Evidence That Paleolithic Hominins
Lived in Close Association
With Weaverbirds
and Their Basket Making Skills
Baobab trees in Tanzanian scenery.
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this article is simple. I will argue that early hominins, almost two million years ago, lived in close proximity to Weaverbirds who built elaborate nests. And because of this, it is probable that they learned initial weaving and knot making skills along with basket making, derived from the complex and well-constructed nests of these birds.
If this is true, then the origins of basket making and weaving began almost two million years ago instead of tens of thousands of years ago, as is currently believed. And this fundamentally changes the story of hominin technology which in turn affects the narrative of human evolution.
In this article, I cite specific scientific evidence, current mainstream thought and expert opinions to make my case.
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INTRODUCTION
"It is likely that many new Oldowan occurrences will be discovered in this century and that a range of new theoretical and methodological approaches will be applied to the earliest paleolithic record. These new lines of evidence should give us a clearer understanding of the complexity of the Oldowan archaeological record and a greater appreciation of the range of adaptive behaviors in the emergent tool-making and tool-using hominins that ultimately led to the modern human condition." (Schick/Toth, 35)
The purpose of this article is to cite scientific evidence plus generally accepted paleoanthropological thought and concepts to support the idea that hominins on the African savanna were in close contact with Weaverbirds almost two million years ago and that, as a result, hominins learned rudimentary basket, weaving and knot making skills.
This is important because it affected human evolution. As Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth pointed out, "It is likely that this phenomenon of accelerated brain expansion in the human lineage was due to the ability of hominins to access higher quality food resources through the use of technology, which allowed for a decreased gut size and increased brain size." (Schick/Toth, 35)
In this case, baskets, for example, would have allowed hunter-gatherers to collect and bring back greater amounts of food -- and greater amounts of quality food that grew far from their camp -- than was possible without baskets.
DIRECT EVIDENCE FROM THE PALEOLITHIC
Fossilized Weaverbirds (Ploceidae) Were Found In The Oldest Layer, Bed I Layer, At Olduvai Gorge
Fossilized Weaverbirds were found in the same layer as Oldowan stone tools, indicating that Homo habilis lived there during the same time period about two million years ago.
For a complete rundown of the evidence please read my blog:
https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2019/10/paleolithic-evidence-for-early-weaving_27.html
https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2019/10/paleolithic-evidence-for-early-weaving_27.html
Earliest Evidence Of Humans Thriving On The Savanna
"Humans were living and thriving on open grassland in Africa as early as 2 million years ago, making stone tools...That’s according to powerful evidence from artifacts found at Kanjera south, an archaeological site in south-west Kenya."
"To investigate whether they were standing on the site of ancient grassland, Plummer’s team analyzed the ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in the soil and in the tooth enamel of the fossilized animals. Grass has a higher ratio than trees and shrubs. Both the soil and the tooth enamel of fossilized animals had similarly high ratios."
“'These tests showed that the Kanjera site was over 75 percent grassland 2 million years ago and that the wider area was teeming with zebras, antelope, and other grazers,' says Dr. Plummer."
Barley, Shanta. "Earliest evidence of humans thriving on the savanna."
New Scientist, 2009, https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18018-earliest-evidence-of-humans-thriving-on-the-savannah/#ixzz6Iv2exzul
Accessed 4/7/2020.
EVIDENCE FROM CONTEMPORARY
HUNTER-GATHERERS
Contemporary Hunter-gatherers as Models for Paleolithic Behavior
"Using modern primates and hunter-gatherers [ED: such as the Hadza] as models, most paleoanthropologists believe the bulk of the diet of early hominin populations consisted of plant resources such as berries, fruits, nuts, leaves, pith, flowers, shoots, seeds, and gum, as well as underground resources such as roots, tubers, corms and rhizomes." (Schick/Toth, 31)About The Hadza
"The Hadza’s homeland lies on the edge of the Serengeti plains...close to Olduvai Gorge, one of the most important prehistoric sites in the world, where Homo habilis – one of the earliest members of the genus Homo – was discovered to have lived 1.9 million years ago. Genetically...they are one of the ‘oldest’ lineages of humankind.They speak a click language that is unrelated to any other language on earth. [ED: It is considered a 'language isolate'.] "
THE HADZA
https://www.survivalinternational.org/galleries/hadza
While Toth and Schick mentioned fruits only in a general way, the following observers during the last century specifically mentioned Baobab fruit as being a major part of the Hadza diet.
