New evidence of broader diets for archaic Homo populations in the northwestern Mediterranean

Abstract

Investigating diet breadth is critical for understanding how archaicHomopopulations, including Neanderthals, competed for seasonally scarce resources. The current consensus in Western Europe is that ungulates formed the bulk of the human diet during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic, while small fast prey taxa were virtually ignored. Here, we present a multisite taphonomic study of leporid assemblages from Southern France that supports frequent exploitation of small fast game during marine isotope stages 11 to 3. Along with recent evidence from Iberia, our results indicate that the consumption of small fast game was more common prior to the Upper Paleolithic than previously thought and that archaic hominins from the northwestern Mediterranean had broader diets than those from adjacent regions. Although likely of secondary importance relative to ungulates, the frequent exploitation of leporids documented here implies that human diet breadths were substantially more variable within Europe than assumed by current evolutionary models.

Macromammal and bird assemblages across the late Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in Italy: an extended zooarchaeological review

“…A.13 -A.17). We also tested the hypothesis of differences in the degree of fragmentation across sites of Northern Italy by running arcsine transformation of proportions fragment-size classes at all sites (1-3cm, >3cm; following Morin et al 2019) and then comparing the distribution of transformed values between Uluzzian and Late Mousterian layers via a two-tailed Mann-Whitney test for independent sample design. As for southern Italy, we once again only focused on Riparo l'Oscurusciuto and Grotta del Cavallo in Southeastern Italy.…”

“…In the same way, evidence of Neandertal reliance on small mammal prey increased over the past 10 years due to the reassessment of faunal assemblages from a new taphonomic perspective (Romandini et al, 2018b;Morin et al, 2019).…”

“…Nevertheless, multiple data have induced some authors to suggest that the exploitation of small animals has been important for human subsistence since ca. 250ka (Klein and Scott, 1986;Stiner, 2005;Romandini et al, 2018b;Morin et al, 2019).…”

Bird procurement by humans during the Middle and early Upper Paleolithic of Europe: New data for the Aurignacian of southwestern France

“…In recent years, detailed taphonomic studies have clarified the potential role played by humans in the accumulation of bird remains in Middle Paleolithic sites (e.g., Rufà et al, 2016aRufà et al, , 2016bRufà et al, , 2018Romero et al, 2017;Lloveras et al, 2018). In Southern France and Iberia, archeozoological analyses of Mousterian collections have shown that Neandertals regularly obtained large mammals and, to a lesser extent, small fast game such as rabbits (e.g., Cochard et al, 2012;Blasco et al, 2013;Morin et al, 2019) and birds. With respect to birds, a wide range of species was exploited, including pigeons, Corvidae, Phasianidae and diurnal raptors, as well as Anseriformes and small passerines (see synthesis in Gómez-Olivencia et al, 2018, table S7 and fig.…”

Distinguishing the taphonomic signature of wolves from humans and other predators on small prey assemblages

“…The development of dietary breadth was first detected in southern Europe and the Levant during the early Upper Palaeolithic and was related to the expansion of anatomically modern humans. However, more recent studies have also shown evidence of different types of small-prey use prior to the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe [7][8][9][10][11][12] . These studies suggest that the evolution of dietary breadth was not linear and that foraging strategies were more diverse than previously thought, varying according to a combination of different factors such as climate conditions and prey availability, demographic pressure, technological advantages or energy return rates 13,14 .…”