Men in ancient Europe likely had better access to protein-rich foods than women did

A new Simon Fraser University study has found men in ancient Europe likely had better access to protein-rich foods than women did.

Analyzing samples from more than 12,000 skeletons from hundreds of sites across Europe over a 10,000-year period, researchers say the findings are strong evidence of long-suspected gender-based diet inequalities throughout history.

“We think these differences were largely culturally motivated,” says Michael Richards, archaeology professor and senior author of the study. “In earlier periods, animal protein was energetically ‘expensive’ to obtain, and in later periods it often carried higher monetary costs. As a result, it likely became a higher-status food and was preferentially consumed by males.”

Published in PNAS Nexus, the study analyzed isotopes found in 12,281 individuals across 393 sites in Europe dating as far back as10,000 years. Isotopes are chemical markers in human remains that allow researchers to reconstruct past diets. 

Nitrogen isotopes reflect the amount of animal protein consumed while carbon isotopes indicate how much plant-based foods, like grains, were ingested.

To compare inequality across different regions and time periods, researchers applied a method from economics known as the interdecile ratio. This approach provides a standardized way to measure how diets differed within populations.

Study results show men were more often among those with the richest diets, while women were more frequently among those with poorer diets. 

In early Neolithic farming societies (approximately 10000 to 2000 BC), diets were relatively similar, though differences between men and women were present. Inequality increased during the Bronze Age (3300 to 1200 BC), alongside advances in agriculture and more complex social hierarchies, and reached its peak in Classical Antiquity (700 BC to 500 AD).

Biological factors may account for some of the differences in diet, since females often (not always) require fewer calories per day than males, Richards says. But diet disparities widened over time, with the gap between the highest- and lowest-status individuals increasing based on nitrogen isotope values, explains Richards.

“This was especially pronounced in the medieval period, where clear dietary differences emerge between upper and lower classes of society,” he says.  

Co-authored by SFU postdoctoral fellow Rozenn Colleter, this research was conducted in collaboration with the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research and Géosciences Environment Toulouse. Some of the samples used in this study were analyzed in SFU’s Isotope Laboratory, one of the few isotope labs in the world based within a university archaeological department.

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Journal

PNAS Nexus

DOI

10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag033 

Rubbish heaps help reconstruct ancient Greenlanders’ farms, seal hunts, and toilets

 

Microbiome of ancient middens sheds new light on the daily life of Paleo-Inuit and old Norse

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Frontiers

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The authors during their fieldwork on Greenland

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Credit: Louise Hindborg Mortensen

Greenland has a long and checkered history of human settlement: several Paleo-Inuit cultures since approximately 2,500 BCE, descendants of Vikings between the tenth and fifteenth centuries, and early modern Danes since 1721. All left their traces on the landscape, for example in the form of ancient domestic rubbish heaps. Composed of waste like animal bones, excrement, mollusk shells, and human artefacts, these middens are a precious resource for archaeologists.

But what can microbiologists contribute to the study of these middens, for example revealing which diseases plagued historic populations, and which animals they kept but perhaps didn’t eat? And now that the Arctic is warming three to four times faster than the global average, could thawing middens be a source of resurgent infectious diseases?

“Here we show that the risk of release of ancient pathogens from ancient middens on Greenland is currently low,” said Dr Frank Møller Aarestrup, a professor at the National Food Institute of Denmark Technical University and corresponding author of the article in Frontiers in Microbiology. “Rather, we found that these middens in the cold Arctic acted like long-term natural experiments. Human- and animal-associated bacterial signals, including opportunistic bacteria and bacteria carrying antibiotic resistance genes, have remained detectable in them many centuries later as the legacy of human activity: for example, livestock farming by the ancient Norse.”

Studying the dustbins of history

In 2020 and 2021 in West and South Greenland, Aarestrup and colleagues collected samples from several middens frozen in time by permafrost and covering 4,500 years of human life in Greenland. These had been identified by the Greenland National Museum and Archives registry. At ancient Norse sites, for example at Kapisilit and Narsarsuaq, they also collected soil samples from historic winter enclosures and summer grazing grounds for livestock. The researchers used DNA sequencing to reconstruct entire bacterial communities. They compared their findings to those in 143 soil samples from areas of permafrost distant from any historical settlements.

