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Hunter-gatherers' daring sea journey to Malta predates early farmers by 1,000 years, study finds

Seafaring hunter-gatherers were accessing remote, small islands such as Malta thousands of years before the arrival of the first farmers, a new international study has found.

The research team—led by Professor Eleanor Scerri of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology (MPI-GEA) and the University of Malta—found hunter-gatherers were crossing at least 100km of open water to reach the Mediterranean island of Malta 8,500 years ago, a thousand years before the arrival of agricultural practices.

The findings, "Hunter-gatherer sea voyages extended to remotest Mediterranean islands," have been in Nature.

This report documented the oldest long-distance seafaring in the Mediterranean, before the invention of boats with sails—an astonishing feat for hunter-gatherers likely using simple dugout canoes.

At the cave site of Latnija in the northern Mellieħa region of Malta, the research team found the traces of humans in the form of their stone tools, hearths, and cooked food waste.

Small, remote islands were long thought to have been the last frontiers of pristine natural systems.

Humans were not thought to have been able to reach or inhabit these environments prior to the dawn of agriculture, and the technological shift that accompanied this transition.

"Even on the longest day of the year, these seafarers would have had over several hours of darkness in open water," said Professor Nicholas Vella of the University of Malta, co-investigator of the study.

Dr. Mathew Stewart, from Griffith University's Australian Research Center for Human Evolution, analyzed the animal remains from this site as part of the study.

"At the site we recovered a diverse array of animals, including hundreds of remains of deer, birds, tortoises, and foxes," Dr. Stewart said.

"Some of these wild animals were long thought to have gone extinct by this point in time," added Professor Scerri.

"They were hunting and cooking red deer alongside tortoises and birds, including some that were extremely large and extinct today."

In addition to this, the team of researchers found clear evidence for the exploitation of marine resources.

"We found remains of seal, various fish, including grouper, and thousands of edible marine gastropods, crabs and sea urchins, all indisputably cooked," said Dr. James Blinkhorn of the University of Liverpool and MPI-GEA, one of the study's corresponding authors.

"The incorporation of a diverse range of terrestrial and, especially, marine fauna into the diet likely enabled these hunter-gatherers to sustain themselves on an island as small as Malta," added Dr. Stewart.

These discoveries also raise questions about the extinction of endemic animals on Malta and other small and remote Mediterranean islands, and whether distant Mesolithic communities may have been linked through seafaring.

"The results add a thousand years to Maltese prehistory and force a re-evaluation of the seafaring abilities of Europe's last hunter-gatherers, as well as their connections and ecosystem impacts," Professor Scerri said.