If Early Humans subsisted on a shoreline diet

Where is the evidence?

Jon Erlandson asked, in his paper (one of the very, very few written on the subject):
"The Archaeology of Aquatic Adaptations"
Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 9, No. 4, December 2001 ( C° 2001)

"Is it really possible that aquatic resources were virtually ignored

for more than 99% of human history?"

I will be quoting him, in blue, and his quotes, extensively, since he's a qualified professional archaeologist, and I'm not.

I will also be quoting extensively from Kathlyn Stewart, who studied and revealed the earliest known evidence of fish-eating at Olduvai Gorge. (Although Louis and Mary Leakey remarked on the fish bones some thirty years earlier, none of the host of experts studying Olduvai fragments had bothered to look at them).

On a planet whose surface is almost 75% water, where life itself is dependent on water to survive, and where our ancestors have successfully  adapted for at least 2.5 million years, it has always seemed strange to me that  modern anthropological theory has maintained that aquatic resources and habitats  were not systematically used by humans until relatively recently (e.g., Binford, 1968; Cohen, 1977; Osborn, 1977a,b; Waselkov, 1987; Washburn and Lancaster, 1968; Yesner, 1987). As Bass (1972, p. 9) noted "even our land masses are crossed  and broken by rivers and streams or dotted with lakes." 

Yesner (1987, p. 285) stated categorically that the "historical fact that maritime resources were not exploited until relatively late in the prehistoric record has attracted a general consensus. ...A real commitment to maritime lifeways did not precede late Upper Paleolithic times."

Erlandson portrays opposite sides of the 'good' and the 'useless' aquatic resources debate as Garden of Eden vs Gates of Hell.

I think he's rather over-doing the phrase 'aquatic resources debate' somewhat. There simply hasn't been one.

Garden of Eden theorists, and others, like me, informed by our direct experience of the sea, rivers, lakes, and their abundance of resources, agree that:

... coastal or aquatic habitats as veritable cornucopia where a diverse array of foods—essentially inexhaustible and easily harvested—was available (e.g., Cutting, 1962; Fischer, 1995a; Hewes, 1968; Morgan, 1877, p. 21; Okladnikov, 1965, pp. 114–115; Sauer, 1962). 

Sauer wrote this at about the same time as Sir Alister Hardy, characteristically, very quietly and informally proposed his 'Aquatic Ape Theory' at a meeting of the Brighton branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club in 1960. Elaine Morgan  took up the theme in a series of books. Many of her assembled examples of aquatically-derived human anatomical adaptations (still retained, for no other good reason whatsoever, by modern terrestrial humans) were inspired by the comparative anatomical studies of Marc Verhaegen.

Regrettably, discussion of their very original and well-considered ideas has polarised and degenerated to a very personal vendetta, mostly carried on via palaeoanthropological discussion groups on the internet.

Though even some respected scientists have published gobbledygook on the subject:

- see: Reply to John Hawks

  
- and Jim Moore's misleadingly-named snipe site, www.aquaticape.org/whataat.html

When I bicycled from Hampshire to Plymouth in 1958, I had two final objectives - to visit the famous Plymouth Marine Biology laboratory, run by Alister Hardy, and the even more famous Union Street, in Plymouth, where certain family 'trades' were said to stretch back to the time of Sir Francis Drake. 

The legend of Sir Francis Drake's unconcerned behaviour, as the huge Spanish Armada was approaching, was bowdlerised in primmer Victorian times and renamed 'playing bowls'.

Sir Alister was a pillar of the British 'Establishment', ably managing one of the world's best marine laboratories. But his laboratory seemed most concerned with researching commercial fishery problems, and was, frankly, boring, so I went on to Union Street, of which I shall say no more.

I didn't come across Sir Alister's name again for another 30 years, when I started to read Elaine Morgan's books. He didn't appear, judging from my brief (and very youthful) experience of meeting him, the type to propose or defend a radical new theory of human development, but he quietly did so, drawing on his personal observations and insights from marine biology field trips 30 years earlier.

Above all, he had noted then that skinning a seal, with its prominent layer of subcutaneous fat, was much more like skinning a human than skinning any other animal. 

