic human adaptation.
The Qesem Cave excavation project is supported by the Israel Science Foundation, the CARE Archaeological Foundation, the Leakey Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Dan David foundation, and the Thyssen Foundation and by a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) research grant (UT 41/4-1). J.R. and R.Bl. develop their work within the Spanish MINECO/FEDER (projects CGL2015-65387-C3-1-P, CGL2016-80000-P, and CGL2015-68604-P) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (project 2017 SGR 836 and CLT009/18/00055). M.A. is the beneficiary of a research fellowship (FI) from AGAUR (2017FI-B-00096), and A.M. was supported by a Ramón y Cajal research contract by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (RYC-2012-11867). |
|
Materia(s):
|
-Arqueologia
-Paleolític
-Medul·la òssia
-Adaptació humana |
|
Derechos:
|
cc-by-nc (c) Blasco et al., 2019
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
|
|
Tipo de documento:
|
Artículo
Artículo - Versión publicada |
|
Editor:
|
American Association for the Advancement of Science
|
|
Compartir:
|
|
