Ancient roasted root vegetables found in 170,000-year-old cave
By Hannah Frishberg, New York Post, January 3 , 2020
Root vegetables, Shutterstock image
Cavemen did not eat nearly as much meat as we thought, according to the recent discovery of ancient root vegetables.
Scientists have dated charred plant stems found in a South African cave to be nearly 170,000 years old, a study published Friday in the journal Science finds.
Lead author Lyn Wadley, of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, and her team discovered a charcoal pile within the rock shelter. After years of microscopic analysis, they confirmed that its ash layer contained hundreds of plants.
The discovery represents rare proof of prehistoric humans’ consumption of carbohydrate-rich roasted veggies. It also shows that early people were actually healthy in their eating habits.
“I think people were eating a very balanced diet, a combination of carbohydrates and proteins,” Wadley tells the New Scientist. Despite the common notion that Stone Age people ate a lot of meat, Wadley says her findings help prove that they actually had a veggie-rich diet.
“I’m afraid the paleo diet is really a misnomer,” she says of the fad, which encourages people to eat significantly more meat than its purported inspiration — ancient people — likely did.
“Early evidence of cooked starchy plant food is sparse, yet the consumption of starchy roots is likely to have been a key innovation in the human diet,” the authors write.
Other recent ancient discoveries include the uncovering of an “early Bronze Age New York,” in Israel, the finding that Neanderthals learned to smile so they could get sex and the unearthing of evidence in New York of the world’s oldest forest.
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