Neandertals ate their veggies

PLoS ONE 9(6): e101045. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0101045

The Neanderthal Meal: A New Perspective Using Faecal Biomarkers

Ainara Sistiaga et al.

Neanderthal dietary reconstructions have, to date, been based on indirect evidence and may underestimate the significance of plants as a food source. While zooarchaeological and stable isotope data have conveyed an image of Neanderthals as largely carnivorous, studies on dental calculus and scattered palaeobotanical evidence suggest some degree of contribution of plants to their diet. However, both views remain plausible and there is no categorical indication of an omnivorous diet. Here we present direct evidence of Neanderthal diet using faecal biomarkers, a valuable analytical tool for identifying dietary provenance. Our gas chromatography-mass spectrometry results from El Salt (Spain), a Middle Palaeolithic site dating to ca. 50,000 yr. BP, represents the oldest positive identification of human faecal matter. We show that Neanderthals, like anatomically modern humans, have a high rate of conversion of cholesterol to coprostanol related to the presence of required bacteria in their guts. Analysis of five sediment samples from different occupation floors suggests that Neanderthals predominantly consumed meat, as indicated by high coprostanol proportions, but also had significant plant intake, as shown by the presence of 5β-stigmastanol. This study highlights the applicability of the biomarker approach in Pleistocene contexts as a provider of direct palaeodietary information and supports the opportunity for further research into cholesterol metabolism throughout human evolution.

Link

Early European farmers used manure

PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1305918110

Crop manuring and intensive land management by Europe’s first farmers

Amy Bogaard et al.

The spread of farming from western Asia to Europe had profound long-term social and ecological impacts, but identification of the specific nature of Neolithic land management practices and the dietary contribution of early crops has been problematic. Here, we present previously undescribed stable isotope determinations of charred cereals and pulses from 13 Neolithic sites across Europe (dating ca. 5900–2400 cal B.C.), which show that early farmers used livestock manure and water management to enhance crop yields. Intensive manuring inextricably linked plant cultivation and animal herding and contributed to the remarkable resilience of these combined practices across diverse climatic zones. Critically, our findings suggest that commonly applied paleodietary interpretations of human and herbivore δ15N values have systematically underestimated the contribution of crop-derived protein to early farmer diets.

Link

Pottery-using hunter-gatherer cooks from Japan

From an accompanying piece:

Pottery usage among hunter-gatherers was considered somewhat anomalous and counter-intuitive; fragile pots did not seem to have a place in the mobile lifestyles thought to characterize most human existence before the advent of farming villages during the Neolithic, from about 10,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean. But the discovery of lipids on ceramic vessels in East Asia dating from the Late Pleistocene, about 15,000–12,000 years ago, presented by Craig et al.2 in a paper published on Nature's website today, suggests that some hunter-gatherers used pots for cooking. The report also provides a demonstration of how science should be integral to our piecing together of history. 

... 

Our knowledge that ceramic containers were being made and used by hunter-gatherers in the Late Pleistocene in various parts of East Asia — from Japan to far eastern Russia and north and south China — means that pottery usage among hunter-gatherers is no longer seen as anomalous in the Old World. In fact, there may be evidence for routes of the introduction of pottery into Europe that are not associated with the introduction of farming13.

From the paper itself:

From both the bulk stable isotope data and the more specific product identifications based on available lipid data, we suggest that aquatic products were the most frequently processed products in Incipient Jōmon pottery, through the fluctuating climate and across a range of environments, from Hokkaido in the north to Kyushu in the south. Whether ceramic vessels were integral to the processing of aquatic resources or, as is suggested by their rarity, were used only occasionally, perhaps ceremonially or as a prestige technology24, remains debatable.