Hadza Diet, Baobab Fruit, and Paleo-diet
At the end of the article entitled, "Why the Hadza are Still Hunter-Gatherers" is "Table 1. Descriptions of the Hadza through time." In these descriptions by ten different observers for about a century (1911- 2002) fruit from the Baobab tree was mentioned as a key part of their diet. Two other observers who did not mention the Baobab fruit specifically used only general terms for foraged food such as fruits. Also at the end of the article (Figure 2) a pie-chart stated that the Baobab fruit averaged 13.5% of the Hadza diet and honey averaged 21.4% of their diet -- the honey being most often found in crevices of the Baobab tree. (Marlowe, Table 1, Figure 2 )
"The Hadza of Tanzania are the world’s last full-time hunter-gatherers. They live on what they find: game, honey, and plants, including tubers, berries, and Baobab fruit."
Gibbons, Ann. "The Evolution of Diet." National Geographic,
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/evolution-of-diet/
Accessed 4/7/2020.
In the following discussion of Oldowan tools and culture, Dr. Plummer makes the assumption that Baobab trees were part of the Paleo-landscape and uses the way of life of contemporary African Hadza hunter-gatherers to illustrate his points and to suggest that Homo habilis and/or Homo erectus may have done the same millions of years earlier.
About The Baobab Tree
The Baobab tree is remarkable, so much so I will devote an entire blog-post to this tree that played a key role in human evolution and survival. Suffice it to say, the trees were spread across the Paleo-savanna millions of years ago. The trees seemed permanent and stable to humans as many lived a thousand years or more and each large tree provided fruit, often honey, shade, and even shelter and water. And Weaverbirds often made the branches a place for their nests.
While all Weaverbird nests are well crafted and intricate, the Village Weaverbird nest is the best known and most widely studied. The birds use a variety of techniques and materials to do the job. Early hominins could have learned a number of techniques by observing Weaverbirds building nests and by studying abandoned nests that may have fallen to the ground or that may have been taken from the Baobab tree branches.
The following gives only the briefest overview of the complexity of a Village Weaverbird nest.
-- Fossil evidence shows that Homo habilis and Weaverbirds lived during the same time period at Olduvai Gorge about two million years ago. Fossil evidence also shows that the savanna environment existed during the same time period.
-- Paleoanthropologists agree that early hominins probably ate fruit from the Baobab tree as a key part of their diet, as contemporary African Hadza hunter-gatherers do today.
-- This means that early hominins were often in the vicinity of Baobab trees.
-- Weaverbirds regularly nest in Baobab tree branches and often prefer to be close to humans there.
-- Therefore: Early hominins were familiar with Weaverbirds and the various nests that these birds made which makes it quite likely that hominins learned how to construct woven fiber containers based on the birds' examples.
If it is agreed that early hominins lived in close proximity to Baobab trees, where Weaverbirds also nested, then many things follow from that association. I believe that early humans would have developed an early rudimentary form of basket making based on examples by Weaverbirds who lived in the branches above them. The birds would not only have shown them finished sturdy nests, but how to make these nests, and how to tie secure knots, which materials on the savanna to use, and how to process those materials. In addition, abandoned nests would have fallen to the ground and would have been used and examined.
Containers would have been so useful to hominins who walked upright and could carry these containers or baskets, that it seems unlikely they would not have developed such a technology. In his book, Human Universals Donald Brown lists containers as one of the eight universal technologies common to all cultures. Anthropologist Dr. George P. Murdock, who developed the Cross-Cultural Survey, lists weaving as one of the four basic universal technologies in all cultures.
Furthermore, the long-living Baobab tree with its remarkable resources gave hunter-gatherers a stable and predictable environment for generations, and that could be used most of the year if they moved from Baobab grove to grove as the Hadza do today. It is no wonder that this tree is called "The Tree of Life" in Africa.
From my point of view, this means that hominins, starting perhaps with Homo habilis, had the resources, the materials, the models, and even the instruction for basket making -- along with a degree of stability which allowed them to work on the time-consuming skills of basketry.
My theory, however, does not end here. The sequential steps of processing, that basket making involves, led eventually to an understanding of linear time -- unique among the animals. I have written that processes such as basket making and stone tool making led to a sophisticated and unique understanding of time which allowed humans to plan and coordinate their activities.
But whenever it started, it led to a nunber of complex and flexible technologies. By the Neolithic period shoes, clothes, baskets, fences, roofs, boats, and houses could all be made with a weaving and basket-like technology. For example, large round boats known as 'basket boats' were in use in the earliest days of the Sumerian civilization.
Please see the following article for a full discussion of the above:
And from its early beginnings basket making would have influenced technology, concepts, metaphors, and language.
