Abstract
The olive tree was an iconic plant for most of the past Mediterranean civilizations, for which it had important economic value. Here we report the earliest use of fruits and wood from olive trees in Africa so far, around 100,000 years ago. These findings suggest the presence of olive trees on the Atlantic coast of Morocco during most of the last glacial period, and the use of olives by the early Homo sapiens for fuel management and most probably for consumption.
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Data availability
All data used in the main text and Supplementary Information are available in Supplementary Data 1. The material is housed at the Department of Botany of the University of Innsbruck, Austria. The Olea pollen data from three marine sedimentary cores (Supplementary Text 14) are available via PANGAEA at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.55037 (A4-M15627-3), https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.55039 (A3-M16004-1) and https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.55038 (A2-M15669-1).
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Acknowledgements
We thank S. Nomade and M. Thinon for their help with dating and charcoal identification, respectively. El Harhoura 2 and El Mnasra caves were excavated with the support of the Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine (Rabat, Morocco) and the Ministry of Culture (Morocco). We are grateful to A. Bouzouggar for his help in 2017 during the sampling and all the scientific members of the Moroccan–French project El Harhoura-Témara. Eslem Ben Arous is the beneficiary of Postdoctoral grant from the Fyssen Foundation.
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Project conceptualization was initiated by L.M. and T.O. Identification of plant macro-remains was performed by T.O. Sampling was carried out by L.M., E.B.A, E.C. and R.N. Dating and faunal data were compiled by E.B.A., E.S., E.C. and C.F. Samples for dating were prepared by E.B.A., A.Z. and O.T. Excavations were led by R.N. and M.A.E.H. SEM images were taken and interpreted by A.S., W.K., L.M. and T.O. All authors have contributed to the writing of the manuscript and approved the final version.
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Extended data
Extended Data Fig. 1 Archaeological sites El Mnasra and El Harhoura 2.
Archaeological sites (a) El Mnasra and (b) El Harhoura 2. (A1) and (B1) show the cave entrances and (A2) and (B2) the central excavations.
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Supplementary text, Figs. 1–9, Tables 1–4 and refs. 30–138.
Supplementary Data 1
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Marquer, L., Otto, T., Arous, E.B. et al. The first use of olives in Africa around 100,000 years ago. Nat. Plants 8, 204–208 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-022-01109-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-022-01109-x
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