Wild grass seed grinding (wild sorghum)
Molienda de gramíneas silvestres (sorgo silvestre)
- Date
- c. 105 ka · confidence medium
- Place
- Ngalue Cave, Niassa, Mozambique
- Credited to
- Middle Stone Age Homo sapiens
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Starch grains of wild sorghum and other plants adhering to stone tools, indicating the processing of grass seeds. It is among the oldest evidence of wild cereal consumption, almost 90,000 years before agriculture.
Mercader (Science, 2009). Some researchers doubt that the starches indicate intensive consumption rather than occasional use or contamination.
What it led to
- the incorporation of seeds into the human diet
- knowledge of grasses that would be domesticated millennia later
- grinding tools as part of the domestic toolkit