Wild cereal grain consumption among Early Holocene foragers of the Balkans predates the arrival of agriculture

Abstract

Forager focus on wild cereal plants has been documented in the core zone of domestication in southwestern Asia, while evidence for forager use of wild grass grains remains sporadic elsewhere. In this paper, we present starch grain and phytolith analyses of dental calculus from 60 Mesolithic and Early Neolithic individuals from five sites in the Danube Gorges of the central Balkans. This zone was inhabited by likely complex Holocene foragers for several millennia before the appearance of the first farmers ~6200 cal BC. We also analyzed forager ground stone tools for evidence of plant processing. Our results based on the study of dental calculus show that certain species of Poaceae (species of the genus Aegilops) were used since the Early Mesolithic, while ground stone tools exhibit traces of a developed grass grain processing technology. The adoption of domesticated plants in this region after ~6500 cal BC might have been eased by the existing familiarity with wild cereals.

Ecological-cultural inheritance in the wetlands: the non-linear transition to plant food production in the southern Levant

“…First, ethnographic studies demonstrate that taste is one of the primary factors that determine food choice by hunter-gatherers (Heim and Pyhälä 2020). While flavour is a subjective characteristic, archaeobotanical evidence strongly supports the idea that hunter-gatherers put time and effort into gathering and processing wild cereals, both in the Levant (Piperno et al 2004;Weiss et al 2004a;Arranz-Otaegui et al 2018a, b) and beyond (Aranguren et al 2007;Mariotti Lippi et al 2015;Cristiani et al 2021). Second, cereals and grasses can play a critical role in many processed foods (Valamoti 2011;Arranz-Otaegui et al 2018a) and have favourable biophysical properties.…”

Neolithic dental calculi provide evidence for environmental proxies and consumption of wild edible fruits and herbs in central Apennines

“…Dental calculus, or tartar, is the result of bacterial plaque mineralisation adhered to the teeth surface. Its accumulation is progressive and even after fossilisation, it may preserve and protect from external damage biomolecules (e.g., DNA) and various microremains (e.g., phytoliths, starch, pollen, spores, plant tissues, sponge spicules, diatom frustules, inorganic soil particles), indicating what has been ingested/inhaled by an organism 2 , 4 , 48 – 52 The precise timespan implicated in dental calculus growth is not yet understood; indeed, its formation and composition can be highly variable among individuals. For this reason, it is not possible to assess when, within the lifetime of a living being, a specific microparticle has been trapped in the mineral matrix 1 , 7 , 53 , 54 .…”

Paleolithic Gene Duplications Primed Adaptive Evolution of Human Amylase Locus Upon Agriculture

“…4A, D ). A more provocative argument would be that the effects of amylase gene duplications on taste preferences and starch metabolism may have facilitated the recently reported pre-agricultural consumption of agricultural grains in the Mesolithic Balkans (Cristiani et al ., 2021). Regardless, it was argued previously that classical sweeps that involve selection on de novo mutations are rare in humans (Hernandez et al ., 2011).…”

“…Moreover, our data shows that the initial human specific AMY1 duplications predate farming by hundreds of thousands of years. This finding is especially interesting in light of recent findings that increased starch consumption predates agriculture, where Neanderthal consumed observable amounts of starchy foods (Yates et al ., 2021) and Mesolithic foragers consumed starchy grains that would later become domesticated (Cristiani et al ., 2021). Therefore, our results raise the possibility that amylase copy number may have evolved earlier than agriculture and perhaps primed human perception and metabolism for agricultural diets.…”