Eland protein found in 60,000-year-old ochre layer offers clues to early human practices in South Africa | Archaeology News Online Magazine

Researchers have found traces of animal protein mixed into a 60,000-year-old layer of red ochre in South Africa. The protein comes from the common eland, a large antelope native to the region. A team from Kyushu University, the University of Bergen, and the University of Copenhagen published the results in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The material comes from Klipdrift Shelter, a Middle and Later Stone Age site in the coastal cliffs of De Hoop Nature Reserve. The Howiesons Poort layers there hold a flat surface rich in ochre. The surface stretches over one meter long, about 40 centimeters wide, and up to one centimeter thick.

Ochre is a colored earth pigment. Archaeologists treat ochre use as a sign of modern human behavior, since people used the powder for both practical and symbolic jobs. Records from southern African cultures show powdered ochre mixed with organic materials, and some of those materials are protein based. Finding such proteins at ancient sites is rare, because few traces last this long.

To search for them, the team turned to palaeoproteomics, the study of ancient proteins. They took archived sediment samples from the Klipdrift surface and pulled proteins out of the soil. Then they ran the samples through mass spectrometry, a method which breaks proteins into small fragments and measures each one. The fragments were checked against large protein databases and a custom collagen set to find the species of origin.

Two samples gave a clear match. The peptides, which are short chains of amino acids, all pointed to the same species. Both held type I collagen from the common eland, Taurotragus oryx. The result points to two possible stories. Either people mixed eland material into the ochre on purpose, or they treated eland hides with ochre at the site. The complex structure of the surface supports the first idea.

The finding matters because direct evidence of organic matter blended with ochre is very rare, especially in Africa. DNA seldom survives in warm African soils. Proteins last longer, so they could be the only trace left which still names the animal. Proteins resist breakdown better than DNA, so they stay readable in samples where DNA is long gone. This work shows scientists are able to recover proteins from sediment itself, which means bone and teeth are no longer the only source.

The eland holds a special place in San mythology, which makes the result interesting for another reason. The authors say human action most likely put the protein there, for everyday needs and early symbolic acts. One example is not enough to prove the eland carried ritual weight in the Middle Stone Age. The team plans to repeat the work at other sites of the same age. More results would test whether the animal’s symbolic role goes back tens of thousands of years.

Better instruments and data tools are widening what palaeoproteomics does. Tests on sediments and other new materials should show where protein residues in soil come from, and what past people did with ochre-rich deposits.