{"id":373340,"date":"2022-08-01T06:01:09","date_gmt":"2022-07-31T20:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=373340"},"modified":"2022-08-01T06:01:09","modified_gmt":"2022-07-31T20:01:09","slug":"marianas-octopus-lures-found-to-be-oldest-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/marianas-octopus-lures-found-to-be-oldest-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Marianas octopus lures found to be oldest in the world\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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University of Guam archaeologist Michael Carson at the 2013 excavation of Sanhalom on Tinian, near the House of Taga. The excavation uncovered an octopus lure artifact from a layer that Carson has since carbon dated to 1500\u20131100 B.C., making it the oldest known artifact of its kind in the world.\u00a0(Photo courtesy of Michael Carson, University of Guam)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Archaeological relics that were dug up on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam were initially thought to be food scrapers. Turns out they were being used by ancient Chamorus to hunt for octopuses.<\/p>\n

A University of Guam archaeological study has determined that cowrie-shell artifacts found throughout the Marianas were lures used for hunting octopuses and that the devices, which have been found on islands across the Pacific, are the oldest known artifacts of their kind in the world.<\/p>\n

The study used carbon dating of archaeological layers to confirm that lures found on Tinian and Saipan were from about 1500 B.C., or 3,500 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s back to the time when people were first living in the Mariana Islands. So we think these could be the oldest octopus lures in the entire Pacific region\u00a0and, in fact, the oldest in the world,\u201d said Michael T. Carson, an archaeologist with the Micronesian Area Research Center at UOG.<\/p>\n

The study, titled \u201cLet\u2019s catch octopus for dinner: Ancient inventions of octopus lures in the Mariana Islands of the remote tropical Pacific,\u201d is published in World Archaeology, a peer-reviewed academic journal. Carson, who holds a doctorate in anthropology, is the lead author of the study, assisted by Hsiao-chun Hung from The Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.<\/p>\n

The fishing devices were made with cowrie shells, a type of sea snail and a favorite food of octopuses, that were connected by a fiber cord to a stone sinker and a hook.<\/p>\n

They have been found in seven sites in the Mariana Islands. The oldest lures were excavated in 2011 from Sanhalom near the House of Taga in Tinian and in 2016 from Unai Bapot on Saipan. Other locations include Achugao on Saipan, Unai Chulu on Tinian, and Mochom at Mangilao Golf Course, Tarague Beach, and Ritidian Beach Cave in Guam.<\/p>\n

Known artifacts, unknown purpose\u2014until now<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe artifacts have been known\u2014we knew about them. It just took a long time considering the possibilities, the different hypotheses, of what they could be,\u201d Carson said. \u201cThe conventional idea\u2014what we were told long ago from the Bishop Museum [in Honolulu]\u2014was that these must be for scraping breadfruit or other plants, like maybe taro. [But] they don\u2019t look like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shells didn\u2019t have the serrated edge of other known food-scraping tools. With their holes and grooves where the fiber cord would have been attached as well as the stone sinker components, they appeared a closer match to octopus lures found in Tonga from about 3,000 years ago, or 1100 B.C.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re confident they are the pieces of octopus lures, and we\u2019re confident they date back to 1500 B.C.,\u201d Carson said.<\/p>\n

An invention of the ancient CHamorus?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Carson said the question now becomes: \u201cDid the ancient CHamoru people invent this adaptation to their environment during the time when they first lived on the islands?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a possibility, he said, the other being that they brought the tradition with them from their former homeland; however, no artifacts of this kind have yet been discovered in the potential homelands of the first Marianas settlers.<\/p>\n

If the CHamoru people did invent the first octopus lures, it provides new insight into their ingenuity and ability to problem solve\u2014having to create novel and specialized ways to live in a new environment and take advantage of an available food source.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt tells us that [\u2026] this kind of food resource was important enough for them that they invented something very particular to trap these foods,\u201d Carson said. \u201cWe can\u2019t say that it contributed to a massive percentage of their diet\u2014it probably did not\u2014but it was important enough that it became what we would call a \u2018tradition\u2019 in archaeology.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next question to look at, Carson said, is whether there are similar objects anywhere else from an older time.<\/p>\n

\u201cPurely from an archaeology standpoint, knowing the oldest of something is always important\u2014because then you can track how things change through time,\u201d he said. \u201c[\u2026] The only other place that would be is in the overseas homeland area for the first CHamoru people moving to the Marianas. So we would look in islands in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, for those findings.\u201d\u00a0(PR)<\/p>\n