Our tryst with honey is not a recent one but is rooted in deep time, it has been an important food source for early Homo. According to many, foraging to collect fruits, tubers, eggs, and honey was the second most important activity after hunting big games in the pre-agriculture stage. Researchers also emphasize the fact that early humans were prolific honey-hunters. They developed and honed up skills to locate and harvest honey from hives stuck on lofty trees or walls of caves.
The appearance of Oldowan stone tool technology, the earliest records of flaked stone artifacts, coupled with the expansion of grasslands across East Africa hint at the ecological changes during the Late Pliocene. The new and improved tools would have allowed early hominins to explore, process, and consume a greater range of foods than that was previously available but not opted for. Various analyses have been used to show that early Homo benefited from targeting beehives using the Oldowan tool kits. Sumptuous liquid honey oozing out from the hives may have provided energy to early hominin foragers and would have been a good supplement to meat and plant-based food.
In order to dig into the minds of the honey hunters, rock art experts strive to decode the clues hidden in early humanity’s endeavors with arts on the rock shelter or elsewhere. It presents another line of support for prehistoric ‘cool’ honey hunting events. While hunting for big games was the sole theme in prehistoric paintings, there are many beautiful portrayals of fruit and honey collection, animal and bird trapping, and fishing. A plethora of rock arts discovered across the globe bear the testimony of the long-standing tryst of our ancestors with honey, and India is no exception. The sandstone rocks of the forested hills of Central India are replete with shelters and still harbor large rock bees, Apis dorsata. Many of the shelters still house the finest rock paintings of the subcontinent. Specifically, the Panchmari region is dotted with rock shelters and paintings on its walls. In one such rock shelter, known as Jambudweep shelter, paintings of a man driving bees out of a nest can be seen and he was accompanied by a woman moving forward with a pot in her hand; both of them are standing on ladders. In Imalikhoh shelter, a painting of a woman driving bees away with a burning stick has been recorded, and the culture of warding off bees with burning sticks or by fuming is still pretty much in fashion in the wild honey collection. At other sites, such as Sonbhadra, the depiction of two men standing on a ladder surrounded by the bees shows different stages of honey hunting and adventure. At Bhimbetka, the famous rock art scholar, Yashodhar Mathpal, noted yet another unique display of collective action of honey hunters to harvest honey. He encountered a man approaching a nest with a round-ended stick and a basket and was assisted by three more men below him, one standing on the shoulders of another. Other researchers also published a painting of a woman on a tree whose branches support 22 nests full of Apis dorsata bees from the Ganeshghati site near Bhopal.
Nice indeed!!
All the marvelous heritage of humanity mesmerizes, takes us back to antiquity, and plunges our minds into a mystic journey. And in flesh and bone, they also reinforce the centrality of honey collection in human evolution. Some even claim that armed with newly innovated Oldowan tool kit targeting beehives and the consumption of honey and bee larvae likely provided dense packets of energy that allowed early Homo a ‘nutritional head start’ over other species. Not only that, it may have supplied critical energy to feed the enlarging hominin brain – a longish jump in human evolution.
Image courtesy: By Raveesh Vyas – originally posted to Flickr as भीमबैटिका/Bhimbetka Cave Paintings, CC BY-SA 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7756171; By Achillea – Drawn of a painting from the caves of Cueva de la Araña by fr:Utilisateur:Achillea converted to svg by User:Amada44, GPL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3255236
Collector- Avik Ray