Nature (2013) doi:10.1038/nature12109

Earliest evidence for the use of pottery 

O. E. Craig et al.


Pottery was a hunter-gatherer innovation that first emerged in East Asia between 20,000 and 12,000 calibrated years before present1, 2 (cal BP), towards the end of the Late Pleistocene epoch, a period of time when humans were adjusting to changing climates and new environments. Ceramic container technologies were one of a range of late glacial adaptations that were pivotal to structuring subsequent cultural trajectories in different regions of the world, but the reasons for their emergence and widespread uptake are poorly understood. The first ceramic containers must have provided prehistoric hunter-gatherers with attractive new strategies for processing and consuming foodstuffs, but virtually nothing is known of how early pots were used. Here we report the chemical analysis of food residues associated with Late Pleistocene pottery, focusing on one of the best-studied prehistoric ceramic sequences in the world, the Japanese Jomon. We demonstrate that lipids can be recovered reliably from charred surface deposits adhering to pottery dating from about 15,000 to 11,800?cal?BP (the Incipient Jomon period), the oldest pottery so far investigated, and that in most cases these organic compounds are unequivocally derived from processing freshwater and marine organisms. Stable isotope data support the lipid evidence and suggest that most of the 101 charred deposits analysed, from across the major islands of Japan, were derived from high-trophic-level aquatic food. Productive aquatic ecotones were heavily exploited by late glacial foragers3, perhaps providing an initial impetus for investment in ceramic container technology, and paving the way for further intensification of pottery use by hunter-gatherers in the early Holocene epoch. Now that we have shown that it is possible to analyse organic residues from some of the world’s earliest ceramic vessels, the subsequent development of this critical technology can be clarified through further widespread testing of hunter-gatherer pottery from later periods.

Link

Dog food

Diet Shaped Dog Domestication

The analysis turned up 36 regions, with 122 genes in all, that may have contributed to dog evolution, the team reports online today in Nature. Nineteen of these regions contain genes important for the brain, eight of which are involved with nervous system development, which makes sense given the importance of behavioral changes in the transition to becoming man's best friend, Axelsson notes.

More surprising were genes for digesting starch. Dogs had four to 30 copies of the gene for amylase, a protein that starts the breakdown of starch in the intestine. Wolves have only two copies, one on each chromosome. As a result, that gene was 28-fold more active in dogs, the researchers found. More copies means more protein, and test-tube studies indicate that dogs should be fivefold better than wolves at digesting starch, the chief nutrient in agricultural grains such as wheat and rice. The number of copies of this gene also varies in people: Those eating high carbohydrate diets -- such as the Japanese and European Americans -- have more copies than people with starch-poor diets, such as the Mbuti in Africa. "We have adapted in a very similar way to the dramatic changes that happened when agriculture was developed," Axelsson says.

Nature (2013) doi:10.1038/nature11837

The genomic signature of dog domestication reveals adaptation to a starch-rich diet

Erik Axelsson et al.

The domestication of dogs was an important episode in the development of human civilization. The precise timing and location of this event is debated1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and little is known about the genetic changes that accompanied the transformation of ancient wolves into domestic dogs. Here we conduct whole-genome resequencing of dogs and wolves to identify 3.8 million genetic variants used to identify 36 genomic regions that probably represent targets for selection during dog domestication. Nineteen of these regions contain genes important in brain function, eight of which belong to nervous system development pathways and potentially underlie behavioural changes central to dog domestication6. Ten genes with key roles in starch digestion and fat metabolism also show signals of selection. We identify candidate mutations in key genes and provide functional support for an increased starch digestion in dogs relative to wolves. Our results indicate that novel adaptations allowing the early ancestors of modern dogs to thrive on a diet rich in starch, relative to the carnivorous diet of wolves, constituted a crucial step in the early domestication of dogs.

Link

Selection at FADS gene cluster in Africa

A couple of quick comments. First, from the paper:

Given 207 fixed differences between chimpanzee and human in this region, we estimate a TMRCA of 1.49 (SEM = 0.23) million years for the human haplotypes. Similarly, only considering the number of mutations within the haplotype group D1, the TMRCA was 85,000±84,000 years, thus suggesting that selection in Africa occurred approximately 85 kya. 

... 

Jointly, these two sets of data support the hypothesis that advantageous mutations within the FADS gene cluster occurred prior to human migration out of Africa (~85 kya), and swept to fixation within African but not European or Asian populations.

I don't know how 85+/-84 can be used to infer that this selection occurred prior to the human migration Out-of-Africa. It seems to me that 85+/-84 is compatible with a wide variety of events. On top of this, this date depends on human-chimp split (=6.5Ma), for which a recent estimate of 7-13Ma has been advanced recently, but also 3.7-6.6Ma. So, I would say that uncertainty about when this selection took place leaves little room for pronouncements that it took place either before, or after Out-of-Africa.

Look at the following frequency map:

I sometimes think that intellectual commitment to recent Out-of-Africa-and-never-back is so strong, that the obvious explanation is overlooked. When Africans are polymorphic and Eurasians are not, this is explained as the result of the OoA bottleneck. When Africans are monomorphic and Eurasians are not -as in this paper- this is explained as the result of selection-to-fixation in Africans.