The sequencing revealed between 9 and 202 bacterial species per midden, for a total of 1,207 species. Importantly, many of these species were previously undescribed and could only be assigned to broad taxonomic categories like families and orders. “This […] highlights how poorly described Arctic soils and archaeological deposits remain,” wrote the authors.

Middens had significantly richer bacterial communities than surrounding pristine soils, confirming that they preserved the biological legacy of human activity. Middens from the Paleo-Inuit had the most soil-like bacterial communities, indicating that the microbial imprint from humans and animals diminishes over time.

Groups of bacteria known to live on or within animal and human hosts predominated in most middens. These included harmless bacteria from human feces like Clostridium massilliamazoniense, Clostridium baratii which can cause botulism, and Paeniclostridium sordellii, which can cause life-threatening human diseases like toxic shock syndrome, sepsis, and gas gangrene.

Bacterial communities depended strongly on the type of waste material in each midden. For example, those from early colonial era Nuuk contained decomposing seal skins and were rich in the bacterium Clostridium perfringens, a major cause of food poisoning. Romboutsia species and Paraclostridium sordellii – which live in the gut of many animals – were abundant in middens filled with animal carcasses, while early Norse middens with decomposing bones were rich in unknown species of Proteobacteria and Clostridiaceae.

No reason to worry

The authors also found a great diversity of genes associated with antimicrobial resistance in bacterial genomes from middens. The presence of the same genes in ancient and contemporary soil layers signaled that microbes resistant to antimicrobials can linger in permafrost for centuries. However, the authors concluded from the spatial distribution of these pathogens that they don’t spread far from thawing middens. They thus appear to pose little risk to public health – at least for now.

"The microbiome in thawing permafrost appeared to be rapidly replaced by local contemporary environmental microbes once released into run-offs,” observed co-author Dr Saria Otani, an associate professor at the National Food Institute.

“However, it is not known whether the risk of release of pathogens will increase with increasing temperatures, or whether this might be greater in other Arctic regions. For this reason, it would be prudent to include microbiome characterization as a routine monitoring aspect during archaeological visits," counseled last author Dr Anders Priemé, a professor at the University of Copenhagen.

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Journal

Frontiers in Microbiology

DOI

10.3389/fmicb.2026.1809037 

Researchers push earliest evidence of human fire use back to over a million years

 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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Wonderwerk Cave Entrance

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A new study has uncovered evidence that early human ancestors were using fire in South Africa's Wonderwerk Cave between 1.07 and 1.79 million years ago, extending the chronology of one of the earliest known records of fire use associated with hominins. By applying a new method that detects traces of burning in fossil bones, researchers found signs of repeated fire use deep inside the cave, far beyond the reach of natural wildfires. The findings suggest that early humans were bringing naturally occurring fire into the cave and maintaining it there, providing new insights into how our ancestors first began to harness one of the most important tools in human history.

A new study has uncovered evidence that early human ancestors were using fire far earlier than previously confirmed, with traces of fire use dating to between 1.07 and 1.79 million years ago in South Africa's Wonderwerk Cave.

The study was part of an ongoing collaboration between Dr. Liora Kolska Horwitz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's National Natural History Collections (co-director of the Wonderwerk Cave project with Prof Michael Chazan, University of Toronto) and and an international team of researchers from Spain, Argentina, Canada, USA, South Africa, Portugal and Israel. Their research combines methods from archaeology, paleontology, geology and a range of scientific techniques to investigate one of the key developments in human evolution: the use of fire.

The current paper builds on the previous discovery of early fire at Wonderwerk Cave, located in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa, that was dated to ~1 million years ago (published by members of the team in 2012 in PNAS), that provided the oldest evidence for intentional use of fire worldwide.

