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Barbeques are very ancient

          Washington: Man used to make barbeques thousands of years ago. He was perfect at making them. Reuven Yeshurun, an archaeologist from the University of Haifa, Israel, has discovered a Misliya Cave in Mount Carmel, Israel, and found evidence of a relatively sophisticated hunting and food preparation style. He said the cave presented "the full array of modern hunting behaviour", adding that this behaviour included "systematic hunting of large, prime-age animals, transport of the animals - or parts thereof - to the site, systematic butchery in order to extract meat and marrow, and roasting the meat". Together with colleagues Guy Bar-Oz and Mina Weinstein-Evron, Yeshurun found "thousands of flint flakes, blades and tools, many of which could have been used for butchering large carcasses". Yeshurun believes the flint points could have been used as hafted spear points and thrust into animals, which included fallow deer, mountain gazelles, a very large type of cattle called aurochs, wild boars, red deer, goats, and a smattering of smaller game. He said the archaeologists also found 28 fragments of ostrich eggshells, perhaps indicating that the cave dwellers ate huge ostrich eggs too. For the study, the researchers used a stereoscopic microscope to search for telltale marks on the bones and tools. They discovered an abundance of butchery and hammerstone marks.

          According to Yeshurun, the marks, along with the method in which the bones were split, together with evidence of burning, suggest that the animals were first dismembered, with larger pieces roasted over a fire. Long bones were then filleted and broken, probably to allow the diners to extract marrow. When the feast was over, cleaned bones were probably tossed into the fire, Yeshurun said. He said the absence of certain missing bones implied that the hunters at times would butcher animals offsite for easier transport, taking only the meatiest parts back to the cave. Yeshurun and his team say if Homo sapiens were in Israel 200,000 years ago, that could rewrite human history. They hope future research at Misliya may help to resolve this, and other unanswered, questions about the site. The findings are scheduled for publication in the Journal of Human Evolution, reports Discovery News.
- August 28, 2007