Now, I don't doubt that there was selection in Africans at the FADS gene cluster. But, rather than imagine that African humans were "tethered to marine sources for LC-PUFAs in isolated geographic regions" throughout the ecologically diverse and geographically huge continent of Africa, I can simply imagine that there was a spread of the adaptive haplotype into Africa, followed by selection, as modern humans, who originated, perhaps, in North Africa, had to drastically shift their diet as they entered Sub-Saharan Africa. I am not convinced that this is what happened, but it is certainly worthy of consideration.

PLoS ONE 7(9): e44926. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0044926

Adaptive Evolution of the FADS Gene Cluster within Africa

Rasika A. Mathias et al.

Long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFAs) are essential for brain structure, development, and function, and adequate dietary quantities of LC-PUFAs are thought to have been necessary for both brain expansion and the increase in brain complexity observed during modern human evolution. Previous studies conducted in largely European populations suggest that humans have limited capacity to synthesize brain LC-PUFAs such as docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) from plant-based medium chain (MC) PUFAs due to limited desaturase activity. Population-based differences in LC-PUFA levels and their product-to-substrate ratios can, in part, be explained by polymorphisms in the fatty acid desaturase (FADS) gene cluster, which have been associated with increased conversion of MC-PUFAs to LC-PUFAs. Here, we show evidence that these high efficiency converter alleles in the FADS gene cluster were likely driven to near fixation in African populations by positive selection ~85 kya. We hypothesize that selection at FADS variants, which increase LC-PUFA synthesis from plant-based MC-PUFAs, played an important role in allowing African populations obligatorily tethered to marine sources for LC-PUFAs in isolated geographic regions, to rapidly expand throughout the African continent 60–80 kya.

Link

Dietary variability of early farmers from Southeastern Italy

Am J Phys Anthropol DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.22134

Examining dietary variability of the earliest farmers of South-Eastern Italy

Roberta Lelli et al.

Stable isotope analysis of human remains has been used to address long-standing debates regarding the speed and degree to which the introduction of farming transformed diet. In Europe, this debate has centered on northern and Atlantic regions with much less attention devoted to the arrival of farming across the Mediterranean. This study presents carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses of collagen from 19 human and 37 faunal remains from eight sites in the Apulia and Marche regions of south-eastern and central Italy, dating to the early phases of agricultural adoption during the first half of the 6th Millennium BC. Where collagen preservation permitted, sulfur stable isotope analysis was also performed. Overall, there was significant isotopic variation between the different geographic regions, although there was also considerable uncertainty in interpreting these data, especially given heterogeneous isotope values for fauna from site to site. By considering isotope data from each region separately, it was noticeable that the degree of carbon isotope enrichment in humans compared to fauna was higher for individuals buried near the coast, consistent with increased marine consumption. Coastal individuals also had higher sulfur isotope values. Nitrogen isotope values were very variable between individuals and regions and, in some cases, were consistent with very high plant food consumption. Overall, early “farmers” in south-east and central Italy consumed a wide range of foods, including marine, and had much more variable stable isotope values than those observed in central and northern Europe during this period, perhaps indicating a different mode for agricultural adoption.

Link

Crafty El Sidrón Neandertals exploited plants for food and medicine

Neanderthals in Northern Spain Had Knowledge of Plants' Healing Qualities, Study Reveals 

An international team of researchers, led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the University of York, has provided the first molecular evidence that Neanderthals not only ate a range of cooked plant foods, but also understood its nutritional and medicinal qualities.

Until recently Neanderthals, who disappeared between 30,000 and 24,000 years ago, were thought to be predominantly meat-eaters. However, evidence of dietary breadth is growing as more sophisticated analyses are undertaken.

Researchers from Spain, the UK and Australia combined pyrolysis gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry with morphological analysis of plant microfossils to identify material trapped in dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) from five Neanderthals from the north Spanish site of El Sidrón.

...

Dr Stephen Buckley, a Research Fellow at the University of York's BioArCh research facility, said: "The evidence indicating this individual was eating bitter-tasting plants such as yarrow and camomile with little nutritional value is surprising. We know that Neanderthals would find these plants bitter, so it is likely these plants must have been selected for reasons other than taste."

... 

The researchers say evidence for cooked carbohydrates is confirmed by both the cracked/roasted starch granules observed microscopically and the molecular evidence for cooking and exposure to wood smoke or smoked food in the form of a range of chemical markers including methyl esters, phenols, and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons found in dental calculus.