 Continuing research at Wonderwerk Cave has now pushed the date for early fire back further, with new evidence fortraces of fire use in archaeological deposits dating between 1.07 and 1.79 million years ago, extending the chronology of one of the earliest known records of fire use associated with hominins. The findings, published in PLOS One, provide new insight into how our ancestors may have interacted with fire long before they learned to create it themselves.

Fire provided warmth, protection from predators, and light after sunset, and eventually enabled cooking. Yet determining exactly when humans first began using fire has remained one of archaeology's most challenging questions.

"Evidence of fire from such ancient sites is often subtle and difficult to detect," said the Dr. Kolska Horwitz. "Our study provides new tools for identifying traces of ancient burning and reveals that fire was repeatedly present deep inside Wonderwerk Cave."

The study also introduces a new method based on the light-emitting properties of burned bone.

When illuminated with specific wavelengths of light, bones that have been exposed to intense heat emit a distinctive glow. By combining this non-destructive luminescence technique with established chemical analyses, researchers were able to identify burned animal bones with a high degree of confidence.

The method is non-invasive, portable, and can be applied to large collections of fossils without damaging them.

The new research applied this method to examine traces of burning on hundreds of tiny fossil bones left behind by owls that once roosted in the cave. Because these remains accumulated naturally on the cave floor, they provide an independent, non-anthropogenic record of ancient events.

The scientists now found clear signs of burning in an archaeological layer associated with artefacts from the initial Acheulean, likely associated with Homo erectus. Importantly, these burned remains were discovered approximately 30 meters inside the cave—far beyond the reach of natural wildfires, and in a layer lacking remains of guano which rules out spontaneous combustion.

The findings do not indicate that these early humans could create fire at will. Instead, the evidence points to the use of naturally occurring fires, such as those sparked by lightning or wildfires on the African savanna. The early humans introduced this fire into the cave on multiple occasions and maintained it there before it eventually died out. The team suggested that they may have used the owl pellets as fuel, resulting in burning of the tiny bones of rodents that were in the pellets.

Nevertheless, bringing fire into a cave and maintaining it represents a significant behavioral achievement.

"These discoveries show that early humans were not simply passive observers of natural fires," Dr. Kolska Horwitz explained. "They were actively engaging with fire and incorporating it into their lives."

Beyond extending the record of fire use, the study provides archaeologists with a new tool for investigating how and when humans first began using fire.

As researchers continue to apply this technique at archaeological sites around the world, it may help clarify the origins and development of one of the most consequential technologies in human history.

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Journal

PLOS One

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0347480 

Book; “Human Identities in the Archaeological Record...from Late Antiquity to the Modern Period”

 

How people lived centuries ago: This volume explores their identity

Book Announcement

University of Bonn

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from the Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences.

 

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Credit: Photo: Bernadett Yehdou/University of Bonn

How did people live centuries ago? How did they see themselves? How were they perceived by others? Today, archaeology uses modern methods to examine skeletons, personal belongings, burial practices, material culture and social and spatial relationships. The book “Human Identities in the Archaeological Record: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Late Antiquity to the Modern Period” shows how past identities can be reconstructed from this evidence.

“Identity is an extraordinarily timely topic,” says co-editor Jun.-Prof. Dr. Alice Toso of the University of Bonn’s Center for Archaeological Sciences. “We all experience identity as something shaped by belonging, difference, memory, social expectations, and personal decisions.” The scholar is fascinated by the question of how people in the past may have understood themselves and how they were perceived by others.

Of course, researchers can never fully understand people from the past. They must always be careful not to impose their own categories on them. “The possibility of reconstructing something of a person’s experiences, affiliations, or struggles after such a long time gives me goosebumps,” says the bioarchaeologist from the University of Bonn. “For me, this sense of human connection across centuries is one of the most powerful aspects of archaeological research.”

Co-edited by Annamaria Diana (Independent researcher, Ireland), Daniela Marcu-Istrate (Vasile Pârvan Institute of Archaeology, Romania), and bioarchaeologist Alice Toso (University of Bonn), “Human Identities in the Archaeological Record” brings together international perspectives on belonging, diversity, resilience, and otherness from Late Antiquity to the modern period.

