Dental calculus indicates widespread plant use within the stable Neanderthal dietary (original) (raw)
2018, Journal of Human Evolution
The ecology of Neanderthals is a pressing question in the study of hominin evolution. Diet appears to have played a prominent role in their adaptation to Eurasia. Based on isotope and zooarchaeological studies, Neanderthal diet has been reconstructed as heavily meat-based and generally similar across different environments. This image persists, despite recent studies suggesting more plant use and more variation. However, we have only a fragmentary picture of their dietary ecology, and how it may have varied among habitats, because we lack broad and environmentally representative information about their use of plants and other foods. To address the problem, we examined the plant microremains in Neanderthal dental calculus from five archaeological sites representing a variety of environments from the northern Balkans, and the western, central and eastern Mediterranean. The recovered microremains revealed the consumption of a variety of non-animal foods, including starchy plants. Using a modelling approach, we explored the relationships among microremains and environment, while controlling for chronology. In the process we compared the effectiveness of various diversity metrics and their shortcomings for studying microbotanical remains, which are often morphologically redundant for identification. We developed Minimum Botanical Units as a new way of estimating of how many plant types or parts are present in a microbotanical sample. In contrast to some previous work, we find no evidence that plant use is confined to the southern-most areas of Neanderthal distribution. Although the interpreting ecogeographic variation is limited by the incomplete preservation of dietary microremains, it is clear that plant exploitation was a widespread and deeply rooted Neanderthal subsistence strategy even if they were predominately game hunters. Given the limited dietary variation across Neanderthal range in time and space in both plant and animal food exploitation, we argue that vegetal consumption was a feature of a generally static dietary niche
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Dental calculus indicates widespread plant use within the stable Neanderthal dietary niche
The ecology of Neanderthals is a pressing question in the study of hominin evolution. Diet appears to have played a prominent role in their adaptation to Eurasia. Based on isotope and zooarchaeological studies, Neanderthal diet has been reconstructed as heavily meat-based and generally similar across different environments. This image persists, despite recent studies suggesting more plant use and more variation. However, we have only a fragmentary picture of their dietary ecology, and how it may have varied among habitats, because we lack broad and environmentally representative information about their use of plants and other foods. To address the problem, we examined the plant microremains in Neanderthal dental calculus from five archaeological sites representing a variety of environments from the northern Balkans, and the western, central and eastern Mediterranean. The recovered microremains revealed the consumption of a variety of non-animal foods, including starchy plants. Using a modeling approach, we explored the relationships among microremains and environment, while controlling for chronology. In the process, we compared the effectiveness of various diversity metrics and their shortcomings for studying microbotanical remains, which are often morphologically redundant for identification. We developed Minimum Botanical Units as a new way of estimating how many plant types or parts are present in a microbotanical sample. In contrast to some previous work, we found no evidence that plant use is confined to the southern-most areas of Neanderthal distribution. Although interpreting the ecogeographic variation is limited by the incomplete preservation of dietary micro-remains, it is clear that plant exploitation was a widespread and deeply rooted Neanderthal subsistence strategy, even if they were predominately game hunters. Given the limited dietary variation across Neanderthal range in time and space in both plant and animal food exploitation, we argue that vegetal consumption was a feature of a generally static dietary niche.
Evidence of Increasing Intensity of Food Processing During the Upper Paleolithic of Western Eurasia
Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, 2018
Archaeologists have suggested that subsistence is central to understanding the population trajectory of Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals and Upper Paleolithic modern humans in western Eurasia. Zooarchaeology and stable isotope data have revealed that hunting supplied most of the protein requirements for Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals and early Upper Paleolithic modern humans. However, the application of dental wear, archaeobotany, and other techniques have shown that plants were an important part of the diet in both Middle and Upper Paleolithic societies in warm and cool regions of western Eurasia. Some lines of evidence have indicated that both groups potentially used a relatively similar range of plants even though this contradicts expectations from optimal foraging theory and diet breadth models positing that Middle Paleolithic societies used fewer plant foods. In this contribution, we identify evidence for increases in the use of Upper Paleolithic processing of plant foods in western Eurasia. We propose that increases in human population density throughout the Upper Paleolithic and especially during the late glacial period were supported by the more frequent use of plant food processing technologies, rather than the use of new plant food taxa.
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