Visitors to the Museum de Caab at Solms-Delta usually start their exploration of the exhibits at the Stone Age implements display. These stone implements might seem a long way away from the slave history or the history of the Huguenots, but behind the seemingly crude lumps of stone lies an important lesson. Between 195 000 and 123 000 years ago Homo sapiens seemed doomed to extinction. Extreme cold and dry conditions prevailed across the globe, and only a handful of survivors managed to eke out an existence along the Cape coast southwards from the present Mossel Bay. As weather conditions over the millennia improved they moved inland again and dispersed over Southern Africa. But this original band of survivors was so small that everyone alive today is descended from them.
They harvested seafood from the rocks when the tide was low and they dug out geophytes from the earth. The seafood was rich in protein and could be made more palatable through cooking. The geophytes contained high amounts of carbohydrates and could be stored for long periods of time. Today we know the geophytes as the bulbs and corms of the Cape Floral Region that are low in fibre and highly nutritious. Besides, growing below ground, they were safe from predators other than smart Homo sapiens. These are the same herbs and bulbs that grow today in the Dik Delta Culinary Gardens.
The use of fire had interesting side-effects. Firstly, heat caused the rocks from which implements were made to scale off into thin slivers that could be attached to wooden handles for greater efficiency. And secondly, cooking made any basic foods much more easily digestible so that brains received far more nutrition than before. (Yes, fresh, uncooked food required a lot more energy to digest!)
Excavations on Solms-Delta started in 2005 when archaeologists uncovered the ruins of what is believed to be the original farm dwelling from 1690. This building started as a single room with a cobble floor and was extended to an L-shaped house with four rooms. Less than a metre from this ruin, trenches uncovered a wealth of small stone tools, together with the waste material from knapping them. This shows us that hunter-gatherers used this site some 6 000 years before the farm was granted to the first European settlers.
Given that prehistory, the Stone Age people that moved round Solms-Delta were a smart lot. And we are all related to them. What does that make us? I say it makes us Hiervandaan!
Thanks to Tracey Randle and to Scientific American, August 2010 “When the Sea Saved Humanity.” By Curtis W. Marean.
By John van Zyl
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