So it may have also led to an understanding of geometry as well as an understanding of the "grid." The avid basket makers, the Babylonians, were the first to divide the sky into sections based on the circle -- and then further divide the sky into hours, minutes and seconds -- the very first grid and the one that astronomers still use today.
The later basic understanding of putting fibers or materials at right angles (the key to weaving) was a masterful insight that was critical. While the principle is simple and seems obvious, it was a construct of the human mind.
My guess and this is only a guess, is that basket making began in a fundamental form with Homo habilis or hominins of that time period. These early baskets were probably made with a 'random weave' which involved tangling strands of fibers together along with some basic knots learned from the Weaverbirds. This technique was used to make baskets for carrying berries and foraged food. The right-angle construction of warp and weft (or also called 'woof') which was part of weaving probably did not happen until much later, perhaps with Homo erectus as this would have been a major breakthrough.
Collias, Nicholas E. And Collias, Elsie C. "An Experimental Study Of The Mechanisms Of Nest Building In A Weaverbird." Auk. Vol. 79, The Auk: Ornithological Advances, 1962.
Crittenden, Alyssa N. "Ethnobotany in evolutionary perspective: wild plants in diet composition and daily use among Hadza hunter-gatherers." Wild Harvest: Plants in the Hominin and Pre-Agrarian Human Worlds, Hardy, Karen; Martens, Lucy Kubiak (Eds.). Oxbow Books, 2016.
Friedmann, Herbert. "The Weaving of the Red-Billed Weaver Bird in Captivity." Zoologica:. Scientific Contribution of the New York Zoological Society, Volume II, Number 16. The Society, The Zoological Park,, New York, 1922.
Marlowe, Frank. "Why the Hadza are Still Hunter-Gatherers." Ethnicity, Hunter-Gatherers, and the “Other”: Association or Assimilation in Africa, Sue Kent (Ed.) Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002, pp 247-275.
Plummer, Dr. Thomas. "Flaked Stones and Old Bones: Biological and Cultural Evolution at the Dawn of Technology." Am J Phys Anthropol. 2004;Suppl 39:118-64.
Schick, Kathy, and Toth, Nicholas. "THE OLDOWAN: Case Studies into the Earliest Stone Age." Stoneage Institute Publication Series, Schick, Kathy and Toth, Nicholas (Eds.). Stone Age Institute and Indiana University, Stone Age Institute Press, 2006.
Watson, Rupert. The African Baobab. Penguin Random House South Africa. Kindle Edition.
"Woody plants that are likely to have provided food to hominins (E.G., Adansonia digtata, Baobab, providing fruit...) are widely distributed across Africa today (O’Brien and Peters, 1999; Peters and O’Brien, 1994)." (Plummer, 123)Both the fruit and the seeds in the fruit were/are important to the Hadza
"The fruit and seeds from the Baobab tree (Adansonia digitata) are important dry-season food for the Hadza (Schoeninger et al., 2001a). The fruit...provides energy as well as calcium and vitamin C. Seeds from the fruit are pounded into flour and when eaten provide a rich source of fat and protein (5 of 8 essential amino acids) (Schoeninger et al., 2001a)." (Plummer, 149)
"Data on Hadza ethnobotany not only provides invaluable and timely cross-cultural information on plant use, but also enhances our understanding of early hominin paleoecology." (Crittenden, 319)
"Baobab fruit (Adansonia digitata) is consumed throughout the year and comprises 14% of the annual diet. The fruit has an inedible hard, green outer shell that accounts for approximately 50% of the total weight of the fruit (Nour et al. 1980). The inside of the fruit is composed of approximately 15–20 seeds which are covered with dry, white, chalky pulp that may be consumed in four ways: (1) directly out of the shell, discarding the hard seed inside the pulp, (2) pounded into a flour, removing the seed husks by winnowing on the surface of small piece of animal hide, (3) combining the flour with water and/or berry juice to create a sweet paste, or (4) removing the intact seeds from the dung of baboons, sun drying, and then pounding into flour. The fruit pulp alone is low in fat, protein, and fibre whereas the pulp flour (seed and pulp combined) is relatively high in fat, protein, and fibre. The fruit pulp and pulp flour are both high in simple carbohydrates (Crittenden 2009)." (Crittenden, 322)
ABOUT BAOBAB TREES, HOMININS, & WEAVERBIRDS
About The Baobab Tree
The Baobab tree is remarkable, so much so I will devote an entire blog-post to this tree that played a key role in human evolution and survival. Suffice it to say, the trees were spread across the Paleo-savanna millions of years ago. The trees seemed permanent and stable to humans as many lived a thousand years or more and each large tree provided fruit, often honey, shade, and even shelter and water. And Weaverbirds often made the branches a place for their nests.