...

The study also provides evidence that the starch granules reported from El Sidrón represent the oldest granules ever to be confirmed using a biochemical test, while ancient bacteria found embedded in the calculus offers the potential for future studies in oral health.

The archaeological cave site of El Sidrón, located in the Asturias region of northern Spain, contains the best collection of Neanderthal remains found in the Iberian Peninsula and one of the most important active sites in the world. Discovered in 1994, it contains around 2,000 skeletal remains of at least 13 individuals dating back around 47,300 to 50,600 years.

NATURWISSENSCHAFTEN 2012, DOI: 10.1007/s00114-012-0942-0

Neanderthal medics? Evidence for food, cooking, and medicinal plants entrapped in dental calculus

Karen Hardy et al.

Link

RIP matrilocal egalitarian early European farmers

It seems that Marija Gimbutas' feminist Old Europe fantasy is collapsing like a house of cards.

Michael Balter covers this in Science:

The results of the study, published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that men who were buried with adzes—thought to be an indication of higher social status—were more likely to have grown up on loess soils than men who were buried without adzes.
...
A similarly striking pattern was seen when the team looked at the female skeletons, which made up 153 of the total 311 individuals analyzed. The variation in strontium ratios for females was significantly greater than for males, suggesting that a greater number of females than males had grown up in non-fertile areas.
...
The team came to two main conclusions: First, some males had greater access to fertile soils than others, probably because they were the sons of farmers who had inherited access to the best land. And second, LBK societies were "patrilocal," meaning that males tended to stay put in one place while females moved in from other areas to mate with them.

From the press release:

Professor Bentley said: "Our results, along with archaeobotanical studies that indicate the earliest farmers of Neolithic Germany had a system of land tenure, suggest that the origins of differential access to land can be traced back to an early part of the Neolithic era, rather than only to later prehistory when inequality and intergenerational wealth transfers are more clearly evidenced in burials and material culture. 

"It seems the Neolithic era introduced heritable property (land and livestock) into Europe and that wealth inequality got underway when this happened. After that, of course, there was no looking back: through the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Industrial era wealth inequality increased but the 'seeds' of inequality were sown way back in the Neolithic."

PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1113710109

Community differentiation and kinship among Europe’s first farmers

R. Alexander Bentley et al.

Community differentiation is a fundamental topic of the social sciences, and its prehistoric origins in Europe are typically assumed to lie among the complex, densely populated societies that developed millennia after their Neolithic predecessors. Here we present the earliest, statistically significant evidence for such differentiation among the first farmers of Neolithic Europe. By using strontium isotopic data from more than 300 early Neolithic human skeletons, we find significantly less variance in geographic signatures among males than we find among females, and less variance among burials with ground stone adzes than burials without such adzes. From this, in context with other available evidence, we infer differential land use in early Neolithic central Europe within a patrilocal kinship system.

Link

Of Elephants and Men

The same team described dental remains from Qesem cave.

The press release:

The elephant, a huge package of food that is easy to hunt, disappeared from the Middle East 400,000 years ago -- an event that must have imposed considerable nutritional stress on Homo erectus. Working with Prof. Israel Hershkovitz of TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, the researchers connected this evidence about diet with other cultural and anatomical clues and concluded that the new hominids recently discovered at Qesem Cave in Israel -- who had to be more agile and knowledgeable to satisfy their dietary needs with smaller and faster prey -- took over the Middle Eastern landscape and eventually replaced Homo erectus.

The findings, which have been reported in the journal PLoS One, suggest that the disappearance of elephants 400,000 years ago was the reason that modern humans first appeared in the Middle East. In Africa, elephants disappeared from archaeological sites and Homo sapiens emerged much later -- only 200,000 years ago.

It would be useful to get something more substantial than teeth to estimate the presence of a new hominin lineage as proposed by the authors. In their earlier work they noted some Neandertal traits in their teeth sample, although, on balance, they linked the Qesem pre-200ka teeth with the much later modern humans from the Levant. The 400ka date is (roughly) when geneticists tell us modern humans and Neandertals had already began to diverge genetically.

Neandertal-like traits have been noted in European hominins (such as Atapuerca) well in advance of this age. A priori, the idea that the common ancestor of modern humans and Neandertals lived in the Near East seems attractive to me, since that is the area where the demarcation line between the two species appears to have been. While the authors' theory about the disappearance of elephants and the emergence of the Acheulo-Yabrudian merits attention, I don't think the evidence for it is strong enough yet.

