To estimate the proposed bedding’s age, Wadley and her team conducted radiocarbon testing on a pair of teeth discovered in the same strata of the cave’s sediments. But Javier Baena Preysler, an archaeologist at the Autonomous University of Madrid who was not involved in the study, tells Science that this is the “most plausible interpretation.” The researchers can’t be absolutely certain that ancient humans slept on the grass bedding.
ANCIENT CITIES FOUND SKIN
The slivers of rock may indicate that the soft bedding was used as a seat for daily chores, while the red pigment may have rubbed off of individuals’ skin or other Stone Age canvases. Mixed in with the bedding, the team found ocher particles and flakes of stone possibly chipped off during toolmaking. They therefore had some basic knowledge of health care through practicing hygiene.” “Furthermore, they could extend their stay at favored campsites by planning ahead and cleaning them through burning fusty beds. “Through the use of ash and medicinal plants to repel insects, we realize that they had some pharmacological knowledge,” she explains. Wadley says the findings are indicative of considerable sophistication on the part of early humans. Per the paper, the ash repelled crawling insects by blocking “their breathing and biting apparatus and eventually them dehydrated.” In addition to broad-leafed grasses, the team found traces of burned camphor bush, which is still used by people in rural East Africa as an aerial insect repellent.īecause the ash is thought to have come from the same grass used in the bedding, the researchers suggest that Border Cave’s occupants periodically burned and replaced their mats with fresh plant matter. Wadley and her colleagues used scanning electron microscopes and infrared spectroscopy to identify the fossilized plant materials. Lead author Lyn Wadley, an archaeologist at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, tells Gizmodo that excavations at the cave revealed “ephemeral fossilized grass.” She says the layer of grass was probably at least a foot thick and “would have been as comfortable as any camp bed or haystack.” More recently, the site has yielded an array of significant archaeological finds related to these early residents. Humans inhabited the Border Cave, so named because it sits near the border of South Africa and eSwatini (formerly known as Swaziland), sporadically between 227,000 and 1,000 years ago.