Baobab trees on the savanna.
Baobabs dotted the African savanna while our ancestors still lolloped along on four legs. The trees would have provided them with easily gathered fruit, while branches gave shelter from rain, sun and predators. As man gradually started to stand upright (some four million years ago), it freed up his hands to shape tools...
(Watson, Kindle Locations 64-72)
----------------------------------
The world of primitive African man spread as far as his furthest travels. The biggest thing that moved in it was the elephant, and the biggest living thing that didn’t was the Baobab. The trees were as near to permanent as any living thing could be. (Kindle Locations 64-72)
---------------------------------
Take away the Baobabs, and a whole community disappears with them. Shade, shelter, food, breeding places, hunting lookouts; the loss of a Baobab is much more than the loss of a tree. (Kindle Locations 1376-1387)
About Weaverbirds
Baobab tree with weaverbird nests.
"Three weavers regularly nest in Baobabs, while a few others occasionally do so.
Weavers that regularly breed in Baobab trees:
Red-billed Buffalo-Weaver Bubalornis niger
White-billed Buffalo-Weaver Bubalornis albirostris
Red-headed Weaver Anaplectes rubriceps"
Weavers Breeding In Baobabs. Weaver Watch, weavers.adu.org.za.
http://weavers.adu.org.za/spcat.php?spc=22
--------------------------
"Near human habitation Baobabs are occasionally taken over by...breeding colonies of Black-headed (or Village) Weavers, seeking their protection from predators by proximity to mankind."
(Watson, Kindle Locations 1371-1374)
--------------------------
"The Village Weaver inhabits bushy savanna...It is frequently associated with human habitation in west and central Africa."
Village Weaver Ploceus Cucullatus. Weaver Watch, weavers.adu.org.za.
http://weavers.adu.org.za/sp.php?spp=797
Weaverbirds and a finished nest.
WHAT WEAVERBIRDS COULD HAVE
SHOWED HOMININS
(Left) A Village Weaverbird makes a nest. (Right) Detail.
The following gives only the briefest overview of the complexity of a Village Weaverbird nest.
"The outer shell of the nest is woven by the male of long strips torn by him from the leaves of giant grasses or palms. The general external appearance of the nest...is ovoidal or kidney-shaped in form with a bottom entrance...Just within the roof of the external shell the male thatches a special ceiling of short, broad strips of grass leaves. The ceiling is not woven, and in some parts of Africa may be thatched of dicot leaves in addition to the use of strips of grass." (Collias/Collias, 571) "There are five stages to the building of the outer shell of the nest by the male: (1) initial attachment, (2) roof and egg or brood chamber, (3) antechamber, (4) entrance, and (5) entrance tube." (Collias/Collias, 573)
Example of Weaverbird knots.
"The Weaving of the Red-Billed Weaver Bird in Captivity."
(Friedmann, 363)
Weaverbird nests.
SUMMARY
-- Fossil evidence shows that Homo habilis and Weaverbirds lived during the same time period at Olduvai Gorge about two million years ago. Fossil evidence also shows that the savanna environment existed during the same time period.
-- Paleoanthropologists agree that early hominins probably ate fruit from the Baobab tree as a key part of their diet, as contemporary African Hadza hunter-gatherers do today.
-- This means that early hominins were often in the vicinity of Baobab trees.
-- Weaverbirds regularly nest in Baobab tree branches and often prefer to be close to humans there.
-- Therefore: Early hominins were familiar with Weaverbirds and the various nests that these birds made which makes it quite likely that hominins learned how to construct woven fiber containers based on the birds' examples.
CONCLUSION
If it is agreed that early hominins lived in close proximity to Baobab trees, where Weaverbirds also nested, then many things follow from that association. I believe that early humans would have developed an early rudimentary form of basket making based on examples by Weaverbirds who lived in the branches above them. The birds would not only have shown them finished sturdy nests, but how to make these nests, and how to tie secure knots, which materials on the savanna to use, and how to process those materials. In addition, abandoned nests would have fallen to the ground and would have been used and examined.
Containers would have been so useful to hominins who walked upright and could carry these containers or baskets, that it seems unlikely they would not have developed such a technology. In his book, Human Universals Donald Brown lists containers as one of the eight universal technologies common to all cultures. Anthropologist Dr. George P. Murdock, who developed the Cross-Cultural Survey, lists weaving as one of the four basic universal technologies in all cultures.
