December 16, 2012

Evidence of marine exploitation 250,000 years ago in North Africa

Dr. Cantillo in a cave access
According to news reports, Juan Jesús Cantillo the University of Cádiz has argued in his (successful) doctoral thesis that the exploitation of marine resources in Benzú Cave (Ceuta, North Africa) has some 250,000 years of antiquity instead of the mere 100,000 that has been proposed for such kind of economy by other scholars always in search of absolutist dividing lines between what is "modern human" and what is something else. 

99% of the coastal resources exploited by the ancient inhabitants of Benzú are limpets, albeit of a variant quite larger than modern ones. While no bones have been found that could inform us of the human species involved in this economy of coastal exploitation, some artifacts appear to be similar to those used by Neanderthals across the Gibraltar Strait. If confirmed, this would also imply intercontinental navigation, even if across a narrow strait of maybe some 5 km (in the worst of the Ice Ages, today it has 14.3 km).

Source[es]: El Pueblo de Ceuta (h/t Pileta de Prehistoria). I could not find the thesis online yet but it says it was successfully defended earlier this month.

Update: reference of the thesis, incl. abstract (in Spanish), full text does not seem available online.

3 comments:

  1. His Dissertation is indexed at TESEO Database

    https://www.educacion.gob.es/teseo/mostrarRef.do?ref=1001172

    It has no PDF archive linked to it, I guess it is related to each University politics.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LOL, Firefox went mad at the sites claiming that they don't have a legitimate security certificate in spite of being https addresses! Probably Wert "saving" money...

      Thanks for the reference anyhow, I bet you are very intrigued, right?

      Delete
  2. His Dissertation is indexed at TESEO Database

    https://www.educacion.gob.es/teseo/mostrarRef.do?ref=1001172

    It has no PDF archive linked to it, I guess it is related to each University politics.

    ReplyDelete

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