Abstract
The role of plants in early human migrations across the globe has received little attention compared to big game hunting. Tropical forests in particular have been seen as a barrier for Late Pleistocene human dispersals due to perceived difficulties in obtaining sufficient subsistence resources. Archaeobotanical data from the Cerro Azul rock outcrop in the Colombian Amazon details Late Pleistocene plant exploitation providing insight into early human subsistence in the tropical forest. The dominance of palm taxa in the assemblage, dating from 12.5 ka BP, allows us to speculate on processes of ecological knowledge transfer and the identification of edible resources in a novel environment. Following the hypothesis of Martin Jones from his 2009 work, “Moving North: archaeobotanical evidence for plant diet in Middle and Upper Paleolithic Europe”, we contend that the instantly recognizable and economically useful palm family (Arecaceae) provided a “gateway” to the unknown resources of the Amazon forest.
Highlights
Hunter-gatherer diet is a key topic for understanding human ecology and evolution, providing insight into the origins of the interactions between people and their environment and the development of foodways as part of Pleistocene global human expansion
Azul [18], where evidence beginning ~12,600 cal BP contribute to our understanding of the initial colonists’ diet and subsistence choices in the Amazon Basin. These results demonstrate the importance of palm exploitation for the early settlers, addressing core processes of human ecology and evolution in tropical forest settings and laying the foundation for later subsistence developments
Lithic artefacts of chert and quartz were recovered from all cultural strata at Cerro Azul
Summary
Hunter-gatherer diet is a key topic for understanding human ecology and evolution, providing insight into the origins of the interactions between people and their environment and the development of foodways as part of Pleistocene global human expansion. Discussions of hominin and human colonization of different continents and environments during the Pleistocene often have a tendency to focus on the ways in which societies were able to procure animal resources. Discussions of human migration out of Africa and around the world have been linked to the development and application of more sophisticated technologies and hunting strategies, including the bow and arrow [1,2,3]. In 2009, Martin Jones wrote the paper “Moving North: archaeobotanical evidence for plant diet in Middle and Upper Paleolithic Europe” [10], in which he reviewed the evidence for the role of plant foods in the northward expansion of Homo sapiens in Palaeolithic Europe Where plants have been discussed in early colonizations, the focus has typically been on the potential availability of edible resources and the limitations of the habitat, especially for tropical forests [8,9], with little discussion of the behavioral processes that enabled pioneers to successfully exploit plants when entering new environments.
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