HUMANS LEARNED how to party very early on in their history. An archeological dig has revealed the remains of a shared feast that took place 12,000 years ago.
The menu might not have suited modern palates, with tortoises and wild cattle served on the night. Yet groups coming together for a feast remains a central part of human behaviour right around the world.
According to research released last night in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists had speculated that feasting began before the Neolithic period 11,500 years ago. The new find in the Hilazon Tachtit cave in northern Israel confirmed this, pushing back the date to about 12,000 years ago.
“This is the first solid evidence that supports the idea that communal feasts were already occurring – perhaps with some frequency – at the beginnings of the transition to agriculture,” said lead author Dr Natalie Munro of the University of Connecticut.
She and colleague Dr Leore Grosman of Hebrew University in Jerusalem dug out the remains of at least 71 tortoises and three wild cattle. The remains showed clear evidence of being butchered and cooked for human consumption.
The tortoises alone could have fed 35 people, so this was a substantial gathering, the authors said.
The gathering took place in a burial cave and involved the preparation of two hollows in the ground for a ritual human burial.
The feast and the burial were part of the same event given the tortoise shells were carefully placed under, around and on top of the human remains, the authors said. They speculated that the person could have been of some importance given the amount of food available.
The event took place before farming and the domestication of animals, so capturing the cattle would have been a chore. The tortoises would have presented less of a physical threat, but collecting so many would have involved effort, hence the importance of the feast.
