15000-year-old bones and teeth reveal what humans ate before agriculture
The introduction of agriculture, around 11,500 years ago in the Middle East was a milestone for humankind. For decades, the image of the prehistoric hunter-gatherer
The introduction of agriculture, around 11,500 years ago in the Middle East was a milestone for humankind. For decades, the image of the prehistoric hunter-gatherer has been remarkably consistent: hunters skilled in living off mainly meat, with plants as occasional supplements.
It's an image deeply embedded in popular culture, in documentaries and even in modern diet fads based on ancient eating habits. But a new scientific study is turning that assumption upside down. According to Reuters, researchers studying the remains of people who lived in what is today Morocco some 15,000 years ago discovered that these prehistoric societies depended much more on wild plants than previously believed.
The results indicate that before agriculture arrived, some hunter-gatherers had already devised sophisticated methods for gathering, storing and consuming a variety of plant foods. The study, published in the
journal Nature Ecology & Evolution provides a rare insight into what a prehistoric society ate and raises new questions about how human diets evolved before the advent of farming.
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