Real Paleo, Kennewick Man, Ate Mostly Seafood

Analysis of the 9,000-year-old remains of the so-called Kennewick man who lived in what is now Washington state reveals this actual Paleo man didn’t eat much big game but rather got the bulk of his calories from fish and other seafood.

The finding not only throws off some common perceptions of what paleo men actually ate, but also adds some mystery to the fully intact skeleton found in 1996 in Kennewick, Washington.

The ancient human, who stood at 5 feet 7 inches, was found in a region where four-footed game were aplenty. So why wasn't he hunting them?

"The only theory I can suppose for why he chose not to eat local game (which was abundantly available) is that he had some deeply-held belief system that caused him to reject terrestrial meat from his diet," Henry Schwarcz, professor emeritus in the School of Geography and Earth Sciences at McMaster University, said in an email to Discovery News.

"It is hard to imagine how a people could persist in such a belief system as long as these data suggest."

Schwarcz added that his research doesn't exclude the possibility that Kennewick Man also ate plant-based foods like nuts and berries (which happen to also be on the Paleo diet menu).

Another possibility is that the ancient man may have been killed far from his main home. His remains were found some 370 miles inland -- but perhaps his home was closer to the Pacific Ocean.

"Certainly his diet is matched more closely by consumption of marine mammals that live mainly on the coast," Schwarcz said.

Schwarcz, renowned for his research in isotopic analysis of ancient bones, based his findings on his analysis of collagen in a small bone fragment from the famous and controversial skeleton. Hepresented his work at the recent annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in St. Louis.

Previous research has shown that the man died at about age 40. He had lived with an arrowhead stuck in his hip and also suffered from five broken ribs, two dents in his skull and a bum shoulder (probably from throwing so many spears).

"He was a strong, robust man (based on the appearance of his skeleton) who had managed to survive at least one attack by another human," said Schwarcz. "He should have been an able fisherman/hunter."

Kennewick man is one of the oldest and most complete skeletons found in North America. Recent estimates date the remains to between 8,400-8,690 years old. The skeleton became the subject of an eight-year-long lawsuit between scientists who sued the federal government (along with several Native American tribes) to prevent the bones from being turned over to regional tribes for reburial.

In 2004 the Ninth Circuit upheld a ruling that Kennewick Man is not related to any of the present-day tribes and therefore can remain at its current location at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle. The debate over his ethnicity and origins -- and what should happen to him -- continue today.

Schwarcz's analysis was surprising since Kennewick Man was found by the Columbia River in an area where big game were believed to be abundant.

While the trendy Paleo Diet includes fish on its list of acceptable foods, the diet is also heavy on red meat and other foods like nuts and berries, that our ancestors are thought to have eaten before the dawn of agriculture and animal domestication.

This particular ancient human seems to have missed the memo and stuck to mostly seafood.
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Reference:

Onion, Amanda. 2015. “Real Paleo, Kennewick Man, Ate Mostly Seafood”. Discovery News. Posted: April 3, 2015. Available online: http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/real-paleo-kennewick-man-ate-mostly-seafood-150403.htm

Nutrients in food vital to location of early human settlements: The original 'Palaeo-diet'

Research led by the University of Southampton has found that early humans were driven by a need for nutrient-rich food to select 'special places' in northern Europe as their main habitat. Evidence of their activity at these sites comes in the form of hundreds of stone tools, including handaxes.

A study led by physical geographer at Southampton Professor Tony Brown, in collaboration with archaeologist Dr Laura Basell at Queen's University Belfast, has found that sites popular with our early human ancestors, were abundant in foods containing nutrients vital for a balanced diet. The most important sites, dating between 500,000 to 100,000 years ago were based at the lower end of river valleys, providing ideal bases for early hominins – early humans who lived before Homo sapiens (us).

Professor Brown says: "Our research suggests that floodplain zones closer to the mouth of a river provided the ideal place for hominin activity, rather than forested slopes, plateaus or estuaries. The landscape in these locations tended to be richer in the nutrients critical for maintaining population health and maximising reproductive success."

The project was funded by English Heritage and the University of Southampton's Faculty of Social and Human Sciences. It involved academics from Geography and Environment and Medicine at Southampton, together with Archaeology at Queen's.

The researchers began by identifying Palaeolithic sites in southern England and northern France where high concentrations of handaxes had been excavated –for example at Dunbridge in Hampshire, Swanscombe near Dartford and the Somme Valley in France. They found there were fewer than 25 sites where 500 handaxes or more were discovered. The high concentration of these artefacts suggests significant activity at the sites and that they were regularly used by early hominins.

Professor Brown and his colleagues then compiled a database of plants and animals known to exist in the Pleistocene epoch (a period between 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) to establish a potential list of nutrient resources in the landscape and an estimation of the possible diet. This showed that an abundance of nutritious foods were available and suggests this was likely to have been the dominant factor driving early humans to focus on these sites in the lower reaches of river valleys, close to the upper tidal limit of rivers.

Over 50 nutrients are needed to sustain human life. In particular, it would have been essential for early humans to find sources of protein, fats, carbohydrates, folic acid and vitamin C. The researchers suggest vitamins and protein may have come from sources such as raw liver, eggs, fish and plants, including watercress (which grows year round). Fats in particular, may have come from bone marrow, beaver tails and highly nutritious eels.

The nutritional diversity of these sites allowed hominins to colonise the Atlantic fringe of north west Europe during warm periods of the Pleistocene. These sites permitted the repeated occupation of this marginal area from warmer climate zones further south.

Professor Brown comments: "We can speculate that these types of locations were seen as 'healthy' or 'good' places to live which hominins revisited on a regular basis. If this is the case, the sites may have provided 'nodal points' or base camps along nutrient-rich route-ways through the Palaeolithic landscape, allowing early humans to explore northwards to more challenging environments."
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References:

EurekAlert. 2014. “Nutrients in food vital to location of early human settlements: The original 'Palaeo-diet'”. EurekAlert. Posted: December 10, 2013. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-12/uos-nif121013.php