Over 20 pairs of sandals were discovered at an ancient burial site in a cave in Spain, along with a range of wooden tools and some of the earliest cases of preserved basketry in Europe.
Plant-based material has been used by humans to make tools, clothes and other objects for millennia, but its perishable nature has caused most of these ancient artifacts to decompose over time. However, a few select sites around the world offer the unique conditions required to preserve these organic artifacts, offering a glimpse into the lives and cultures of our ancient ancestors.
One such site is the Cueva de los Murciélagos in Albuñol, on the coast of Granada in Spain. The name literally translated to the Cave of Bats and it was first rediscovered in the early 1830s by a local landowner, who thought he had stuck gold after finding the guano-filled cavern. In the 1850s, miners descended on the site searching for lead. It was then that they discovered a hidden inner cavern filled with several partially mummified corpses and archaeological remains.
Nearly two centuries later, scientists have used modern dating techniques to determine roughly when these objects were made and who might have made them. Their results were published in the journal Science Advances on September 27.
"We studied the raw materials and technology and carried out carbon-14 dating, which revealed that the set [of objects] dates to the early and middle Holocene period, between 9,500 and 6,200 years ago," lead author on the study, Francisco Martínez-Sevilla, from the University of Alcalá, told Newsweek.
"This is the first direct evidence of basketry made by Mesolithic hunter-gatherer societies in southern Europe and a unique set of other organic tools associated with early Neolithic farming communities, such as sandals and a wooden mace," he said.
Previous studies had dated all of the objects to the Neolithic period, also known as the New Stone Age, which lasted from between 7,000 to 1,700 BCE. This period was marked by a more settled human lifestyle, where people learned to cultivate plants and domesticate animals for food rather than relying on hunting and gathering. However, this new research shows that some of the earlier objects, including the set of baskets, were most likely made during the Mesolithic period or the Middle Stone Age, centuries before.
"The new dating of the esparto baskets from the Cueva de los Murciélagos of Albuñol opens a window of opportunity to understanding the last hunter-gatherer societies of the early Holocene," Martínez-Sevilla said.
"The quality and technological complexity of the basketry makes us question the simplistic assumptions we have about human communities prior to the arrival of agriculture in southern Europe. This work and the project that is being developed places the Cueva de los Murciélagos as a unique site in Europe to study the organic materials of prehistoric populations."
However, many questions still remain as to who made these objects and whether they had a role in the ancient funerary practices at the time. For example, some of the sandals had clear signs of wear, while others seemed to have never been used, suggesting that some individuals may have been buried with specific clothing for the afterlife.
"It is honest to say that we have more questions than conclusions," Martínez-Sevilla said. "We still have a lot to investigate to understand the use of the cave and the ways of life of prehistoric human communities."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Pandora Dewan is a Senior Science Reporter at Newsweek based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on science, health ... Read more
