Caveman Campsite Unearthed at Construction Site in London

A Paleolithic flint found at the site of the new U.S. Embassy in London. Credit: © MOLA/ Andy Chopping

               By Megan Gannon


Construction is underway on the south side of the Thames River in London's Battersea neighborhood on a shiny crystalline cube that will house the new U.S. Embassy. But long before the site was set aside for diplomacy, it may have been a caveman campground.
Archaeologists monitoring the building's construction over the last year uncovered traces of London's distant past — Stone Age tools, the charred remains of campfires, animal bones and a possible fish trap.
"Prehistoric sites in London are extremely rare and to have such a vast horizon preserved is quite significant," said Kasia Olchowska, a senior archaeologist at the Museum of London Archaeology, referring to the large surface area preserved. Olchowska patrolled the construction site from last July through April to examine and excavate any archaeological finds.

The oldest artifact from the site is perhaps a Paleolithic flint. This sharp-sided rock is likely a flake, or a byproduct from the making of a bigger tool, though it also could have been used as a tool itself, Olchowska said.
Found among water-smoothed gravel, the flint was likely swept into place by a river channel. Researchers haven't pinpointed an exact age for the stone tool, because it's been washed away from its original context. Experts who looked at the flint think it was created no earlier than 500,000 years ago, but more likely crafted sometime between 100,000 and 12,000 years ago, Olchowska said. The researchers are hoping to narrow that time frame with further study.
The rest of the prehistoric surface uncovered at the construction site is up to 11,750 years old, carbon dating showed. At that time, the London area was wetter than it is today, with a network of channels that swirled around sandy islands, Olchowska said. The land was likely too wet for a permanent settlement, but the vast, open space may have been a good spot to set up camp for hunting and fishing expeditions.

These crumbling wooden posts may have been part of a fish trap along the Thames more than 11,000 years ago.
Credit: © MOLA

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Archaeologists uncovered several patches of scorched ground and burned animal bones, which may be evidence of campfires, Olchowska said.
"We think that [the fires] are potentially marking a spot that people were coming back to seasonally," Olchowska told Live Science.
In the southwestern corner of the site, the team also found two rows of disintegrating wooden stakes stretching over an area 39 feet (12 meters) long. These fences might represent an early fish trap used to round up a catch in a basket or net.
The team found other stone tools, too, including a 12,000-year-old plunging blade, which would have been set in bone or wood and used as a tool or weapon, and handheld Neolithic scrapers that would have been used for woodwork or hide-cleaning.
Near the embassy site, archaeologists have previously discovered other prehistoric archaeological remains, including a Bronze Age jetty and a 7,000-year-old timber structure near the Thames. The new discovery gives archaeologists a chance to reconstruct a wider area of prehistoric London, Olchowska said. She is putting together a history of this period in light of her findings at the embassy.

http://www.livescience.com/45933-stone-age-tools-campfires-london-construction-site.html

The REAL caveman diet: Research shows ancient man mainly ate tiger nuts

 

Published January 10, 2014

FoxNews.com

 

So much for Fred Flintstone’s brontosaurus ribs.
The popular caveman diet claims people will feel more powerful and healthier if they only eat items popular during the Paleolithic, pointing to nuts, berries and red meat. But a new study from Oxford University says meat wasn’t making it for our ancient ancestors: 2.4 million years ago, man survived mainly on “tiger nuts” -- edible grass bulbs still eaten in parts of the world today.
“Tiger nuts, still sold in health food shops as well as being widely used for grinding down and baking in many countries, would be relatively easy to find,” explained Gabriele Macho with Oxford University’s Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art.
“They also provided a good source of nourishment for a medium-sized hominin with a large brain. This is why these hominins were able to survive for around one million years because they could successfully forage – even through periods of climatic change.”

'They provided a good source of nourishment for a medium-sized hominin with a large brain.'

- Gabriele Macho with Oxford University’s Research Laboratory for Archaeology

But early man couldn't live on nuts alone, of course, and Fred Flintstone was likely no exception. These early relatives may have also sought additional nourishment from fruits and invertebrates, like worms and grasshoppers, the study concluded.
To find what cavemen really ate, Macho compared the diet of Paranthropus boisei, nicknamed “Nutcracker Man” because of his big flat molar teeth and powerful jaws, and modern Kenyan baboons. Scientists have debated whether high-fiber foods would have been sufficient nourishment for early man.
Macho found that modern baboons living in an environment similar to Nutcracker Man’s eat large quantities of tiger nuts, and this food would have contained sufficiently high amounts of minerals, vitamins, and the fatty acids that would have been particularly important for the hominin brain.
She concludes that the nutritional demands of ancient man would have been quite similar.
Tiger nuts (Cyperus esculentus) are rich in starches, the study says, and are highly abrasive in an unheated state. Macho suggests that wear and tear on the teeth in that ancient skull points to wear and tear due to these starches. The study finds that baboon teeth have similar marks, giving clues about their pattern of consumption.
The study was published Wednesday in the online journal PLOS One.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/01/10/real-caveman-diet-research-shows-ancient-man-feasted-mainly-on-tiger-nuts/