Nut-grass tuber processing at Wadi Kubbaniya
Procesado de tubérculos de junquillo en Wadi Kubbaniya
- Date
- c. 18 ka · confidence medium
- Place
- Wadi Kubbaniya, Aswan, Egypt
- Credited to
- Late Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers of the Nile
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Grinding stones and charred Cyperus rotundus (nut-grass) tubers alongside abundant fish show that Nile hunter-gatherers pounded and cooked fibrous, mildly toxic tubers to make them edible. It is one of the earliest known intensive plant-gathering economies.
Excavations by Fred Wendorf and colleagues (1980s) give radiocarbon dates of about 19,000-17,000 years before present. That the tubers were ground is inferred from the grinding stones found with them.
What it led to
- a diet of Nile tubers and fish with repeated reoccupation of the valley
- grinding technology to remove fibres and toxins from wild plants
- a precursor of the intensive plant exploitation that preceded agriculture