For 8500 Years, Humans Have Relied on Bees, Their Honey and Their Wax

First Posted: Nov 12, 2015 09:14 AM EST

The relationship between humans and bees isn't modern. Scientists have now found that it stretches as far back as the Stone Age, according to new research.

Prehistoric rock art in previous studies depicted honey hunters at work. In addition, Pharaonic Egyptian murals show early scenes of beekeeping. Until now, though, the close association between early farmers and the honeybee remained uncertain.

In this latest study, the researchers investigated chemical components trapped in clay fabric of more than 6,000 potsherds from over 150 Old World archaeological sites. The distinctive chemical "fingerprint" of beeswax was detected at multiple Neolithic sites across Europe, indicating just how widespread the association between humans and honeybees was during prehistoric times. For example, beeswax was detected in cooking pots from an archaeological site in Turkey, dating to the seventh millennium BC. This is the oldest evidence yet for the use of bee products by Neolithic farmers.

"The most obvious reason for exploiting the honeybee would be for honey, as this would have been a rare sweetener for prehistoric people," said Melanie Roffet-Salque, lead author of the new paper, in a news release. "However, beeswax could have been used in its own right for various technological, ritual, cosmetic and medicinal purposes, for example, to waterproof porous ceramic vessels."

These latest findings are the first unequivocal evidence, based solely on a chemical "fingerprint" for the palaeoecological distribution of an economically and culturally important animal. It shows widespread exploitation of the honeybee by early farmers and pushes back the chronology of human-honeybee association to earlier dates.

The findings are published in the journal Nature.

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TagsBees, Archaeology, Honey, Human, Humans, Stone Age, Neolithic Period, Farm