Ancient Dating

Even 160,00 years ago, primitive man was trying to get into his woman’s loincloth with seafood dinners, and she was tarting herself up to get dinner invites.

Overlooking the Indian Ocean near South Africa's Mossel Bay, researchers found evidence of harvested and cooked seafood, reddish pigment from ground rocks, and early tiny blade technology.

The discovery means humans were eating seafood about 40,000 years earlier than previously thought. This is also the earliest record of humans eating something other than what they caught or gathered on the land. Remnants of brown and black mussels, small saltwater clams, and sea snails were found -- even a barnacle, indicating whale blubber or skin was brought into the cave.

These early people had to trudge two to three miles to where the mussels, clams and snails were harvested and to bring them back to the cave. They put them over hot rocks to cook, similar to modern-day mussel-steaming, but without the pot. Seafood harvesting, unlike other hunter-gatherer activities, encourages people to stay put, yet very few signs were found in that area for tens of thousands of years.

It remains to be seen if this proto-Red Lobster had any competition from other restaurants in the area, but I would not be surprised if they unearthed an Outback Steakhouse nearby. Those places are everywhere.