The first Australian plant foods at Madjedbebe, 65,000–53,000 years ago

Abstract

There is little evidence for the role of plant foods in the dispersal of early modern humans into new habitats globally. Researchers have hypothesised that early movements of human populations through Island Southeast Asia and into Sahul were driven by the lure of highcalorie, low-handling-cost foods, and that the use of plant foods requiring processing was not common in Sahul until the Holocene. Here we present the analysis of charred plant food remains from Madjedbebe rockshelter in northern Australia, dated to between 65 kya and 53 kya. We demonstrate that Australia's earliest known human population exploited a range of plant foods, including those requiring processing. Our finds predate existing evidence for such subsistence practices in Sahul by at least 23ky. These results suggest that dietary breadth underpinned the success of early modern human populations in this region, with the expenditure of labour on the processing of plants guaranteeing reliable access to nutrients in new environments.

Identifying disturbance in archaeological sites in tropical northern Australia: Implications for previously proposed 65,000‐year continental occupation date

“…The date for initial occupation at either site remains unresolved but may be consistent with all other evidence indicating a 50 ka or later human arrival on the continent. Inferences about early Australian technology and subsistence based on data from Madjedbebe (e.g., Florin et al, 2020) are probably accurate, but not well dated. Ideas about the timing of a >50 ka African H. sapiens diaspora, to the degree they are based on that same 65‐ka age estimate (e.g., Bae et al, 2017; Marean, 2017; Rabett, 2018) are undercut entirely.…”

“…The inferred 65 ka age has been accepted and cited widely and uncritically. If valid, it would indicate a remarkably early date for the exploitation of certain hard‐to‐process plant resources in Australia (Florin et al, 2020). It would also add critical support for controversial claims about the spread of anatomically modern Homo sapiens into east and southeast Asia well before 50 ka (e.g., Bae, Douka, & Petraglia, 2017; Groucutt et al, 2015; Westaway et al, 2017).…”

First Nations Peoples’ Participation in the Development of Population-Wide Food and Nutrition Policy in Australia: A Political Economy and Cultural Safety Analysis

“…3 Aboriginal people hunted and gathered, practiced agriculture and aquaculture, and made sophisticated technological innovations to procure and process food. 8,9 As a result the precolonial diets of Aboriginal…”

Direct morpho-chemical characterization of elusive plant residues from Aurignacian Pontic Steppe ground stones

“…The role played by plants in the human diet is widely accepted since early times as demonstrated by the outstanding record of macrobotanical remains in the Acheulian site of Gesher-Benot Ya'aqov in Israel 55 . However, direct data of their intentional processing for consumption is scant and mostly circumstantial [5][6][7] . Late Pleistocene evidence consisting of a few grains of starch was reported from dental calculus 1, [56][57][58] although their interpretation as having a food origin and exposed to thermal treatment was contended 26 .…”

“…The consumption of starch-rich storage organs has been documented since the Middle Pleistocene through the extraction of starch grains from dental calculus, coprolites, and gut contents, which can be considered as direct evidence of their role in the diet [1][2][3][4] . On the other hand, charred roots and tubers recognized at early modern human sites in South Africa and in northwestern Australia [5][6][7] , and starch grains retrieved in sediments from Klissoura cave in Greece 8 represent indirect proof of starchy plant foraging. The Epipalaeolithic site of Ohalo II on the Galilee lake yielded a unique record of thousands of charred protoweeds and other plants remains as well as ground stones used to process starchy plants 9,10 .…”