Back to Jon Erlandson's views of the 'conventional paradigm'

"The Gates of Hell models articulated nicely with the prevailing view of the time that, prior to the development of agriculture, male dominated big-game hunting was the driving force in human physical, cultural,and technological evolution".

see: Skull & Bones Club

"... marine resources are low-return subsistence resources due to a need for labor intensification, in the case of shellfish and small food package-sized organisms, and due to their low protein content. A number of factors combine to create an evolutionary threshold that is too costly for human populations to cross unless they are experiencing density  dependent selection. This subsistence-related threshold is so costly to cross, in fact, that, given the option, we should expect to see human groups shift away from the exploitation of the sea, at least in non-industrial societies, whenever possible" (Osborn, 1977a,p. 177).

Which is as patently wrong as it is turgidly and stodgily full of authoritative trade jargon.

Nonetheless, something closer to the Gates of Hell model has heavily influenced the work of some of the most influential scholars who have worked with or discussed coastal or other aquatic archaeological sequences (e.g., Bailey, 1975; Binford, 1968; Cohen, 1977; Fagan, 2001; Gamble, 1986; Hayden, 1981; Isaac, 1971; Kelly, 1996; Washburn and Lancaster, 1968). Erlandson

"procuring the essentials of life by collecting shells in itself indicates a low form of human existence. In all parts of the world, even today, people may be seen on the shore at low water gathering for food the shells uncovered by the retreating tide . . . these people always belong to the lower classes of society and lead in this manner a primitive as well as a simple life" (Uhle, 1907, p. 31).

Uhle wrote this when 'gentleman scholars' didn't mix with the 'low forms of human existence', who, at that time, frequented the pubs of East London, where oysters from the Thames estuary were so prolific, and so easy to obtain, that they were given away for free. 

Erlandson, brave man, goes on to say:

...the notion of a long-standing inability of hominids to cope with aquatic habitats is also difficult to reconcile with the fact that our human ancestors now appear to have spread from Africa into southern Eurasia by about 1.7 million years ago. How did they accomplish such extensive and early migrations if they were afraid of the water and incapable of either swimming or constructing simple rafts, boats, or other flotation devices?

Erlandson lists several reasons why fish and shellfish remains may be limited in archaeological sites:

See also: Shell Middens & Fish Bones

Stone remains and bones survive better.

Acidic soils, or the gradual action of humic acids in neutral soils, commonly lead to the deterioration of shells and bones in archaeological sites, but shells deteriorate faster. Bones are made of much the same chemical materials as shells, but are very much more complex, with molecular and micro-structures shaped by collagen and so on, into much denser structures, so large animal bones are better preserved than fish bones.

Fish and shell (and small animal bones) are simply lost 

Large proportions of the fish bone and shellfish remains in many sites are lost during screening of excavated sediments through coarser (0.25 in. or larger) mesh sizes

Biases in reporting

"In Howe’s synthesis of the Mugharet el‘Aliya investigations (Howe, 1967), for instance, the description of stone tools is over 31 pages long, the vertebrate remains are relegated to 5 pages in an appendix, and the shellfish merit a single short and obscure paragraph".
See also: Blombos Cave

Pervasive misconceptions listed by Erlandson:

the notion that large land mammals were virtually always the most productive and highly ranked resources for our hominid ancestors

- see the Skull & Bones Club

that male-dominated hunting was always the central force that shaped human subsistence, settlement, and technological developments

- see the Skull & Bones Club

that the utilization of aquatic resources is automatically evidence for demographic pressure or resource stress 

that the archaeological record preserves a representative picture of our past.

But, if you're an archaeologist, and looking for new places to dig marine sites, why not look at the map above, and try: 

The eastern coast of north Kenya/Somalia, the southern coast of Turkey, most of the coast of Oman, eastern India (Tamil Nadu), and eastern Taiwan

The coast of Lebanon  - Ras al Kalb, the Cape of the Dog, listed above as a 'Neanderthal marine site', is a rocky promontory, just north of Beirut, where almost every passing army (and there have been many) since Rameses, 3000 years ago, has carved a memorial to itself. 

Nahr al Ibrahim (Abraham's River) is just north of that cape. Every spring it is said to run red with the blood of Adonis, killed by a wild boar, and loved equally by Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, and Aphrodite, Goddess of Love. To mollify the two, old man Zeus decreed that Adonis should spend the winter months down in Hades with P, and the summers with A. That story has much in common with Christian myths, even down to the name Adonis, closely related to 'Adonai - Lord'.

My son (then aged six) and I followed the river to its source, a huge cave high in a cliff of the Lebanon mountains. He clambered up to the cave, and came back with some bones, proving, he said, that the story about Adonis was true.

