Stable Nitrogen Isotope Ratios of Bone Collagen Reflect Marine and Terrestrial Components of Prehistoric Human Diet

Schoeninger, Margaret J.; DeNiro, Michael J.; Tauber, Henrik

doi:10.1126/science.6344217

Cited by 674 publications

(482 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Consistent with the data above, Schoeninger et al (242) showed that European agriculturalists consuming C 3 grasses had much lower d 13 C values in bone collagen (2 21 to 2 19 ‰) compared with Mesoamerican agriculturalist consuming C 4 maize (27 to 2 5 ‰), while North American and European fisher-gatherers had intermediate values (2 15 to 2 11 ‰). However, bone collagen proved less reliable to study early hominin diets.…”

Section: Biogeochemistrysupporting

confidence: 74%

A multidisciplinary reconstruction of Palaeolithic nutrition that holds promise for the prevention and treatment of diseases of civilisation

2012

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Evolutionary medicine acknowledges that many chronic degenerative diseases result from conflicts between our rapidly changing environment, our dietary habits included, and our genome, which has remained virtually unchanged since the Palaeolithic era. Reconstruction of the diet before the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions is therefore indicated, but hampered by the ongoing debate on our ancestors' ecological niche. Arguments and their counterarguments regarding evolutionary medicine are updated and the evidence for the long-reigning hypothesis of human evolution on the arid savanna is weighed against the hypothesis that man evolved in the proximity of water. Evidence from various disciplines is discussed, including the study of palaeo-environments, comparative anatomy, biogeochemistry, archaeology, anthropology, (patho)physiology and epidemiology. Although our ancestors had much lower life expectancies, the current evidence does neither support the misconception that during the Palaeolithic there were no elderly nor that they had poor health. Rather than rejecting the possibility of ‘healthy ageing’, the default assumption should be that healthy ageing posed an evolutionary advantage for human survival. There is ample evidence that our ancestors lived in a land–water ecosystem and extracted a substantial part of their diets from both terrestrial and aquatic resources. Rather than rejecting this possibility by lack of evidence, the default assumption should be that hominins, living in coastal ecosystems with catchable aquatic resources, consumed these resources. Finally, the composition and merits of so-called ‘Palaeolithic diets’, based on different hominin niche-reconstructions, are evaluated. The benefits of these diets illustrate that it is time to incorporate this knowledge into dietary recommendations.

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Section: Biogeochemistrysupporting

confidence: 74%

A multidisciplinary reconstruction of Palaeolithic nutrition that holds promise for the prevention and treatment of diseases of civilisation

2012

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“…The d 15 N stable isotope ratio increases by 3e 5& up the food-chain with each trophic level, meaning that the consumer has higher values than the consumed protein (De Niro and Epstein, 1981;Schoeninger and De Niro, 1984). This makes nitrogen stable isotopes useful for detecting the presence of high trophic level marine and freshwater foods on the diet (Schoeninger et al, 1983). However, the distinction of animal-rich diets from plant-rich diets using d 15 N values (Minagawa and Wada, 1984) is less straightforward than previously thought (i.e.…”

Section: Stable Isotopes and Palaeodietary Reconstructionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Isotope evidence for the use of marine resources in the Eastern Iberian Mesolithic

Salazar‐García¹,

Aura²,

Olària³

et al. 2014

Journal of Archaeological Science

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a b s t r a c tThere are relatively few coastal Mesolithic sites in the Iberian Mediterranean region, probably due to a number of factors including sea level changes and the disappearance of sites due to agriculture and urbanisation. However, recent excavations have uncovered inland sites that have marine faunal remains (i.e. molluscs and fish) and lithics from the coastal area, which both indicate interactions between the coast and the upland valleys. These inland sites are located at a distance of 30e50 km from today's coastline and are at altitudes higher than 1000 m. We report on additional information on the links between the coast and these inland sites through the use of dietary isotope analysis (carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis) of collagen extracted from human and faunal remains at the sites of Coves de Santa Maira, Penya del Comptador and Cingle del Mas Nou. The results indicate that Mesolithic diet in this region was largely based on C 3 terrestrial resources, but there was measurable evidence of low-level consumption of marine resources at both coastal and inland sites.

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“…This makes nitrogen stable isotopes useful for detecting the presence of high trophic level marine and freshwater fish in the diet (Schoeninger et al, 1983), as well as for distinguishing animal-rich diets from plant-rich diets (low values of d 15 N mean a higher consumption of plant foods, while high values mean higher meat consumption) (Minagawa and Wada, 1984).…”

Section: Stable Isotopes and Palaeodietary Reconstructionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neanderthal diets in central and southeastern Mediterranean Iberia

Salazar‐García

Power

Serra³

et al. 2013

Quaternary International

111

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a b s t r a c tDuring recent decades, Neanderthal diet has been a major research topic in palaeoanthropology. This has been accelerated by the maturation of different techniques, which have produced a plethora of new information. However, this proliferation of data has led to confusing and contradictory results. Furthermore, most of the ecological dietary studies have been carried out on specimens drawn from different time periods and regions, almost exclusively those characterized by cold, open environmental conditions. Subsistence models based on these fragmentary data have been applied to Neanderthals living in a variety of different regions and environments, even though their dietary strategies may have been as variable as regions they inhabited. In this paper we integrate different dietary approaches (studies of the zooarchaeology, stable isotopes and plant remains) from the central and southeastern Mediterranean coast of Iberia in order to develop a broader and more complex picture of Neanderthal diet in different Mediterranean environmental conditions. Our results suggest that there may have been some minor dietary variation due to climatic or environmental differences, but that Neanderthal diet focussed on large terrestrial game, supplemented by plant foods when these were available.Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Neanderthal dietary ecologyThe dietary behaviours of Neanderthals and the relationship between their diet and their social organization, technological abilities, and even their eventual disappearance, have been hotly debated in the anthropological literature. Examining the diets of Neanderthals requires the synthesis of data that have been collected by numerous researchers over the last 150 years. In many cases, the differences between Neanderthal and early modern human diets have been emphasized, at the expense of cogent discussion of the variation within each group. Early modern humans lived in a wide variety of environmental contexts and likely pursued a variety of behaviours throughout this range of environments. The exclusively Eurasian distribution of Neanderthals did not include as many environments, but neither was it the exclusively cold Arctic climate that many have supposed it to be. A more detailed examination of the Neanderthal range and the effects of shifting global climates reveals that this group would have been exposed to a diverse range of environments (Hoffecker, 2009;MacDonald et al., 2009). Just as modern human dietary behaviour likely varied with environments, so, too, can we predict that Neanderthals had different diets in different environments.Our understanding of the diets of Neanderthals comes from three main lines of evidence. The first is the study of the human remains themselves, including the isotope signal recorded in their bones, the microwear on their teeth, and how factors of their lifehistory are related to diet. The second line of evidence includes the study of the remains of their food, in the form of animal and plant remains preserved ...

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Stable Nitrogen Isotope Ratios of Bone Collagen Reflect Marine and Terrestrial Components of Prehistoric Human Diet

Cited by 674 publications

References 17 publications

A multidisciplinary reconstruction of Palaeolithic nutrition that holds promise for the prevention and treatment of diseases of civilisation

A multidisciplinary reconstruction of Palaeolithic nutrition that holds promise for the prevention and treatment of diseases of civilisation

Isotope evidence for the use of marine resources in the Eastern Iberian Mesolithic

Neanderthal diets in central and southeastern Mediterranean Iberia

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