Have ever been to a party with friends where everyone brings something to eat? Know that the custom is older than you think: already at the beginning of the Neolithic (between 11 thousand and 5,500 years ago), in fact, it happened that banquets and parties were brought food from home. In those days, however, they were not cold pasta, quiche or savory pies. But rather, of whole wild boars (in Obelix style, so to speak), which could happen to drag on ten for tens of kilometers, in order not to make a bad impression with some distant guest. This is what emerges from the analysis of dozens of 11 thousand years old wild boar bones brought to light on the Zagros Mountains, in Iran, and recently described in a study published in the Communications magazine Earth & Environment.
The bones were found in a sealed pit, within a basement structure used in all probability as a common house by the ancient inhabitants of the settlement, known today as Asab. The bones show signs of slaughter that indicate food use. And from their disposal and from the fact that the pit has been sealed, once filled by leftovers, the researchers believe that all animals have been killed and slaughtered on the same occasion, and consumed during some holidays.
The banquet with 700 kilos of meat
The 19 wild boars, on the other hand, provided approximately 700 kilos of meat, sufficient for a banquet for 350-1,200 people. Even considering that a part may have been dry or preserved in another way, it is however a quantity of excessive meat for the size of a Neolithic settlement in that area of the Iranian mountains. And therefore – conclude the authors of the study – the Festino must have brought together delegations of many settlements in the area.
Established that the wild boars had been slaughtered for a large party, the authors of the study decided to investigate where they came from, to understand if they had been hunted on the spot, or also elsewhere. To do this, they entrusted the teeth of animals, structures that present growth rings similar to those of the trees in the nail polish. Counting them, the researchers managed to associate each of the rings with a week growth intervals. And thus studying their chemical composition, they were able to establish if the animals had spent the weeks prior to their capture more or less in the same area.
Thus breeding and agriculture were born
This was not the case: the analyzes show in high probability that wild boars came from different areas, in some cases even seventy kilometers from the one in which they were slaughtered. The most plausible explanation is therefore that the guests at the big ASAB party came from all over the region, and had presented themselves by their guests by going to consuming gifts and meat during the banquet.
Similar parties “everyone brings something” to date had been documented in companies that had already discovered agriculture and breeding, and for which to procure food for a high number of people it was therefore relatively easy. The inhabitants of ASAB were instead hunters-cackers, for which to capture a wild boar to bring to the banquet required a not indifferent effort. To demonstrate – the authors of the study write – that they were willing to work to strengthen social ties with other communities. And that sociality and banquets could therefore have been one of the main engines that led to the development of breeding and agriculture, such as technologies and forms of society that allow the accumulation of food and therefore sharing.
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