PLoS ONE 6(12): e28689. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028689

Man the Fat Hunter: The Demise of Homo erectus and the Emergence of a New Hominin Lineage in the Middle Pleistocene (ca. 400 kyr) Levant

Miki Ben-Dor et al.

The worldwide association of H. erectus with elephants is well documented and so is the preference of humans for fat as a source of energy. We show that rather than a matter of preference, H. erectus in the Levant was dependent on both elephants and fat for his survival. The disappearance of elephants from the Levant some 400 kyr ago coincides with the appearance of a new and innovative local cultural complex – the Levantine Acheulo-Yabrudian and, as is evident from teeth recently found in the Acheulo-Yabrudian 400-200 kyr site of Qesem Cave, the replacement of H. erectus by a new hominin. We employ a bio-energetic model to present a hypothesis that the disappearance of the elephants, which created a need to hunt an increased number of smaller and faster animals while maintaining an adequate fat content in the diet, was the evolutionary drive behind the emergence of the lighter, more agile, and cognitively capable hominins. Qesem Cave thus provides a rare opportunity to study the mechanisms that underlie the emergence of our post-erectus ancestors, the fat hunters.

Link

Affluent hunter-gatherers revisited

I think we need to get rid of the "affluent hunter-gatherer" paradigm altogether. There is no doubt that humans were well-adapted to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle for a very long time. Species that aren't well-adapted tend to die out.

It is also true that the onset of the Neolithic was associated with negative health trends, exhibited e.g., in skeletal pathologies, and probably the result of a greater disease load due to higher population densities and a shift in diet.

Nonetheless, we should keep in mind that ten thousand years have passed since the onset of agriculture. People have had time to adapt, both in terms of their genetic endowment, and their culture, which mitigates the potential negative effects of the new mode of living. Primitivism in the sense of either fads like the "Paleolithic diet", or in glorifying living hunter-gatherers as some sort of ideal is a rejection of the progress our species has made.

Anthropol Anz. 2011;68(4):349-66.

!Kung nutritional status and the original "affluent society"--a new analysis.
Bogin B.

Abstract
The theme of the 2011 meetings of the German Anthropological Society, "Biological and Cultural Markers of Environmental Pressure", provides the entree to revisit one of Anthropology's most enduring canons - hunters and gathers are well-nourished and healthy. The Dobe !Kung foragers of the Kalahari Desert often serve as a model of hunter-gatherer adaptation for both extant and Paleolithic humans. A re-analysis of food intake, energy expenditure, and demographic data collected in the 1960s for the Dobe !Kung finds that their biocultural indicators of nutritional status and health were, at best, precarious and, at worst, indicative of a society in danger of extinction. Hunting and gathering is the lifestyle to which the human species was most persistently adapted, in terms of the biological, cultural, and emotional meanings of the word 'adapted.' However, the few remaining foraging groups studied in the 20th Century are unlikely to serve as the ideal models of that ancient way of life.

Link

Diet of Byzantine Greeks

AJPA DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.21601

Reconstructing the diets of Greek Byzantine populations (6th–15th centuries AD) using carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios

Chryssi Bourbou et al.

Documentary evidence and artistic representations have traditionally served as the primary sources of information about Byzantine diet. According to these sources, Byzantine diet was based on grain (primarily wheat and barley), oil, and wine, supplemented with legumes, dairy products, meat, and marine resources. Here, we synthesize and compare the results of stable isotope ratio analyses of eight Greek Byzantine populations (6th–15th centuries AD) from throughout Greece. The δ13C and δ15N values are tightly clustered, suggesting that all of these populations likely consumed a broadly similar diet. Both inland and coastal Byzantine populations consumed an essentially land-based C3 diet, significant amounts of animal protein, and possibly some C4 plants, while no evidence of a general dependence on low-δ15N legumes was observed. One interesting result observed in the isotopic data is the evidence for the consumption of marine protein at both coastal sites (a reasonable expectation given their location) and for some individuals from inland sites. This pattern contrasts with previous isotopic studies mainly on prehistoric Greek populations, which have suggested that marine species contributed little, or not at all, to the diet. The possibility that fasting practices contributed to marine protein consumption in the period is discussed, as are possible parallels with published isotope data from western European medieval sites.

