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Beachcombing or Beachcomber is a term with multiple but related meanings which have evolved over time.

The origins of the term are unknown but the first appearance in print was in Herman Melville's Omoo (1847).^[1] It described a population of Europeans who lived in South Pacific islands, such as drifters, ex-sailors or criminals on the run, who had given up on civilization and "gone native" with the Polynesian peoples of the region. Unlike the modern term "comb" which means to "sift through", the term "comber" was originally related the long breaking waves the Pacific is famous for, known as "combers". There had always been a small number of castaways since the earliest Spanish explorers, but the numbers increased dramatically in the early 19th century with the start of regular commercial enterprises. It is estimated that in 1850 there were over 2000 beachcombers throughout Polynesia and Micronesia.^[2] Ultimately they became cultural mediators for the native inhabitants, able to speak the language and understand the customs of both sides of the colonial experience, they fulfilled an important function.^[3]

Beachcombing today more commonly refers to the act of scavenging (or literally, combing through debris) along beaches or in wharf areas for items of value that are floating in the water (flotsam) or that have washed up on shore. A beachcomber is one who practices beachcombing. The term beachcomber may also refer to people who practices beachcombing as a lifestyle. The beachcomber lifestyle includes, in addition to searching for items of flotsam that may have value, becoming totally dependent upon coastal fishing of fish and shellfish, and often abandoning totally one's original culture and values. In Uruguay, the term has been naturalized into the spanish form Bichicóme, and refers to poor or lower-class people. The spanish form also draws on the similarities to the spanish bicho (small animal) and comer (eat), making it difficult for Uruguayans to see the word's anglo origin.

In archaeology the beachcombing lifestyle is associated with coastal shell-middens, that may accumulate for many hundreds if not thousands of years. Evidence at Klasies River Caves in South Africa, and Zuli Gulf in Eritrea, show that a beachcombing option is one of the earliest activities separating anatomically modern human Homo sapiens from the ancestral subspecies of Homo erectus that went before.

1. ^ H.E. Maude, Of Islands and Men (1968), 135.
2. ^ K.R.Howe, Where the Waves Fall: A New South Sea Islands History from First Settlement to Colonial Ruler (1984), 103.
3. ^ Ruth Blair (1996), Typee, (Oxford World's Classics). Introduction xv.

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