Genomic ancestry, diet and microbiomes of Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers from San Teodoro cave.

Recent improvements in the analysis of ancient biomolecules from human remains and associated dental calculus have provided new insights into the prehistoric diet and genetic diversity of our species. Here we present a multi-omics study, integrating metagenomic and proteomic analyses of dental calculus, and human ancient DNA analysis of the petrous bones of two post-Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) individuals from San Teodoro cave (Italy), to reconstruct their lifestyle and the post-LGM resettlement of Europe. Our analyses show genetic homogeneity in Sicily during the Palaeolithic, representing a hitherto unknown Italian genetic lineage within the previously identified Villabruna cluster. We argue that this lineage took refuge in Italy during the LGM, followed by a subsequent spread to central-western Europe. Analysis of dental calculus showed a diet rich in animal proteins which is also reflected on the oral microbiome composition. Our results demonstrate the power of this approach in the study of prehistoric humans and will enable future research to reach a more holistic understanding of the population dynamics and ecology.

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

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 (GSTs) 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 GSTs 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.

Before humans invented agriculture and the first farmers appeared in southwestern Asia, other ancient foragers (also known as hunter-gatherers) in southeastern Europe had already developed a taste for consuming wild plants. There is evidence to suggest that these foragers were intensely gathering wild cereal grains before the arrival of agriculture. However, until now, the only place outside southwestern Asia this has been shown to have occurred is in Greece, and is dated around 20,000 years ago. In the past, researchers proposed that forager societies in the Balkans also consumed wild cereals before transitioning to agriculture. But this has been difficult to prove because plant foods are less likely to preserve than animal bones and teeth, making them harder to detect in prehistoric contexts. To overcome this, Cristiani et al. studied teeth from 60 individuals found in archaeological sites between Serbia and Romania, which are attributed to the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic periods. Food particles extracted from crusty deposits on the teeth (called the dental calculus) were found to contain structures typically found in plants. In addition, Cristiani et al. discovered similar plant food residues on ground stone tools which also contained traces of wear associated with the processing of wild cereals. These findings suggest that foragers in the central Balkans were already consuming certain species of wild cereal grains 11,500 years ago, before agriculture arrived in Europe. It is possible that sharing knowledge about plant resources may have helped introduce domesticated plant species in to this region as early as 6500 BC. This work challenges the deep-rooted idea that the diet of hunter-gatherers during the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods primarily consisted of animal proteins. In addition, it highlights the active role the eating habits of foragers might have played in introducing certain domesticated plant species that have become primary staples of our diet today.

Multipronged dental analyses reveal dietary differences in last foragers and first farmers at Grotta Continenza, central Italy (15,500-7000 BP).

This paper provides results from a suite of analyses made on human dental material from the Late Palaeolithic to Neolithic strata of the cave site of Grotta Continenza situated in the Fucino Basin of the Abruzzo region of central Italy. The available human remains from this site provide a unique possibility to study ways in which forager versus farmer lifeways affected human odonto-skeletal remains. The main aim of our study is to understand palaeodietary patterns and their changes over time as reflected in teeth. These analyses involve a review of metrics and oral pathologies, micro-fossils preserved in the mineralized dental plaque, macrowear, and buccal microwear. Our results suggest that these complementary approaches support the assumption about a critical change in dental conditions and status with the introduction of Neolithic foodstuff and habits. However, we warn that different methodologies applied here provide data at different scales of resolution for detecting such changes and a multipronged approach to the study of dental collections is needed for a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of diachronic changes.

Dental calculus and isotopes provide direct evidence of fish and plant consumption in Mesolithic Mediterranean.

In this contribution we dismantle the perceived role of marine resources and plant foods in the subsistence economy of Holocene foragers of the Central Mediterranean using a combination of dental calculus and stable isotope analyses. The discovery of fish scales and flesh fragments, starch granules and other plant and animal micro-debris in the dental calculus of a Mesolithic forager dated to the end of the 8th millenium BC and buried in the Vlakno Cave on Dugi Otok Island in the Croatian Archipelago demonstrates that marine resources were regularly consumed by the individual together with a variety of plant foods. Since previous stable isotope data in the Eastern Adriatic and the Mediterranean region emphasises that terrestrial-based resources contributed mainly to Mesolithic diets in the Mediterranean Basin, our results provide an alternative view of the dietary habits of Mesolithic foragers in the Mediterranean region based on a combination of novel methodologies and data.