How To Cook Hot Mineral Springs As A Means Of Cooking In Ancient Times - Recipe

Nia Rouseberg Author: Nia Rouseberg Time for reading: ~5 minutes Last Updated: August 08, 2022
How To Cook Hot Mineral Springs As A Means Of Cooking In Ancient Times - Recipe

Learn how to cook "Hot mineral springs as a means of cooking in ancient times". Delicious recipe.

Anthropologists have come across some of the oldest traces of human ancestors in Olduvai Gorge, a valley in northern Tanzania. They found fossils of hominids that lived 1.8 million years ago. The region itself is known as a rich deposit of remains and stone tools, which shows that ancient people were found and hunted there.

A team of experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Spanish University of Alcala found traces that prove the existence of hot springs in Olduvay Gorge, at about the same time and near the habitat of hominids. Scientists believe that the choice of location may not be accidental, and in fact the ancients used the springs to cook freshly caught game long before the fire was opened .

Roger Summons, a professor of geobiology in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first concrete evidence that humans used geothermal sources near their habitat hundreds of years ago. to the places where they hunted. "

Summons and his colleagues published their findings on September 15, 2020, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It also features Fatima Hussein, a student in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, as well as archaeologists, geologists and geochemists from Alcala University, the University of Valladolid, Spain, the University of Tanzania and Pennsylvania State University.

An unexpected discovery - climate change millions of years ago

In 2016, Sistyaga joined the Olduvai Gorge archaeologists' expedition, which collected sediment and the remains of a 3-kilometer-long layer of bare rock that formed about 1.7 million years ago. This geological layer arouses the interest of specialists because of its atypical sand composition, very different from the layer of dark clay beneath it, which accumulated 1.8 million years ago.

Sistyaga says: "During this period, there were changes in the environment. We wanted to find out exactly what and how they affected people. ”The expert initially plans to focus on the sedimentary layer to understand how nature has changed in response to climate change.

It is estimated that 1.7 million years ago, East Africa suffered from gradually increasing water shortages. In the beginning the climate was humid and there were forests, but over time there was a drought and the trees were replaced by grassy vegetation. Sistyaga took debris from the sandy rocks with him and began analysis in Roger Summons' lab. Its purpose is to check for traces of certain lipids in which leaf wax residues have been stored in order to get an idea of ​​the type of vegetation at that time.

Prof. Summons reveals: "One can recreate a plant that existed thousands of years ago by the number of carbon atoms and isotopes. This is exactly what our laboratory specializes in and this is what Ainara did. But later she discovered radically different types of compounds that we didn't even suspect. "

The hyperthermophilic bacterium, which lived 2 million years ago, still exists

Among the rock fragments she analyzes, she comes across lipids different from any other she has ever extracted from plants. He and Summons came to the conclusion that they were not so close to those produced by plants, but to specific groups of bacteria that the team had worked on 20 years ago, but in a completely different context.

Lipids extracted from Sistyaga date back 1.7 million years to Tanzania. They turn out to be the same as those produced by a bacterium that still exists today, isolated from the hot springs in Yellowstone National Park.

The specific bacterium Thermocrinis ruber is a hyperthermophile that lives and survives only in very hot waters. It does not even develop if the temperature is below 80 ° C. The samples taken from Ainara contained the same bacterial lipids, which clearly shows that hot springs existed at the site. In other words, it is quite possible that the hyperthermophilic bacterium from Yellowstone National Park was the same as that from Olduvai Gorge 1.7 million years ago. Hence the scientists' conclusion that the hominids probably lived near hot geothermal water sources.

Sistyaga notes: "It would not be insane to say that the active tectonic activity in the valley at that time caused the appearance of hot springs on the surface. Olduvai Gorge is a region known for the geological activity of tectonic plates, which was a prerequisite for erupting volcanoes millions of years ago. This same activity probably led to the formation of geothermal springs. "

The sediment was selected from a place where hominids have been shown to have lived, as tools and animal skeletal remains have been found there. It is possible that the proximity allowed prehistoric people to cook meat from the catch, as well as other hard crops or roots.

Hot springs as a means of cooking

How exactly the ancients cooked in the hot springs is still an unanswered question. Maybe they dipped the meat in water to make it a little more tender and easy to chew. It is also possible that they boiled roots and other hard crops such as potatoes to make them easier to digest. It is possible that the animals often found their own death in the hot water, after which the hominids took them out and ate them.

Sistyaga asks the logical question: "If an animal got into very hot water and its meat was already cooked, wouldn't you eat it?"
Scientists have not yet found conclusive evidence for their theory. In the meantime, they plan to study other layers and areas in Olduvai Gorge for the presence of the same lipids.

Experts believe they can find more evidence to support the claim that hot springs existed in the area. However, the task of understanding exactly how prehistoric people interacted with them remains difficult. This involves difficult-to-analyze aspects such as the behavior of a species that no longer exists and lived almost 2 million years ago.

The study was supported by the European Commission, NASA's Astrobiology Institute and the Spanish government.

 

 

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