On Palaeo-diet -- An exception to the rule?

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

All,

It is a well known, established, and scientifically marketable fact that Neanderthals were voracious carnivores, efficiently preying on Ice Age megafauna, and that they were first displaced and then replaced by “OoAfricans” with an opportunistic omnivorous dietary edge. Not only were the latter artists, with all that implies, but they also had a taste for a wide variety of smaller critters, and, perhaps more importantly, definitely had an incipient “palaeo-Vegan” attitude.

Well, here is what seems to be an exception to this scenario. And it had to be a woman who happened not like Saiga tatarica.

Drucker,  Dorothée G. and Dominique Henry-Gambier. 2005. Determination of the dietary habits of a Magdalenian woman from Saint-Germain-la-Rivière in southwestern France using stable isotopes. Journal of Human Evolution (in press).

Abstract:
To obtain direct dietary information, carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios were measured from bone collagen acquired from the well-preserved skeleton of a Magdalenian woman from the site of Saint-Germain-la-Rivière in southwestern France. Comparison of d13C and d15N values of the human bone collagen to those of bone collagen from local herbivores and carnivores indicates that the woman’s primary source of protein was the meat of large terrestrial herbivores. Application of a linear mixing model to the woman’s isotopic signature indicates that (1) no significant marine-derived protein contributed to her average diet; (2) saiga antelope, which dominates the faunal remains at Saint- Germain-la-Rivière, was not the main source of terrestrial protein; and (3) her pattern of subsistence reflects a less opportunistic behavior than generally attributed to humans from this period. Dietary proportions of prey reflected by the number of identified specimens are revised using meat percentage estimates, which de-emphasize the importance of saiga antelope in human subsistence at Saint-Germain-la-Rivière during the middle Magdalenian.

Keywords:
Carbon-13; Collagen; Diet; Human; Magdalenian; Nitrogen-15; Saiga antelope; Saint-Germain-la-Rivière; Southwestern France

2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Click HERE for access to the full article.

Jacques Cinq-Mars

[richard01]

This is very interesting if only because of three negatives

- No marine-derived protein
- Not saiga antelope although many bones about
- Less opportunistic 

I can't access the full article to see just what she did eat - it would, though, be miraculous if they could infer her detailed diet just from her bone collagen

I wonder how many previous reports on this cave have stated that, from the bones found, saiga antelope was the major diet item.

regards

Richard

[AWSX]

Well the "Low Carb Diet" prevailed into the mesolithic in some H. s.s. communities in England. This short article from British Archeology describes a similar study on a 7700 year old woman that 'ate like a wolf'.

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba66/news.shtml.

[lagarvelho]

Richard and AWSX:

I can't get the full article either(sniff!), but it would be interesting to know exactly what she *did* eat.  OTOH, maybe the "Magdalenians" knew saiga were tough and untasty or something.  I really don't know.  What I do know is, that any time you have a bunch of people living in a climate where winters are long and cold, they are going to eat a *lot* of meat.  And not many plants.  It doesn't matter if it's Neandertals, "Magdalenian" moderns, or Inuit people.  The results are all fairly similar.  And they tell you more about the climate and what's available locally, than they do about the people eating the stuff.
Anne G

[Dale Hoogeveen]

Hi Anne,

The saiga antelope is in almost constant movement and does not handle barriers very well.  That makes it both essentially non-resident (almost perpetually migratory) and not only open terraine, but pretty much restricted to unbroken open terraine.

So it would never have been a year around food source and even when present would almost certainly have required a team hunting approach.  Would large amounts of saiga meat on a few days a year or perhaps even every few years have left any kind of readable signature?  

The woman who left the fossils may simply not have been around when those who left the saiga bones were.  

Interestingly modern saiga, although very cold tolerant are not currently arctic animals.  For a modern range map see
http://www.ultimateungulate.com/Artiodactyla/Saiga_tatarica.html

Jacques probably knows about this website:
http://www.beringia.com/02/02maina11.html

which discusses ice age saiga distribution.

See also:
http://www.iccs.org.uk/papers/mammrev.pdf

which describes modern saiga habitat:
"The Saiga is regarded as a species of the steppe (Kucheruk, 1959), the desert (Vasenko, 1950;
Afanas’ev, 1960; Reimov, 1981), the semi-desert (Rakov, 1956; Zhirnov, 1982) and both the semidesert
and desert (Sludskii, 1961; Fadeev & Sludskii, 1982; Bekenov, 1988). "

Saiga range is of a quite specifc type and there is little tolerance in the animal for a great deal of variation in that.  
Unless glacial maximum saigas were dramatically different from the current, highly-derived type, that points to extensive desert and semi desert areas across Eurasia dominated by continental climates with light snow fall, a surprisingly uniform expression over very large areas of Eurasia from Britain to Beringinia.  

Perhaps the Saiga would be a better barometer of Eurasian climate going into and through the last glacial maximum than the more adaptable reindeer.  It seems to have colonized widely during that period, apparently falling back, as the last glacial maximum ended, into something approaching what is probably both its recent range and the range it had prior.  Although that is harsh, it is definitely not arctic or even subarctic.

Dale

Richard and AWSX:

I can't get the full article either(sniff!), but it would be interesting to know exactly what she *did* eat.  OTOH, maybe the "Magdalenians" knew saiga were tough and untasty or something.  I really don't know.  What I do know is, that any time you have a bunch of people living in a climate where winters are long and cold, they are going to eat a *lot* of meat.  And not many plants.  It doesn't matter if it's Neandertals, "Magdalenian" moderns, or Inuit people.  The results are all fairly similar.  And they tell you more about the climate and what's available locally, than they do about the people eating the stuff.
Anne G