South Africa has discovered the world's oldest camping mat

caves extend deep into the mountains along South Africa's border with Eswadini. Photo credit: A. Kruger
Cave is a deep hole in the cliffs of South Africa's Leppons Mountains. Unaffected by natural factors, bones, tools and well-preserved plant materials have been unearthed in the area, which paint a detailed picture of human life more than 200,000 years ago.
study, published August 14 in Science, found that plant remains suggest that the cave's occupants used grass mats about 200,000 years ago. The researchers speculated that the cave's occupants had laid beds on ashes to repel insects.
Baena Preysler, an archaeologist at the Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain who was not involved in the study, said the well-preserved "bedding" would join the "incredible discovery" in African archaeological records. But other researchers point out that the dates of these objects are uncertain, and in the absence of time machines, scientists have to guess how the ancients used the accumulated grass and ash.
Lyn Wadley, an archaeologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, discovered the material while she and her team were excavating the border cave. When they were digging, they found white spots in the brown soil. "I looked at these things with a magnifying glass and realized it was a trace of a plant," she says. "Under the microscope, she confirmed that the plant belonged to the Panicoideae herb that grew up in the area.
the grass suggests that people deliberately brought them into the cave, said Wadley, a 40-year-old man. She said the sediments showed repeated layers of plants and ash, suggesting that the material was used to make clean and comfortable bed surfaces.
researchers can't be sure if people are sleeping on mats, but they describe it as "bedding" because people seem to sleep on comfortable beds. Baena Preysler agrees, which is the "most reasonable explanation."
sediments containing grass are buried deep in the cave's rock formations. By measuring the degree of radiation exposure to tooth enamel, the researchers determined the age of two isolated teeth found in the same formation. The two teeth were about 200,000 years old, one earlier than 200,000 years ago and one earlier than 200,000 years ago.
Dani Nadel, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa in Israel who was not involved in the study, said the date of the use of the two teeth alone was somewhat inaccurate. If the date is established, the grass mats in the border cave will be the earliest evidence of human use of camping beds. The second oldest known grass mat is located in the Sibudu cave in South Africa, dating back 77,000 years, and there is preliminary evidence that similar mats appeared in Israel about 185,000 years ago.
mat itself "doesn't really tell us anything about the complexity of human cognition." Wadley said. Many other animal species, including birds, rodents and other primates, also nest. But the material found next to the grass does hint at more complex behavior. Ashes, charred grass, wood and bones indicate that cave residents may periodically burn bedding, possibly to remove "smelly bedding and pests," Wadley said. Some of the burned wood comes from broad-leaved camphor trees, which are still used as insect repellents in South Africa.
, said repeated ashes and plant materials showed that ancient humans intended to lay grass on the ashes. The researchers believe evidence from border caves suggests that humans deliberately used ash and medicinal plants to keep their camps clean and pest-free.
, a microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, said the discovery highlights the possibility that some plant records may have been missing from archaeological sites around the world. "Plants make up a large part of the modern human diet and have a range of other uses, so there are good reasons to think that our ancestors relied heavily on plants in their daily lives, but the subtle traces of ancient plants can easily be overlooked." Cabanes said.
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