Link

Diverse microbes in Pygmy saliva

PLoS ONE 6(8): e23352. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0023352

High Diversity of the Saliva Microbiome in Batwa Pygmies

Ivan Nasidze et al.

We describe the saliva microbiome diversity in Batwa Pygmies, a former hunter-gatherer group from Uganda, using next-generation sequencing of partial 16S rRNA sequences. Microbial community diversity in the Batwa is significantly higher than in agricultural groups from Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We found 40 microbial genera in the Batwa, which have previously not been described in the human oral cavity. The distinctive composition of the salvia microbiome of the Batwa may have been influenced by their recent different lifestyle and diet.

Link

Stature and robusticity during the Neolithic transition: population replacement, not necessarily declining health

First of all, I would like to say that I don't doubt that the Neolithic transition led to a deterioration in health. Contrary to the authors of this paper who suggest that this is "counterintuitive", it would be unexpected if it didn't happen: man lived as a hunter-gatherer for millions of years, and all of the sudden converted to a new lifestyle for which he was not well-suited; it would be surprising if his health did not deteriorate. A good analogy is what is happening right now in much of the world as it undergoes a transition from farming to modern technological life: rise in obesity and its attendant problems, various mental illnesses, etc.

Second, there is a serious flaw with the general thesis that reduction in stature and robusticity was the product of the agricultural transition, as this requires the additional hypothesis that foragers and their succeeding farmers in the same region were the same people. What we are slowly beginning to learn is that they were, in fact, not, and that there have been massive population replacements, beginning with the Neolithic in much of the world.

So, for example, the fact that Neolithic Europeans were shorter than so-called Cro-Magnons is not, so much caused by agriculture, but by the fact that Neolithic Europeans were derived from a people that lived in a hotter climate and were thus smaller-bodied in accordance with Bergmann's Rule. This is consistent, also with the observation (found in the paper) of the Portuguese data not following the general pattern, as Portugal's pre-farming population was not as tall as pre-farmers in more northern latitudes.

So, while it is probably true (and expected) that the agricultural transition was a stressful event for the human species, caution must be exercised when interpreting the pattern of change.

Econ Hum Biol. 2011 Jul;9(3):284-301. Epub 2011 Apr 1.

Stature and robusticity during the agricultural transition: Evidence from the bioarchaeological record.

Mummert A, Esche E, Robinson J, Armelagos GJ.

Abstract
The population explosion that followed the Neolithic revolution was initially explained by improved health experiences for agriculturalists. However, empirical studies of societies shifting subsistence from foraging to primary food production have found evidence for deteriorating health from an increase in infectious and dental disease and a rise in nutritional deficiencies. In Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture (Cohen and Armelagos, 1984), this trend towards declining health was observed for 19 of 21 societies undergoing the agricultural transformation. The counterintuitive increase in nutritional diseases resulted from seasonal hunger, reliance on single crops deficient in essential nutrients, crop blights, social inequalities, and trade. In this study, we examined the evidence of stature reduction in studies since 1984 to evaluate if the trend towards decreased health after agricultural transitions remains. The trend towards a decrease in adult height and a general reduction of overall health during times of subsistence change remains valid, with the majority of studies finding stature to decline as the reliance on agriculture increased. The impact of agriculture, accompanied by increasing population density and a rise in infectious disease, was observed to decrease stature in populations from across the entire globe and regardless of the temporal period during which agriculture was adopted, including Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, South America, and North America.

Link

30,000-year old evidence of plant food processing

PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1006993107

Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing

Anna Revedin et al.

European Paleolithic subsistence is assumed to have been largely based on animal protein and fat, whereas evidence for plant consumption is rare. We present evidence of starch grains from various wild plants on the surfaces of grinding tools at the sites of Bilancino II (Italy), Kostenki 16–Uglyanka (Russia), and Pavlov VI (Czech Republic). The samples originate from a variety of geographical and environmental contexts, ranging from northeastern Europe to the central Mediterranean, and dated to the Mid-Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian and Gorodtsovian). The three sites suggest that vegetal food processing, and possibly the production of flour, was a common practice, widespread across Europe from at least ~30,000 y ago. It is likely that high energy content plant foods were available and were used as components of the food economy of these mobile hunter–gatherers.

Link

Mediterranean diet changes gene expression to fight disease

The FASEB Journal. 2010;24:2546-2557 doi: 10.1096/fj.09-148452

In vivo nutrigenomic effects of virgin olive oil polyphenols within the frame of the Mediterranean diet: a randomized controlled trial

Valentini Konstantinidou et al.

