Diet of ancient Andes hunter-gatherers was 80% plant-based, study finds

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Hunter-gatherers dwelling in South America round 9,000 years in the past had a predominantly plant-based weight loss plan – difficult the extensively held view that these societies had been made up of primarily meat eaters, scientists have mentioned.

Archaeologists on the University of Wyoming within the US analysed stays of 24 people from two burial websites within the Andes Mountains in Peru.

Chemical proof from the bones revealed plant meals to be a significant half (round 80%) of the diets of the Andes hunter-gatherers, with meat enjoying a secondary function, the group mentioned.

The perception that ancient people had been predominantly meat-eaters has led to approaches such because the paleo weight loss plan – which seeks to imitate the consuming habits of ancestors who lived throughout the Paleolithic period, from about 2.5 million to 10,000 years in the past.

Today, the modern-day paleo weight loss plan is predicated on meat, fish, greens, nuts and seeds, and excludes grains, pulses and dairy merchandise.

While some imagine that human our bodies are higher tailored to the weight loss plan of Paleolithic ancestors, critics argue it might be too restrictive, eliminating sure nutritious meals.

Randy Haas, an assistant professor on the University of Wyoming, mentioned: “Conventional wisdom holds that early human economies focused on hunting – an idea that has led to a number of high-protein dietary fads such as the paleo diet.

“Our analysis shows that the diets were composed of 80% plant matter and 20% meat.”

He mentioned one of the principle the explanation why hunter-gatherers had been extensively believed to be meat-eaters is as a result of “artefacts associated with hunting preserve better than those associated with plant foraging and processing”.

Prof Haas mentioned: “Stone tools and animal bones preserve well while plant parts tend to rapidly degrade and thus are rarely observed in the archaeological record.”

He additionally mentioned it’s theoretically attainable that hunter-gathers such because the Andeans had been meat-based to begin with and the “transition to a plant-based diet happened much more quickly than previously thought”.

But Prof Haas added that western biases about early human weight loss plan can’t be neglected.

He mentioned: “Archaeology and related sciences have long been dominated by male practitioners.

“In western culture, hunting is the purview of males, which has likely led to an over-emphasis on hunting in the interpretation of early human economies.

“The convergence of these various factors has misled us to overestimate the role of meat in early Andean diets.”

For the study, revealed within the journal Plos One, the researchers seemed on the isotopic composition of the stays discovered within the burial websites Wilamaya Patjxa and Soro Mik’aya Patjxa.

This methodology appears to be like on the variations of chemical parts in ancient bones and may present invaluable details about the person’s weight loss plan, the place they’re from, and different features of their life historical past.

The researchers mentioned that whereas there’s proof that the Andes hunter-gatherers, who lived someplace between 6,500 to 9,000 years in the past, had been killing giant mammals for meals, this is able to have performed a secondary function of their weight loss plan.

The group additionally discovered burnt plant stays from the websites.

The researchers analysed marks on the enamel and located patterns that recommended that tubers, or crops that develop underground akin to potatoes, had been a key half of the weight loss plan.

Lead creator Jennifer Chen, a PhD pupil in anthropology at Penn State University within the US, mentioned: “Food is incredibly important and crucial for survival, especially in high-altitude environments like the Andes.

“A lot of archaeological frameworks on hunter-gatherers, or foragers, centre on hunting and meat-heavy diets – but we are finding that early hunter-gatherers in the Andes were mostly eating plant foods like wild tubers.”

The researchers mentioned their work reveals, for the primary time, that ancient human economies had been plant primarily based – in not less than one half of the world.

Prof Haas mentioned: “Given that archaeological biases have long misled archaeologists – myself included – in the Andes, it is likely that future isotopic research in other parts of the world will similarly show that archaeologists have also gotten it wrong elsewhere.”