200,000 years ago, humans preferred to sleep in beds

Researchers at the Border Cave of South Africa, a well-known archeological site located on a cliff between eSwatini (Swaziland) and KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, have found evidence that humans used grass beds to create comfortable areas. to sleep and work on at least 200,000 years ago.

These beds, consisting of shells of grass of the broadleaf Panicoideae subfamily, were placed on ash layers near the back of the cave. The layers as was used to protect humans from insects crawling while sleeping. Today, the layers of beds are visually ephemeral traces of silicified grass, but they can be identified with high magnification and chemical characterization.

The Border Cave study was carried out by a multidisciplinary team of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, the CNRS (University of Bordeaux), and Université Côte d’Azur, France, the Instituto Superior de Estudios Sociales, Tucumán, Argentina, and the Royal Institute of Cultural Heritage, Belgium. The study was published in Science.

“We speculate that laying grass beds on ashes was a deliberate strategy, not only to create a dirt-free, insulated base for the bedding, but also to repel invasive insects,” says Professor Lyn Wadley, lead researcher and lead author.

“Sometimes the ashy foundation of the bedding was a remnant of older grass beds that was burned to clean the cave and destroy pests. On other occasions, wood ash from the pillows was also used as the clean surface for a new bed layer. “

Several cultures have used it as an injection repellent because insects cannot move easily through fine powder. Ash blocks the respiratory and biting apparatus of insects, and eventually dehydrates them. Tarchonanthus (camphor forest) remains were identified on top of the grass from the oldest bedding in the cave. This plant is still used to control insects in rural parts of East Africa.

“We know that people worked as well as sleeping on the grass surface, because the debris from the manufacture of stone tools was mixed with the grass debris. Many small, round grains of red and orange ocher were also found in the bed. , where they may have rubbed off human skin as colored objects, “says Wadley.

Modern hunter-gatherer camps have fires as focal points; people regularly sleep next to them and perform household chores in social contexts. People at Border Cave also regularly set fires, as seen by stacked rooms in the entire sequence dated between about 200,000 and 38,000 years ago.

“Our research shows that 200,000 years ago, near the origin of our species, humans were able to produce fire, and they used fire, ash, and medicinal plants to maintain clean, pest-free camps. Such strategies would have health benefits that ‘. t benefit these early communities. “

Although hunter-gatherers tend to be mobile and rarely stay in one place for more than a few weeks, purge camps had the potential to extend potential occupancy.