Tortoise banquet: Remains of the oldest feast found

[n2doc]

20:00 30 August 2010 by Michael Marshall

In a cave 12,000 years ago, a group of people settled down to a dinner that has rarely been matched: 71 tortoises that had been roasted in their shells.

The discovery of the shells shows that feasting occurred 2500 years earlier than previously thought, at a critical stage in the transition from hunter-gathering to settled farming.

The remains of the feast were found in Hilazon Tachtit cave (see picture) in Israel by Natalie Munro of the University of Connecticut in Storrs and Leore Grosman of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It is a burial ground that contains the bones of 28 people.

The tortoise shells (see picture) were buried in 12,000-year-old pit lined with limestone slabs, along with the body of an elderly woman (see picture). "She had a lot of health problems and probably limped," Munro says. "She was buried with a collection of unusual animal parts such as a leopard pelvis." These items were probably symbols of status and may indicate that she was a shaman. Munro thinks that the tortoises were eaten during the woman's funeral.

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http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19376-tortoise-banquet-remains-of-the-oldest-feast-found.html