A ravenous love for meat has saturated depictions of prehistoric humans for ages, but in a surprising twist, some groups may have embraced mostly plant-based diets.
A new study has raised the argument that humans’ historic hunger for meat might not have been so universal in the ancient world, as evidenced by early humans in the Andes Mountains who ate more plants than meat.
For years, archaeologists saw meat as the main course of early human diets. A new study published in PLOS ONE now challenges this belief with recent research that points to prehistoric plant-based diets.
Randy Haas, University of Wyoming archaeology professor led the research effort, analyzing the remains of 24 individuals from the Wilamaya Patjxa and Soro Mik’aya Patjxa burial sites in Peru. The results indicated that early human diets in the Andes Mountains consisted of 80 percent plant matter and 20 percent meat.
Meat did account ...
