The ancient bed remnants include fossilized grass, bug-repelling ash and aromatic leaves

People living in southern Africa around 200,000 years ago not only slept on grass bedding but occasionally burned it, apparently to keep from going buggy.

Remnants of the oldest known grass bedding, discovered in South Africa’s Border Cave, lay on the ashes of previously burned bedding, say archaeologist Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and her colleagues. Ash spread beneath bound bunches of grass may have been used to repel crawling, biting insects, which cannot easily move through fine powder, the researchers report in the Aug. 14 Science. Wadley’s team also found bits of burned wood in the bedding containing fragments of camphor leaves, an aromatic plant that can be used as a bug repellent.

Prior to this new find, the oldest plant bedding — mainly consisting of sedge leaves, ash and aromatic plants likely used to keep insects away — dated to around 77,000 years ago at South Africa’s Sibudu rock-shelter.

Fig. 1 Border Cave plan and stratigraphy.
Fig. 1 Border Cave plan and stratigraphy. - (A) Plan of Border Cave marking excavation areas. The profile featured in (B) (13) is shown in yellow. (B) East profile stratigraphy in squares N109, E113 and N108, E113. The thickest 5WA-DBK bedding is green, but the entire layer contains silicified grass fragments (see Fig. 4). Large combustion features (CFs), but not small ones (as shown in Fig. 4), are illustrated here. 4WA-WH comprises 12 superimposed layers of ash. Scale bar, 30 cm. For greater detail, see fig. S2; for profiles of more recent layers, see (13). B, burrow; BR, Brown; CHB, Chocolate Brown; PW, Pinkish White; PG, Pinkish Gray; WH, White; RB, Reddish Brown; VDGB, Very Dark Grayish Brown; VDGJ, Very Dark Grayish Jez; VDGBJ, Very Dark Grayish Brown Jim; BJN, Brown John; LGK, Light Gray Kelly; DBK, Dark Brown Kevin; VPBK, Very Pale Brown Kim; BJ, Brown Jolly; BL, Brown Lad; BLR, Brown Larry; BLS, Brown Lassy; BLMB, Brown Lamb.

L. Wadley et al. Fire and grass-bedding construction 200 thousand years ago at Border Cave, South Africa. Science. Vol. 369, August 14, 2020, p. 863. doi: 10.1126/science.abc7239.

Early plant use is seldom described in the archaeological record because of poor preservation. We report the discovery of grass bedding used to create comfortable areas for sleeping and working by people who lived in Border Cave at least 200,000 years ago. Sheaves of grass belonging to the broad-leafed Panicoideae subfamily were placed near the back of the cave on ash layers that were often remnants of bedding burned for site maintenance. This strategy is one forerunner of more-complex behavior that is archaeologically discernible from ~100,000 years ago.

The Border Cave site in the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa has been a rich source of archaeological knowledge about Stone Age humans because of its well-preserved stratigraphic record. Wadley et al. now report the discovery of grass bedding in Border Cave, dated to approximately 200,000 years ago. The bedding, identified with a range of microscopic and spectroscopic techniques, was mingled with layers of ash. It also incorporated debris from lithics, burned bone, and rounded ochre grains, all of which were of clear anthropogenic origin. The authors speculate that the ash may have been deliberately used in bedding to inhibit the movement of ticks and other arthropod irritants. These discoveries extend the record of deliberate construction of plant bedding by at least 100,000 years.

Fig. 2 Border Cave plant bedding from 5WA-DBK and 1 WA.
Fig. 2 Border Cave plant bedding from 5WA-DBK and 1 WA. - (A) Horizontal field view of silicified bedding in 5WA-DBK. Scale bar, 30 mm. (B and C) SEM images of grass fragments from (A). Scale bar in (B), 100 μm. Scale bar in (C), 30 μm. (D) Vertical field section of desiccated bedding grass on Member 1 WA ash (~43 ky old). 5WA-DBK bedding may have looked like this 200 ky ago. Scale bar, 10 mm.