Although the stereotypical cave man was a meat eater, several recent archaeological studies have shown that, at least by 30,000 years ago, modern human diets had to include a substantial chunk of carbohydrates and fat along with their meat.
Cattails in Winter. Photo by J Wynia
For one thing, wild meat is much less fatty than modern domesticates. Research conducted by Bruce Hardy and reported earlier this year, showed that diets high in lean meat are downright detrimental to humans (and probably neanderthals too). To stay healthy, only 35% of your diet can be lean meat, the rest has to include some carbohydrates and fats.
On October 18, 2010, an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science reported new work by Anna Revedin, Jiri Svoboda and associates, with evidence that cattails and other starchy plants were ground into flour at least as long ago as the Upper Paleolithic, some 30,000 years ago. Revedin and colleague's earlier study on attail starches from the Italian site of Bilancino first appeared in Antiquity a couple of years ago.
Cattails are today recognized as a good and tasty food source available across much of the planet. The tall perennial herbs have edible flowers, shoots, roots, seeds and stems. They grow in watery environments and in fact can survive in standing water up to 15 cm deep. The roots can be eaten raw or cooked; consumed fresh after being peeled; or dried and ground to a powder. One hectare of cattails can yield 8 tons of flour; and cattails can be harvested during the winter, very handy for your hunter-gatherer types.
This story has gotten considerable press, so I'll leave it at that, chuck a few important academic resources and some juicy science press stuff your way.
More Info Here
- Bilancino, Italy
- Kostenki, Russia
- Guide to the Upper Paleolithic
- Starch Grain Analysis
Academic Sources
Aranguren B, Becattini R, Mariotti Lippi M, and Revedin A. 2007. Grinding flour in Upper Palaeolithic Europe (25 000 years bp). Antiquity 81:845-855.
Hardy BL. 2010. Climatic variability and plant food distribution in Pleistocene Europe: Implications for Neanderthal diet and subsistence. Quaternary Science Reviews 29(5-6):662-679.
Revedin A, Aranguren B, Becattini R, Longo L, Marconi E, Mariotti Lippi M, Skakun N, Sinitsyn A, Spiridonova E, and Svoboda J. 2010. Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.
Blog-o-Licious
- The Stone Age Food Pyramid Included Flour Made From Wild Grains, Discover
- The Cavemen's Complex Kitchen, Science Now
- Stone Age flour found across Europe, Nature
Comments
Dear Kris,
After reading one of your sections on the Neolithic, I have a question regarding those few places on Earth where agriculture emerged pristinely, that is without learning it from neighbors, near or far. Would not the North American Midwest be one of those places? Bruce Smith’s 1992 edited volume, Rivers of Change, lays out the data and theory of how folks in the Midwest co-evolved with native species (knotweed, maygrass, sunflower, etc.) during the Middle and Late Archaic so that domesticated strains of those species emerged in Late Archaic times. According to him, the “Riverine Heartland” surrounding sections of the Ohio River, Mississippi River and their confluence, was a place where domesticated plant agriculture emerged without being introduced from outside the region. Of course, this was at least 1,000 years before the first maize in the region, which takes corn out of the equation at those early times.
A related question might be: Did we have the Neolithic in North America? I know North American archaeologists don’t apply that label to our culture history.
If you can clarify for me, I would appreciate it.
Keep up the great work. I enjoy your posts and always learn from them.
Thanks, -Mark
Great question! My main source (Pearsall 2008) used Harlan 1992:
Harlan JR (1992) Crops and Man, (2nd edn.). Madison, Wisconsin: American Society of Agronomy
And Harlan didn’t consider the maygrass/knotweed region as even a “subcenter” (Harlan relegates South America to a subcenter, and I’m not entirely comfortable with that!). But that doesn’t mean Bruce Smith wasn’t on to something; and certainly Pearsall’s main focus was on plant domestication, rather than the “Neolithic” as a whole. The fuzziness might well have something to do with my using “Neolithic” in the Americas–but I wonder if it might be feasible, given the definition. The Americas do have complex societies, domesticated plants and animals and pottery, among other things, arising there independently. You could argue there’s no urban societies–although, what’s Teotihuacan if not urban?
Clearly, I need to do some poking around. I think I’ll start with doing investigations into knotweed and maygrass. It will be interesting to see what the earliest dates of those are. I have done a paper on sunflower domestication, but the research I read suggests it was domesticated in Mexico (earliest in San Andres, Tabasco state, 2500-2800 cal BC).
http://archaeology.about.com/od/sterms/qt/sunflower.htm
Although Newt Kash Hollow is supposed to be a different site of domestication, about 2000 BC. I’m still doing the research, but it looks at this point like I’ll have to revise to include some other areas.
If you have any additional reading suggestions for me, pass them along!
Thanks again!
Kris
Cattails are nature’s water purifier. They will clean water of pollutants. They do not seem to be harmed by any of the chemicals they filter out of the water.
Kris,
Don’t know what I’d do without you. What a treasure! I have a keen interest in how humans evolved to the point where we are today. And a vital part of that evolution, a turning point, seems to be the “neolithic”. Ergo, this information about starch and fats needed in diet in addition to lean meat is absolutely fascinating to me.
Now my question: I understand that certain northern peoples, such as the Yupik and Inupiat, once lived on a diet that consisted almost entirely of meat — say, seal meat which is supposedly high in fat. Now, if this is so, then how did they get the starch in their diet that we now suspect is necessary?
All good wishes,
Max
Interesting! I found this:
http://www.inchr.com/Doc/January05/Kozlov-2003-whaling.pdf
that points out that marine animals aren’t lean, especially in the arctic. The problem (as I understand it from reading Hardy) is all-lean meat diets, and whales and other marine mammals have more fat than terrestrial animals. That, plus a meat-adapted system, I think, helped arctic folks survive a meat-heavy diet.
Kris
My wife and I purchased a place in the Central Sands/Green Bay Terminal Morraine area of Central Wisconsin. I started noticing an interesting flower growing on a vine throughout the woods near the house. Since it was something I had never encountered I did some research. I believe it’s Latin name is Hopnis and called by some as ground nuts. I dug some up this summer and found round tuber like balls of starch in the roots. A bit more investigation found that the native people of the area used it as a starch source to be mixed into stews. I also found that Native groups made encampments where the plant grew so they could harvest and process the starch for seasonal travel. That made me think there may be a site to dig. So far test digs only give-up stones. . .I’m hoping. One old timer said he found copper points from the Old Copper Culture and some guy came to all the farms in the area back in the 1920′s and bought them all. . .who knows where they are now. . .
I think you must mean Apios:
http://www.duke.edu/~jspippen/plants/apios.htm
I don’t know much about the history, but suspect from my very recent reading that it was one of several plant species that were used by Native Americans.
Kris
apios it is. . . I’m wanting to try some if anyone knows more about it. I heard it was tried as a replacement for the potato in Ireland during the potato famine but the yield was too small. Thanks for the return.
mark