Furthermore, the long-living Baobab tree with its remarkable resources gave hunter-gatherers a stable and predictable environment for generations, and that could be used most of the year if they moved from Baobab grove to grove as the Hadza do today. It is no wonder that this tree is called "The Tree of Life" in Africa.
From my point of view, this means that hominins, starting perhaps with Homo habilis, had the resources, the materials, the models, and even the instruction for basket making -- along with a degree of stability which allowed them to work on the time-consuming skills of basketry.
My theory, however, does not end here. The sequential steps of processing, that basket making involves, led eventually to an understanding of linear time -- unique among the animals. I have written that processes such as basket making and stone tool making led to a sophisticated and unique understanding of time which allowed humans to plan and coordinate their activities.
The Importance of Processes
in the Paleolithic Era
AFTERWORD
One cannot overemphasize the importance of basket making which may have evolved into weaving. It is now assumed that textile weaving began thousands of years before the latest confirmed find of clay fragments that showed impressions of weaving that were dated at 27kya. These showed sophisticated weaving techniques that must have been developed thousands of years earlier.But whenever it started, it led to a nunber of complex and flexible technologies. By the Neolithic period shoes, clothes, baskets, fences, roofs, boats, and houses could all be made with a weaving and basket-like technology. For example, large round boats known as 'basket boats' were in use in the earliest days of the Sumerian civilization.
Please see the following article for a full discussion of the above:
Evidence for a Basket Weaving
and Woven-Fiber Technology
in the Paleolithic Era
And from its early beginnings basket making would have influenced technology, concepts, metaphors, and language.
For example, at the Beyond the Basket conference in 2009, Mr, Heslop stated: “Beyond its practical uses, basketry has arguably been even more influential on our lives, since it relies on the relationship of number, pattern and structure."University of East Anglia. "Basket Weaving May Have Taught Humans To Count." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 8 June 2009. <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090604222534.htm>.
So it may have also led to an understanding of geometry as well as an understanding of the "grid." The avid basket makers, the Babylonians, were the first to divide the sky into sections based on the circle -- and then further divide the sky into hours, minutes and seconds -- the very first grid and the one that astronomers still use today.
The later basic understanding of putting fibers or materials at right angles (the key to weaving) was a masterful insight that was critical. While the principle is simple and seems obvious, it was a construct of the human mind.
As the famous architect Antoni Gaudi said:
“There are no straight lines or right angles in nature.”
My guess and this is only a guess, is that basket making began in a fundamental form with Homo habilis or hominins of that time period. These early baskets were probably made with a 'random weave' which involved tangling strands of fibers together along with some basic knots learned from the Weaverbirds. This technique was used to make baskets for carrying berries and foraged food. The right-angle construction of warp and weft (or also called 'woof') which was part of weaving probably did not happen until much later, perhaps with Homo erectus as this would have been a major breakthrough.
_____________________________________________________________________________
WORKS CITED
Collias, Nicholas E. And Collias, Elsie C. "An Experimental Study Of The Mechanisms Of Nest Building In A Weaverbird." Auk. Vol. 79, The Auk: Ornithological Advances, 1962.
Crittenden, Alyssa N. "Ethnobotany in evolutionary perspective: wild plants in diet composition and daily use among Hadza hunter-gatherers." Wild Harvest: Plants in the Hominin and Pre-Agrarian Human Worlds, Hardy, Karen; Martens, Lucy Kubiak (Eds.). Oxbow Books, 2016.
Friedmann, Herbert. "The Weaving of the Red-Billed Weaver Bird in Captivity." Zoologica:. Scientific Contribution of the New York Zoological Society, Volume II, Number 16. The Society, The Zoological Park,, New York, 1922.
Marlowe, Frank. "Why the Hadza are Still Hunter-Gatherers." Ethnicity, Hunter-Gatherers, and the “Other”: Association or Assimilation in Africa, Sue Kent (Ed.) Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002, pp 247-275.
Plummer, Dr. Thomas. "Flaked Stones and Old Bones: Biological and Cultural Evolution at the Dawn of Technology." Am J Phys Anthropol. 2004;Suppl 39:118-64.
Schick, Kathy, and Toth, Nicholas. "THE OLDOWAN: Case Studies into the Earliest Stone Age." Stoneage Institute Publication Series, Schick, Kathy and Toth, Nicholas (Eds.). Stone Age Institute and Indiana University, Stone Age Institute Press, 2006.
Watson, Rupert. The African Baobab. Penguin Random House South Africa. Kindle Edition.
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