I wonder if anyone else has ever climbed up to that cave and looked at those bones?

Earliest evidence of human fish-eating

Kathlyn Stewart, in her seminal paper, shows that, at five of the famous Olduvai sites, there is evidence that very early hominids were eating fish, and lots of them.

Early hominid utilisation of fish resources and implications for seasonally and behaviour
Journal of Human Evolution (1994) 27, 229-245

Fish remains are associated with several early hominid sites, with especially well-preserved and relatively large assemblages at Olduvai Gorge.

One 40 cm long cichlid will provide almost 1 kg of meat, enough for a meal for a family. It is noteworthy that the average fat content of these fish equals or betters the 1-4% content of African ungulates reported by Speth.

At particular times of year certain fish groups arc sought after by local fishers for their fat/oil reserves, with siluroids (catfish) and mormyroids well-known for these qualities.

Giant Mekong River catfish -

 293kg 

Indigenous East African fishers will throw back what are described as "thin" fish, citing lack of fat as the reason. Unfortunately, very few quantitative studies exist on seasonal changes in body composition of African freshwater fish.

A study on Clarias anguillaris in the Niger River showed an increase in condition through the dry season due to "diverting a greater proportion of energy to the laying down of food reserves towards the end of the (dry) season". Cichlids studied at Lake Victoria showed better condition during the dry season prior to spawning. My own study on the cichlid Oreochramu niloticus, undertaken from 1985-1987 at Lake Turkana, Kenya indicated a higher condition (K) factor in the weeks prior to spawning (January to March). It has further been suggested that the nuchal hump that male cichlids develop at spawning is actually a source of fat reserves.

High waters occur with the onset of the rainy season, usually in March or April in eastern Africa, with a shorter, less reliable period in November. With the advent of first rains and flooding of lakes and rivers, the majority of riverine fish taxa migrate upriver to spawning grounds, as do most of the non-perciform taxa of the lakes. Actual spawning usually takes place in the shallow waters of floodplains.

So African freshwater fish are 'coming into season' and becoming easy targets at exactly the same time, at the end of the dry season, as terrestrial animal and plant foods are at their scarcest, and nutritionally poorest.

Fishing opportunities exist both along rivers and especially at river mouths on the originating migration runs. Without equipment however, catching fish from the river itself is difficult, because river waters are deep and fast-flowing, and usually some implements such as weirs, fences, baskets and spears are needed. However, Barbus, a large minnow-like fish, can be clubbed or speared as they congregate in pools along their spawning migration. Ethnographic reports document numerous large fish taken this way.

Barbus apleurogramma

East african red finned barb

African Catfish - Clarias gariepinus

African Catfish - Clarias gariepinus 
Distribution

Africa: almost Pan-Africa, absent from Maghreb, the upper and lower Guinea and the Cape province.

Asia: Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and southern Turkey.

Occurs mainly in quiet waters, lakes and pools but may also occur in fast flowing rivers and in rapids. Widely tolerant of extreme environmental conditions. The presence of an accessory breathing organ enables this species to breath air when very active or under very dry conditions. Remains in the muddy substrates of ponds and occasionally gulps air through the mouth. Can leave the water at night using its strong pectoral fins and spines in search of land-based food or can move into the breeding areas through very shallow pathways. A bottom feeder which occasionally feeds at the surface. Forages at night on a wide variety of prey. Feeds on insects, plankton, invertebrates and fish but also takes young birds, rotting flesh and plants
www.fishbase.org

In the floodplains, fish often spawn in shallow waters, and capture without additional equipment is easier. Siluriforms, particularly clariids, spawn in waters which are only a few cm deep. They are therefore very easy to procure, and many reports exist of fishers taking Clarias in large numbers often with only bare hands as they spawn at first rains 

I have witnessed, at a certain place on the Rima river, near the northern Nigerian city of Sokoto, where the waters run shallow, hundreds of people assembling for an annual 'fiesta' of hand-fishing large Clarias catfish. Everyone joins in, from ancient crones to infants. 

In my town of General Luna, kids from 4 -7 years old, fish in the local creek, entirely by hand, and bring me a kilo or so of small fish every day for my animals and birds. Most of the fish are unimpressive, but they have caught several sizeable burod. The tiles in this picture are standard 10 x 10cm.

Cichlids, a very numerous group, often construct nests in the shallow newly-submerged lake/river floodplains at high waters. Because cichlids are very territorial, reports exist of fishers marking their nests and returning year after year to rob the nests.