The aim of the study was to assess whether benefits associated with the traditional Mediterranean diet (TMD) and virgin olive oil (VOO) consumption could be mediated through changes in the expression of atherosclerosis-related genes. A randomized, parallel, controlled clinical trial in healthy volunteers (n=90) aged 20 to 50 yr was performed. Three-month intervention groups were as follows: 1) TMD with VOO (TMD+VOO), 2) TMD with washed virgin olive oil (TMD+WOO), and 3) control with participants’ habitual diet. WOO was similar to VOO, but with a lower polyphenol content (55 vs. 328 mg/kg, respectively). TMD consumption decreased plasma oxidative and inflammatory status and the gene expression related with both inflammation [INF- (INF), Rho GTPase-activating protein15 (ARHGAP15), and interleukin-7 receptor (IL7R)] and oxidative stress [adrenergic β2-receptor (ADRB2) and polymerase (DNA-directed) (POLK)] in peripheral blood mononuclear cells. All effects, with the exception of the decrease in POLK expression, were particularly observed when VOO, rich in polyphenols, was present in the TMD dietary pattern. Our results indicate a significant role of olive oil polyphenols in the down-regulation of proatherogenic genes in the context of a TMD. In addition, the benefits associated with a TMD and olive oil polyphenol consumption on cardiovascular risk can be mediated through nutrigenomic effects.

Link

Mediterranean diet improves autonomic heart function among middle-aged men

Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes doi: 10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.109.905810

Mediterranean Dietary Pattern Is Associated With Improved Cardiac Autonomic Function Among Middle-Aged Men

A Twin Study

Jun Dai et al.

Background Reduced heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of cardiac autonomic dysfunction, is a risk factor for coronary artery disease. Diet can influence HRV, but this association may be confounded by genetic and environmental factors.

Methods and Results We administered the Willett Food Frequency Questionnaire to 276 middle-aged male twins. We derived a score measuring the extent to which an individual's diet conformed to the Mediterranean diet following a published algorithm. The higher the score, the greater the similarity to the Mediterranean diet. All twins underwent 24-hour ambulatory ECG recording. Time and frequency domain measures of HRV were calculated. Mixed-effects regression was used to partition the association into between- and within-twin pair differences. After adjusting for energy intake, other nutritional factors, shared genes, and common environment, a 1-unit higher score was significantly associated with 3.9% to 13% higher time and frequency domain HRV parameters. Further controlling for known cardiovascular risk factors and use of fish oil supplements and medications did not substantially change the estimates.

Conclusions The Mediterranean dietary pattern is associated with higher HRV.

Link

Lathyrus consumption in Late Bronze and Iron Age Israel

Related:

• The script of the Philistines
• Tayinat Dark Age temple

Journal of Archaeological Science doi:10.1016/j.jas.2010.05.008

Lathyrus Consumption in Late Bronze and Iron Age Sites in Israel: An Aegean Affinity

Yael Mahler-Slasky et al.

Abstract

This paper presents new evidence, together with previous findings, for the appearance of charred seeds of Lathyrus sativus (grass pea)/L. cicera. This grain legume was a food staple in ancient times, principally in the Aegean region, but also appeared sporadically and in a limited way in the archaeological record of the southern Levant. It is encountered there first in the Late Bronze Age but disappears in the record at the end of the Iron Age. Although a palatable, nutritious plant adapted for growing under adverse conditions, its seeds can be toxic when consumed in large quantities. Apparently L. sativus/cicera made its way to the lowlands of the southern Levant, either by trade or with Philistine immigrants. It is absent at other south Levantine Bronze Age (i.e., Canaanite) and Iron Age sites and it remained a food component in the southern coastal region (i.e., Philistia, the region associated with the biblical Philistines) up to the end of Iron Age II, suggesting a possible ethnic association. Evidence of L. sativus/cicera joins that of another Aegean archaeobotanical import from an earlier, Middle Bronze Age II context, L. clymenum, found at Tel Nami, a coastal site farther to the north of the region.

Link

People who eat a Mediterranean-like diet less likely to have brain infarcts

Mediterranean diet may lower risk of brain damage that causes thinking problems

ST. PAUL, Minn. – A Mediterranean diet may help people avoid the small areas of brain damage that can lead to problems with thinking and memory, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 62nd Annual Meeting in Toronto April 10 to April 17, 2010.

