The area straddling Algeria and Tunisia is dotted with hundreds of ash colored mounds, the remains of seasonal camps of one of the last hunter gatherer cultures in North Africa, the Capsians, who lived there 10,000 years ago. If you get closer to them, you’ll notice that one of the primary consituents of these mounds are thousands of snail shells. These people were among the greatest consumers of snails known. These mounds are actually middens, the built up refuse of human activity over hundreds of years, and contain other remains of human activity as well, such as stone tools or skeletons. The Europeans and scientific world refers to them as escargotiers after their Snail shell contents, while the local people call them ramdadiya, meaning ash colored in Arabic. The people were named the Capsians, after the nearest town to one of the first escargotiers excavated in 1903, which was known as Capsia in the days of the Roman Empire (modern day Gafsa in Tunisia). Much of what we now know about Capsians has been determined by excavating 3 escargotiers in the Telidjene Basin in Algeria near the Tunisian border.
The Telidjane Basin is the area drained by a wadi, a river that only flows during parts of the year, called Wadi Telidjane, which runs in a southwest direction. The Telidjan Depression is an area within this basin flanked by high hills and cliffs, with the wari running between them. Another set of cliffs and hills is at the south, giving the depression an oval like shape. The Wadi Cheria and its associated depression runs parallel and to the West of it. The Telidjene Depression has dozens of escargotiers in it, marking the location of seasonal camps of the Capsian hunter gatherers in the area. Of those, three have been studied intensely with modern techniques and have materials in them that date to both main phases of the Capsian Culture, the Typical Capsian period and the Superior Capsian. Relilai is located in a rock shelter in the south of the depression just to the east of the wadi. Kef Zoura D is in another rock shelter nearby on the other side of the wadi. Ain Misteheyia is in an open air site in the north end of the depression, about 20km from the other twi, and was by a smaller Wadi (Wadi Hamaja) and had a spring nearby (Ain Misteheyia spring). Relilai was the first of these to be excavated (in 1936), but it’s material sequences weren’t continuous, making it a little hazier to draw conclusions from. Ain Misteheyia was studied in the 1970s in great detail. Since it was an open air site and not protected by rock overhangs, its soil layers were compressed over time, again making it more difficult for archaeologists to date, but they were able to work with it. Unfortunately it was destroyed in the late 1970s during a soil reclamation project, so it cannot be followed up on using more modern techniques. Kef Zoura D had the nicest and most preserved continuous archaeological sequence and was studied last. The three sites were able to be compared and contrasted with each other, in effect “checking the work” of the findings of the other, so archaeologists could be confident in their conclusions.
The Capsian culture can be divided up into two or three phases, depending on how you want to look at it. The early phase was called the Typical Capsium (10 to 8 ka, meaning 10 thousand years ago to 8 thousand years ago). The game tended to be larger, as were the snails. The stone tools were also larger and less sophisticated, and were normally created by striking a hammer rock against another. The second phase was the Superior Capsium (8 to 7 ka). The game was smaller, as were the snails. The stone tool technology had advanced so that the pressure flaking technique started being used to creatw tools. This technique involved apply pressure of a sharp blade to the edges of the tool being crafted. This led to finer control of the output and smaller tools to be created with more details, which allowed smaller game to be hunted. In Europe and West Asia, introduction of this technology was the hallmark of the transition from the Paleolothic (old stone age) to the Mesolithic (middle stone age). It occured about 20,000 years ago in Western Asia, and had reached most of Europe by 11,500 years ago. The third phase of the Capsian is usually considered a post-Capsian phase, but still a continuation of it, and is called the Neolithic of Capsian Tradition (7 to 5 ka). It involves neolithic (New Stone Age) activities, such as the domestication of animals being added to the Capsian tradition.
Archaeologists wanted to understand when the transition from the Typical to the Superior Capsian occured. Since they had ground containing artifacts spanning these phases, they were able to look for these artifacts and date them and then they determined that the transition happened about 8,200 years ago. This turns out to correspond with the time that the 8.2 Kiloyear Event took place, which was the worse global cooling event that occured since the end of the Ice Age 11,600 years ago, which pretty much affected the whole world. Ironically, according to one of the most acceoted theories, it is thought to have happened because the world was warming. Glaciers used to cover much of North America and Eurasia during the Ice Age, but they began to melt when the temperatures rose. There was a lake larger than all if the Great Lakes put together (Lake Agassi) in North America that was being held in its basin on one side by a glacier (essentially an ice dam). When the glacier on the north side of the lake weakened enough, the force of the water in the lake caused the ice dam to burst and most of the water in that lake to drain into the oceans. This rose the sea levels dramatically overnight (possibly the source of many of the flood myths in the world). This new fresh water being poured into the Atlantic Ocean caused the ocean currents to get disrupted and weather patterns to change across the world. Much of the world became colder for a few hundred years, while northern Africa became dryer. Humans around the world, some of who had started farming, had to endure the changes in climate and adapt, move, or die. This marked the end of the Greenlandian Age, which started at the beginning of our current Holocene Epoch, which started when the last ice age ended, and marked the start of the Northgrippian Age.
The types of plants that could be supported in the Teledjene Depression after the 8.2 kiloyear event changed to plants that could survive with less water. This was determined by noting the types of Phytoliths (remnants of plant cellular processes) of grasses and similar plants that were present in the ash at Ain Misteheyia around the transition which helped confirmed that the climate did get dryer there. It is thought that the Capsians ate wild grasses like the ones found there, which prevented the need to plant their own crops at a time other cultures were already doing so.
Remains from larger animals such as Hartebeests (their main source of protein), Barbary Sheep, Aurochs, Gazelles, Zebras, and Jackals were prevalent in the lower earlier layers, while smaller animals like Rabbits and Hares were more prevalent in the upper later ones. This suggests the change in animal kinds available for hunting prompted an update in stone tools to be smaller and more sophisticated in order to hunt the smaller prey. The culture thus shifted from the Typical Capsian to Superior Capsian. I wonder if they figured out the pressure technique for stone tool making themselves as they found themselves needing to hunt smaller prey, or if they got it from an outside group, which may have been using the technique for a while. Maybe they knew about it all along, but just never needed to use it before?
The types of snails found also got smaller, and they appeared to have relied on snails more than ever before. There is a theory that say snails may have been one of the first domestic animals, which might explain why they often appear to be consumed in large numbers shortly before a culture starts domesticating plants and larger animals, though I don’t think this theory is particularly accepted at the moment.
At any rate, with the expected climate change in our world due to global warming, our own civilization might have to make a technological leap and lifestyle change similar to the ones the Capsians had to make after their world started changing.
Sources:
Scientific Papers:
Diet (Mar 1976)
https://academia.edu/resource/work/20182658
Adult Skeleton (Aug 1979)
https://academia.edu/resource/work/30985921
Edible Meditterrainean Snails (Jan 2004)
https://academia.edu/resource/work/2025278
Telidjene Basin (Aug 2008)
https://academia.edu/resource/work/13345335
Plant Subsistence (Feb 2013)
https://academia.edu/resource/work/37662698
Book Review (Jan 2016)
https://academia.edu/resource/work/25294131
https://academia.edu/resource/work/40462209
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