Archeological evidence shows hunter-gatherers in South America ate mostly plants

What if the real paleo diet was mostly veggie

HILLEL ARON / January 23, 2024



The Wilamaya Patjxa archeological site in Peru produced human remains showing that the diets of early people of the Andes were primarily composed of plant materials (Randy Haas)

(CN) — Archeologists and those who study prehistory have long assumed that hunter-gatherers, particularly those living in cold parts of the world, ate mostly meat.

But in a new published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal "PLOS ONE," researchers argue that hunter-gatherers, at least those living in the Andes mountains of South America, subsisted on a diet composed of roughly 80% plant matter and 20% meat.

Though the study is only of one localized population, its lead author, archaeologist Randy Haas, suspects that the conclusions will apply to other parts of the world.

"There is a distinct possibility that we've gotten the the dietary regime of people in other places wrong in similar ways, for the same reasons," said Haas, an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming

Haas and a team of researchers analyzed the remains of 24 people from the Wilamaya Patjxa and Soro Mik'aya Patjxa burial sites in Peru, near Lake Titicaca, in an area that would later become part of the Inca Empire. The two dozen individuals lived 9,000 to 6,500 years ago.

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https://www.courthousenews.com/archeological-evidence-shows-hunter-gatherers-in-south-america-ate-mostly-plants/