The plant component of an Acheulian diet at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel

Abstract

Diet is central for understanding hominin evolution, adaptation, and environmental exploitation, but Paleolithic plant remains are scarce. A unique macrobotanical assemblage of 55 food plant taxa from the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel includes seeds, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and plants producing underground storage organs. The food plant remains were part of a diet that also included aquatic and terrestrial fauna. This diverse assemblage, 780,000 y old, reflects a varied plant diet, staple plant foods, environmental knowledge, seasonality, and the use of fire in food processing. It provides insight into the wide spectrum of the diet of mid-Pleistocene hominins, enhancing our understanding of their adaptation from the perspective of subsistence. Our results shed light on hominin abilities to adjust to new environments, facilitating population diffusion and colonization beyond Africa. We reconstruct the major vegetal foodstuffs, while considering the possibility of some detoxification by fire. The site, located in the Levantine Corridor through which several hominin waves dispersed out of Africa, provides a unique opportunity to study mid-Pleistocene vegetal diet and is crucial for understanding subsistence aspects of hominin dispersal and the transition from an African-based to a Eurasian diet.

Keywords: Acheulian; food plants; paleo diet; seasonality; use of fire.

Fig. 1.

Food plant remains from GBY. (A) Quercus sp., young cupule (layer II-6 L1); (B) T. natans, upper tip of nut (layer III-7); (C) Nuphar luteum, seed (layer II-7); (D) B. umbellatus, seed (layer III-4); (E) Scirpus lacustris, seed (layer II-9); and (F) Vitis sylvestris, pip (layer IV-7).

Fig. 2.

Count, frequency, types, and seasonality of food plants found at GBY arranged from youngest layer to oldest layer (left to right, respectively) (Table S5). (A) Number of taxa and plant foods in the archaeological layers. (B) Frequency of food organ types in the archaeological layers. (C) Frequency of edible organ types according to seasonality in the richest archaeological layers.

Fig. S1.

MDS (PROXCAL) plot of 14 archaeological layers based on the Chebychev distance calculated from the proportion of 36 plant species remains. Dispersion accounted for (i.e., variance explained) =0.99, and the stress (i.e., the degree of correspondence between the distances among points calculated by the MDS map and the input matrix) =0.0098. The dashed line denotes the 95% confidence ellipse.

Fig. 3.

The probability (±95% confidence intervals) of detecting the remains of a key food plant in archaeological and geological layers. This probability was significantly different between archaeological and geological layers (LR ${\mathrm{\chi }}_1^2$ = 5.1, P = 0.024).