3500 year-old honeypot: Oldest direct evidence for honey collecting in Africa

Honey is humankind’s oldest sweetener – and for thousands of decades it was also the only one particular. Oblique clues about the importance of bees and bee products and solutions are furnished by prehistoric petroglyphs on many continents, designed among 8,000 and 40,000 decades in the past. Ancient Egyptian reliefs show the exercise of beekeeping as early as 2600 year BCE. But for sub-Saharan Africa, immediate archaeological proof has been missing until now. The analysis of the chemical residues of foods in potsherds has essentially altered the photo. Archaeologists at Goethe University in cooperation with chemists at the University of Bristol were capable to recognize beeswax residues in 3500 12 months-aged potsherds of the Nok lifestyle.

The Nok lifestyle in central Nigeria dates concerning 1500 BCE and the starting of the Frequent Era and is known particularly for its elaborate terracotta sculptures. These sculptures stand for the oldest figurative artwork in Africa. Until finally a handful of several years back, the social context in which these sculptures experienced been developed was completely unknown. In a challenge funded by the German Investigate Foundation, Goethe College experts have been studying the Nok lifestyle in all its archaeological aspects for over twelve yrs. In addition to settlement sample, chronology and meaning of the terracotta sculptures, the analysis also focussed on setting, subsistence and diet program.

Did the individuals of the Nok Culture have domesticated animals or were being they hunters? Archaeologists usually use animal bones from excavations to answer these inquiries. But what to do if the soil is so acidic that bones are not preserved, as is the scenario in the Nok location?

The examination of molecular food stuff residues in pottery opens up new choices. This is because the processing of plant and animal products and solutions in clay pots releases secure chemical compounds, particularly fatty acids (lipids). These can be preserved in the pores of the vessel partitions for hundreds of several years, and can be detected with the assistance of gas chromatography.

To the researchers’ great shock, they found several other factors in addition to the stays of wild animals, drastically expanding the formerly regarded spectrum of animals and vegetation made use of. There is 1 creature in distinct that they had not envisioned: the honeybee. A third of the examined shards contained substantial-molecular lipids, common for beeswax.

It is not attainable to reconstruct from the lipids which bee goods had been made use of by the individuals of the Nok culture. Most likely they separated the honey from the waxy combs by heating them in the pots. But it is also conceivable that honey was processed with each other with other uncooked resources from animals or crops, or that they produced mead. The wax alone could have served specialized or health care functions. A further possibility is the use of clay pots as beehives, as is practised to this working day in classic African societies.

“We began this review with our colleagues in Bristol simply because we required to know if the Nok individuals experienced domesticated animals,” describes Professor Peter Breunig from Goethe College, who is the director of the archaeological Nok project. “That honey was part of their day by day menu was totally unpredicted, and special in the early historical past of Africa until finally now.”

Dr Julie Dunne from the University of Bristol, 1st author of the review suggests: “This is a extraordinary instance for how biomolecular data from prehistoric pottery in mixture with ethnographic info presents insight into the use of honey 3500 several years ago.”

Professor Richard Evershed, Head of the Institute for Organic Chemistry at the University of Bristol and co-writer of the analyze factors out that the distinctive partnership involving humans and honeybees was already identified in antiquity. “But the discovery of beeswax residues in Nok pottery allows a very exclusive insight into this connection, when all other sources of evidence are lacking.”

Professor Katharina Neumann, who is in cost of archaeobotany in the Nok undertaking at Goethe University claims: “Plant and animal residues from archaeological excavations mirror only a small portion of what prehistoric men and women ate. The chemical residues make previously invisible components of the prehistoric diet program obvious.” The first immediate proof of beeswax opens up intriguing views for the archaeology of Africa. Neumann: “We think that the use of honey in Africa has a incredibly very long custom. The oldest pottery on the continent is about 11,000 yrs old. Does it probably also have beeswax residues? Archives all over the earth keep 1000’s of ceramic shards from archaeological excavations that are just waiting around to expose their insider secrets as a result of gas chromatography and paint a picture of the day-to-day lifestyle and eating plan of prehistoric men and women.”

###

Images for obtain:

http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/100070440&#13

Traces of beeswax were detected in 3500 calendar year-previous clay pots like this (image: Peter Breunig, Goethe University Frankfurt)

http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/100070081&#13

Dr Gabriele Franke, Goethe College archaeologist during the documentation of excavated clay pots at the Nok investigation station in Janjala, Nigeria in August 2016. Traces of beeswax were detected in clay pots like these (image: Peter Breunig, Goethe College Frankfurt)

http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/100070175&#13

Even now well-known nowadays: excavation employees appreciate freshly gathered wild honey (photograph: Peter Breunig, Goethe University Frankfurt)

http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/100070146&#13

The Nok lifestyle is regarded in Nigeria now for its terracotta figurines (picture: Peter Breunig, Goethe University Frankfurt)&#13