Crayfish feasts and a medicine horn: new finds depict life in pre-colonial South Africa

• New finds are filing in the details of what hunter-gatherer life was like in South Africa.
• Fats from marine creatures, springbok, and sheep milk have been identified in pots from four Later Stone Age sites in Namaqualand.
• A 500-year-old cattle horn found in an Eastern Cape rock shelter contained medicine that could have been used for fevers and infections.
• The horn was wrapped in the leaves of a plant used by hunter-gatherers to make poison arrows.

The hunter-gatherers who populated South Africa before the arrival of colonists dined on crayfish and springbok, often drank sheep milk, and carried medicines in bespoke containers.

These are some of the discoveries by two teams of scientists who have just reported the outcome of their investigations within a day of each other.

Pottery from two coastal sites in Namaqualand, occupied between the early part of the first millennium AD and late in the second millennium, point to “intensive and/or specialised processing of marine products in many vessels”, says a team led by Canadian archaeologist and biological anthropologist Courtneay Hopper.

Other fragments from two inland sites on the Orange River suggest sheep and springbok were cooked in the pots, and “most notably, evidence for dairy processing is present at both sites”, Hopper and her co-authors say in the journal Scientific Reports.

“[This] provides the first direct chemical evidence for people processing milk and/or milk products in ceramic pottery in western South Africa during the Later Stone Age.”

At the coastal sites, near Kleinsee, the dominance of shellfish and Cape rock lobster remains found during archaeological excavations suggests most of the pottery vessels found there were used to process the delicacies, says the paper.

And if any early South African felt unwell after their seafood platter, evidence that medical help was available comes from a team led by Prof Justin Bradfield at the University of Johannesburg.

The team’s paper reports the discovery of a 500-year-old cattle-horn medicine container, complete with contents, in a rock shelter in the Langkloof mountains between Uniondale and Plettenberg Bay.

Plant ingredients in the horn – believed to be the oldest medicine container found in southern Africa – can control blood sugar and cholesterol, treat fevers, inflammation and infections, and act as an aphrodisiac, Bradfield says in the South African Journal of Science.

The two teams have added scientific evidence to support anecdotal accounts about the pastoralists encountered by European ships that rounded the Cape of Good Hope from the 15th century onwards.

In 1654, for example, two years after he landed in Table Bay and set up a Dutch command post, Jan van Riebeeck wrote in his journal that he had observed Khoekhoe using pottery to render whale blubber. And over the next 250 years, several explorers reported seeing milk being used in cooking.

Until now there was no proof, but pottery from the two Orange River sites has provided it. “Our results bear out the ethnohistoric accounts, which suggest milk was usually stored in organic containers but that pots were occasionally used to cook milk, often together with other foodstuffs,” says Hopper’s paper.

High concentrations of dairy fats in two pots mean it is unlikely they were used to cook other foodstuffs, and were reserved for boiling milk, says the paper.

The cattle horn also had a single purpose, and it was to store a liquid or gelatinous substance, say Bradfield and colleagues at UJ, Wits University and iThemba LABS.

When it was found by chance in 2020 after being dug up by an animal, it was capped with a rawhide lid and wrapped in a bundle of grass and leaves from the century plant (Boophone disticha), which was used by hunter-gatherers as a source of poison for their arrow tips.

Up to 30 paintings on the shelter’s overhang depict humans with hunting equipment, an eland and other unidentified animals, and there are several handprints – “typical of the hunter-gatherer [San] rock art in the area”, says Bradfield

The only damage to the horn was caused by beetles and Bradfied says Boophane leaves’ antiseptic properties might have protected it. Radiocarbon dating found it originated between 1461 and 1630, but efforts to date the contents failed.

Analysis of the sticky mass was more successful and showed the main organic compound it contained was inositol, a sugar found in many plants that can control diabetes, treat high cholesterol and help with mood disorders by stimulating the production of serotonin and dopamine.

The other compound in the substance was lupeol, which occurs in fruits, vegetables and medicinal plants, and has anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties. One of the plants that contains lupeol is used by Pedi people to treat rheumatism, gout and jaundice, and as an aphrodisiac.

Bradfield and his team say plants in the area that could have produced the medicine in the horn include sierkooltjie, liquorice and horse gram.

“We do not know whether the medicine was intended to be ingested or used topically, but based on the pharmacological literature it could have been used both ways,” says Bradfield.