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What did Stone Age people eat before the advent of farming around 10,000 years ago? A long-standing stereotype that influences modern fad diets is that ancient humans hunted large animals and ate mammoth steaks.
But new research on a Paleolithic group called Iberomauruans, hunter-gatherers who buried their dead 13,000 to 15,000 years ago in the Taforalt cave in what is now Morocco, adds to a growing body of evidence challenging the idea that human ancestors relied heavily on meat. According to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Scientists analyzed chemical signatures preserved in bones and teeth from at least seven different Iberomaurusians and found that their primary source of dietary protein was plants, not meat.
“Our analysis showed that these hunter-gatherer groups added significant amounts of plant matter and wild plants to their diets, changing our understanding of the diet of pre-agricultural populations,” said Zineb Moubtahij, a PhD student and lead author of the study. at the Géosciences Environnement Toulouse, a research institute in France, and at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
The share of plant sources as sources of dietary protein in the humans whose remains were studied was similar to that seen in early farmers in the Levant, the modern-day Eastern Mediterranean countries where plant domestication and farming were first documented.
The researchers also detected more tooth cavities among the Taforalt samples than seen in hunter-gatherer remains from that period. According to the study, evidence suggests that Iberomaurusians consumed “fermentable starchy plants” such as wild grains or acorns. The findings raise some interesting questions about how agriculture spread across different regions and populations.
“Although not all individuals obtained their proteins primarily from plants in Taforalt, it is unusual to document such a high proportion of plants in the diet of a pre-agricultural population,” said co-author Klervia Jaouen, a researcher at the Géosciences Environnement Toulouse. email.
“This is probably the first time such an important plant-based component in the Paleolithic diet has been documented using isotope techniques,” Jaouen added.
Decoding ancient diets
The researchers used a technique called stable isotope analysis to learn about the diet of each of the Iberomaurusians studied.
Nitrogen and zinc isotopes (variants of an element) found in collagen and tooth enamel can reveal the amount of meat ancient diets contained, while carbon isotopes can shed light on whether meat or fish was the main source of protein.
“People consume these foods and the isotope information is recorded in tissues such as bones and teeth,” Moubtahij said. “By analyzing these tissues we find in the archaeological record, we can know whether a person ate more meat or more plant-based foods.”
The isotope technique indicates the amount of plants eaten, but not the type. However, botanical remains consisting of charred sweet acorns, peanuts, pine nuts, wild oats and legumes discovered in the area support the information obtained from human remains. Grinding stones unearthed at the site also indicate that plant processing took place nearby.
However, the study stated that Iberomaurusians were not strict vegetarians. Cut marks on the remains of ancient ancestors and cow-like mammals, as well as Barbary sheep and gazelles, indicate that some animals were slaughtered and processed into food.
According to the study, the increased reliance on plant foods was likely due to several factors; these included a wider range of edible plants and perhaps the extinction of large prey species.
Early weaning tips
Isotope analysis also identified evidence of a case of premature weaning, in which starchy plant foods were introduced into an infant’s diet before he died between 6 and 12 months of age.
“This contrasts with hunter-gatherer societies where long breastfeeding periods were the norm due to limited weaning foods,” according to the study.
The study investigated the diets of only one group of Stone Age hunter-gatherers. However, a similar study published in January that analyzed the remains of 24 early humans from two burial sites in Peru, dated between 9,000 and 6,500 years ago, found that ancient diets in the Andes consisted of 80% plant matter and 20% meat . .
A November 2022 study found that Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens were sophisticated cooks who combined plant-based ingredients such as wild nuts, peas, vetch, lentils and wild mustard.
“I don’t think there is a standard diet for everyone (during this period), but it depends on the environment. People are resilient and flexible in their eating habits,” Moubtahij said.
The study debunks the idea that the Stone Age diet was meat-heavy; This is a rigid assumption perpetuated by today’s dietary trends such as the Paleo diet. But the stereotype is likely rooted in past research, and there are several possible reasons for this.
Briana Pobiner, a research scientist and museum educator in the Department of Anthropology’s Human Origins Program, said evidence of meat eating in the form of butchered animal bones is generally more “archaeologically visible” than evidence of plant eating. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He was not involved in the research.
Another reason for the idea that meat played a central role in early human diet is the perception that “hunting was an important behavioral innovation that emerged early in our evolutionary history; this perception is based in part on early hunter-gatherer research conducted by male scholars and focused primarily on meat” .does not document, downplay, or downplay the important nutritional role of men hunting large game and women gathering smaller game and plant resources,” she said via email.
Statements on the agricultural transition
Archaeologists have documented a similar plant-based diet among another group that practiced a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the Levant region just before the development of agriculture, raising questions about why the transition to farming did not occur simultaneously, Jaouen said. Iberomaurus population.
“These findings suggest that by the end of the Paleolithic Age, many populations adopted a diet similar to that of farmers in terms of plant content,” he said.
Pobiner said the transition to agriculture was a complex process that occurred at different times and progressed at different rates, with different foods, in different places.
“In other words, this was not a single, sharp, simultaneous worldwide change but a largely local phenomenon that may have involved ways in which livelihoods transitioned,” he added.
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