In contrast to lots of their principally meat-eating friends, a bunch of late Stone Age hunter-gatherers residing in what’s now northeastern Morocco had a largely plant-based weight-reduction plan. However regardless of eating for millennia on native, wild vegetation — akin to acorns, pistachios and wild oats, the Iberomaurusians by no means began cultivating these vegetation. The discovering aligns with current challenges to scientists’ concept that heavy reliance on vegetation finally results in their domestication (SN: 11/9/21).
Earlier than people found out farming, they relied on looking and gathering to maintain themselves, with most protein coming from animals. Over time, they shifted from foraging to cultivating sure vegetation, finally resulting in the vegetation’ domestication — so goes the standard story of agriculture’s emergence. Archaeologists as soon as assumed that the Iberomaurusians additionally relied totally on animals. However information from human stays at a website in Morocco factors to a predominantly plant-based weight-reduction plan, researchers report April 29 in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The positioning — referred to as Taforalt, which is situated in a cave — is a “essential website to check human evolution and perceive human conduct throughout this time,” says Zineb Moubtahij, an archaeologist at Géosciences Atmosphere Toulouse, a analysis laboratory in France. The Iberomaurusians lived round this space for a very long time, beginning round 23,000 years in the past. They used a part of the cave to bury the deceased.
To study concerning the Iberomaurusians’ diets, Moubtahij and colleagues turned to enamel and bones from these stays, which date to between 15,077 and 13,892 years previous. The group checked out ranges of sure varieties, or isotopes, of components — together with zinc, carbon and nitrogen — that have been deposited from meals into tissues and bones. The researchers additionally checked out isotopes within the stays of herbivores and carnivores from the location, akin to sheep and foxes, and in contrast these to the human isotope ranges.
The evaluation confirmed that the Iberomaurusians’ diets have been nearer to that of herbivores, suggesting a heavy reliance on vegetation not animals. The group wasn’t fully vegetarian; meat was nonetheless on the menu, Moubtahij says. However in contrast with different hunter-gatherers from this time, the Iberomaurusians’ weight-reduction plan leaned extra on the gatherer facet and fewer on the hunter facet.
Earlier work has instructed that the Iberomaurusians beloved their plant meals, says Teresa Steele, a paleoanthropologist on the College of California, Davis not concerned on this research. In 2014, researchers analyzed the decayed enamel of some Iberomaurusians. Their frequent cavities indicated a weight-reduction plan wealthy in starchy, fermentable meals. But it surely’s “all the time good to see additional verification of issues we have now much less direct proof about,” she says.
Curiously, the group relied on wild vegetation for a lot of millennia with out ever domesticating them. The archaeological report suggests the vegetation’ options didn’t change over time.
That’s in distinction with people in southwestern Asia, who started farming round 12,000 to 11,000 years in the past (SN: 7/4/13). It wasn’t till round 7,600 years in the past that agriculture arrived in what’s now Morocco, and the farmed vegetation had been introduced from different lands. Why the Iberomaurusians’ reliance on vegetation didn’t result in domestication is a thriller, Moubtahij says.
As a result of there are comparatively few well-preserved human stays from round this time in historical past — the late Pleistocene — scientists have restricted proof to piece collectively how agriculture arose somewhere else. “It’s actually vital that we have now these kind of research that present us that there have been various pathways and meals manufacturing techniques,” says Michael Westaway, an archaeologist on the College of Queensland in Australia who was not concerned within the work. One factor is evident: “Not all roads result in agriculture.”