The study found that people who ate a Mediterranean-like diet were less likely to have brain infarcts, or small areas of dead tissue linked to thinking problems.

The Mediterranean diet includes high intake of vegetables, legumes, fruits, cereals, fish and monounsaturated fatty acids such as olive oil; low intake of saturated fatty acids, dairy products, meat and poultry; and mild to moderate amounts of alcohol.

For the study, researchers assessed the diets of 712 people in New York and divided them into three groups based on how closely they were following the Mediterranean diet. Then they conducted MRI brain scans of the people an average of six years later. A total of 238 people had at least one area of brain damage.

Those who were most closely following a Mediterranean-like diet were 36 percent less likely to have areas of brain damage than those who were least following the diet. Those moderately following the diet were 21 percent less likely to have brain damage than the lowest group.

"The relationship between this type of brain damage and the Mediterranean diet was comparable with that of high blood pressure," said study author Nikolaos Scarmeas, MD, MSc, of Columbia University Medical Center in New York and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. "In this study, not eating a Mediterranean-like diet had about the same effect on the brain as having high blood pressure."

Previous research by Scarmeas and his colleagues showed that a Mediterranean-like diet may be associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease and may lengthen survival in people with Alzheimer's disease. According to the present study, these associations may be partially explained by fewer brain infarcts.

Mediterranean diet and risk of depression

Archives of General Psychiatry Vol. 66 No. 10, October 2009

Association of the Mediterranean Dietary Pattern With the Incidence of Depression

Almudena Sánchez-Villegas et al.

Abstract

Context Adherence to the Mediterranean dietary pattern (MDP) is thought to reduce inflammatory, vascular, and metabolic processes that may be involved in the risk of clinical depression.

Objective To assess the association between adherence to the MDP and the incidence of clinical depression.

Design Prospective study that uses a validated 136-item food frequency questionnaire to assess adherence to the MDP. The MDP score positively weighted the consumption of vegetables, fruit and nuts, cereal, legumes, and fish; the monounsaturated- to saturated-fatty-acids ratio; and moderate alcohol consumption, whereas meat or meat products and whole-fat dairy were negatively weighted.

Setting A dynamic cohort of university graduates (Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra/University of Navarra Follow-up [SUN] Project).

Participants A total of 10 094 initially healthy Spanish participants from the SUN Project participated in the study. Recruitment began on December 21, 1999, and is ongoing.

Main Outcome Measure Participants were classified as having incident depression if they were free of depression and antidepressant medication at baseline and reported a physician-made diagnosis of clinical depression and/or antidepressant medication use during follow-up.

Results After a median follow-up of 4.4 years, 480 new cases of depression were identified. The multiple adjusted hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals) of depression for the 4 upper successive categories of adherence to the MDP (taking the category of lowest adherence as reference) were 0.74 (0.57-0.98), 0.66 (0.50-0.86), 0.49 (0.36-0.67), and 0.58 (0.44-0.77) (P for trend <.001). Inverse dose-response relationships were found for fruit and nuts, the monounsaturated- to saturated-fatty-acids ratio, and legumes.

Conclusions Our results suggest a potential protective role of the MDP with regard to the prevention of depressive disorders; additional longitudinal studies and trials are needed to confirm these findings.

Link

Comparison of Neanerthal and modern human diets

PNAS doi:10.1073/pnas.0903821106

Isotopic evidence for the diets of European Neanderthals and early modern humans

Michael P. Richards, Erik Trinkaus

Abstract

We report here on the direct isotopic evidence for Neanderthal and early modern human diets in Europe. Isotopic methods indicate the sources of dietary protein over many years of life, and show that Neanderthals had a similar diet through time (≈120,000 to ≈37,000 cal BP) and in different regions of Europe. The isotopic evidence indicates that in all cases Neanderthals were top-level carnivores and obtained all, or most, of their dietary protein from large herbivores. In contrast, early modern humans (≈40,000 to ≈27,000 cal BP) exhibited a wider range of isotopic values, and a number of individuals had evidence for the consumption of aquatic (marine and freshwater) resources. This pattern includes Oase 1, the oldest directly dated modern human in Europe (≈40,000 cal BP) with the highest nitrogen isotope value of all of the humans studied, likely because of freshwater fish consumption. As Oase 1 was close in time to the last Neanderthals, these data may indicate a significant dietary shift associated with the changing population dynamics of modern human emergence in Europe.

Link