Until about 10,000 years ago, before the emergence of agriculture, humans were exclusively small nomadic groups of hunter-gatherers who lived off the animals they hunted and the wild plants they gathered. And for a long time, historians thought that meat was a fundamental product of their diet.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology challenge, in a new article published in the journal Nature Ecology
This is the first time, specialists say, that a significant amount of vegetable consumption has been measured in a pre-agricultural population, shedding light on the eating habits of ancient human societies. Until now this analysis was scarce due to the lack of well-preserved human remains from Paleolithic sites.
The current study has examined the diet of individuals associated with the Ibero-Mauritanian (or Ibero-Mauritian) culture who lived in the Taforalt caves (in the Oujda region, Morocco). These human groups lived in the Maghreb during the Mesolithic, in a period between 10,100 and 8,500 BC.
Experts from the Max Planck Institute, in collaboration with French and Moroccan experts, carried out analyzes of zinc and strontium in the tooth enamel of individuals who lived in the Late Stone Age of North Africa. They also studied carbon, nitrogen and sulfur isotopes in dentin and bone collagen.
“Our results unequivocally demonstrate a substantial component of plant origin in the diets of these hunter-gatherers. “This dietary pattern challenges the prevailing notion of a high dependence on animal proteins among pre-agricultural human groups,” the authors of the article write.
The diet of these ancient humans included a significant proportion of plants belonging to Mediterranean species, predating the arrival of agriculture in the region by several millennia. Archaeobotanical remains found at the site, such as acorns, pine nuts, and wild legumes, further support this idea.
Additionally, the study suggests that plant foods were also introduced into infant diets and may have served as weaning products for these populations. “The finding suggests earlier weaning practices in pre-agricultural communities compared to the norms previously thought for hunter-gatherer societies,” the specialists add.
"Our findings not only provide insights into the dietary practices of pre-agricultural human groups, but also highlight the complexity of human subsistence strategies in different regions. Understanding these patterns is crucial to unraveling the broader history of human evolution." , says Zineb Moubtahij, lead author of the study.
His work is also the first to use zinc isotopes preserved in enamel to determine the diet of ancient populations in North Africa, a key region for the study of human evolution and its dispersion. In the future, the research team hopes to explore more Paleolithic sites to gain a deeper understanding of those dietary practices and their implications for human evolution.