Science Across Borders

Using innovative analytical methods, researchers can investigate what people ate, where they grew up and how their bodies were affected by disease, diet, work, and inequality. However, the editors emphasize the importance of a transdisciplinary approach: “Large datasets remain incomplete as long as they are not interpreted within the archaeological context, using historical evidence and incorporating social science theories”, says Diana.

Diet is an excellent example of the complexity of this research. “What a person ate depended not only on their personal preferences,” says Toso. Rather, it was also shaped by the landscape and the resources available there, as well as by religious regulations, agricultural practices, access to markets, political power, household structures, and social status.

Interpreting a burial is just as complex. “A grave does not simply express the identity of the deceased”, says Marcu-Istrate, senior researcher at the Vasile Pârvan Institute of Archaeology in Bucharest, “it also reflects the decisions of relatives, religious authorities, and the wider community.” Thus, the location, design, grave goods, and treatment of the body reflect the relationships between the individual, the community, and social institutions.

Which identities are concealed?

The fundamental question addressed by the book is how people understood themselves and others. But also, how these identities were expressed, negotiated, imposed, altered, or suppressed. “Every person is both unique and part of one or more communities” says Diana. The volume examines how individuality coexisted with collective affiliations based on religion, social status, occupation, ancestry, gender, origin, or political identity.

The researchers are asking how reliably identity can be reconstructed from material remains. Archaeological evidence is incomplete, and historical sources are often fragmentary and shaped by elite perspectives. Whose identity becomes visible, and who is forgotten or deliberately erased? “Archaeology can recover evidence of enslaved people, migrants, religious minorities, social outsiders, and communities that are absent from written history,” says Toso, who is also a member of the Cluster of Excellence “Bonn Center for Dependency & Slavery Studies” as well as the transdisciplinary research areas “Life & Health” and “Present Pasts.” “Reconstructing identity is therefore also an ethical responsibility.”

Drawing on case studies from Europe, America, Africa and Australia, the book illustrates how people and communities expressed, negotiated, and preserved their identities in various historical contexts. It is surprising how relevant these archaeological questions are today. Many of the chapters address migration, displacement, religious persecution, colonialism, and the suppression of cultural diversity. “The past reveals both the long history of these processes and the resilience of communities whose identities were preserved despite the pressure to conform”, says Marcu-Istrate.

Publication: “Human Identities in the Archaeological Record: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Late Antiquity to the Modern Period,” Bloomsbury Academic, 288 pp., 46 black-and-white illustrations, 120 US-Dollar

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Hidden layout of ancient Roman city of Parion in present-day Turkey

National Research University Higher School of Economics

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Orthophotographic map of Parion (Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia)

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Credit: © İdil Malgil

İdil Malgil, a researcher at HSE University, conducted a UAV-based LiDAR survey of the ancient Roman city of Parion in present-day Turkey. The high density of the scans allowed the team to detect subtle terrain features concealed beneath the ground and vegetation. The survey revealed traces of entire neighbourhoods, terraced structures, and walls that had remained invisible during routine excavations and could not be identified through aerial photography. The findings have been published in Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia.

 

Parion was likely founded at the turn of the 8th and 7th centuries BC in northwestern Turkey, in what is now Çanakkale Province, and in the 1st century BC, it became a Roman colony. Systematic archaeological excavations have been underway at Parion since 2005. Researchers have already uncovered Roman baths, a theatre, and several necropolises. However, large parts of the ancient city remain unexplored, as they are either overgrown with grass and shrubs or buried beneath a thick layer of soil.

Conventional aerial photography captures only features visible on the surface. Ground-penetrating radar can reveal what lies beneath the ground, but it produces relatively low-resolution images and is effective only over limited areas. Although archaeologists had data from previous topographic surveys, they still lacked a comprehensive understanding of the city's layout and the structures that remain buried underground.

To address this challenge, İdil Malgil, a doctoral student at the Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies of the HSE Faculty of Humanities, employed LiDAR (laser scanning) technology. 

Surveys of this kind have previously been conducted in archaeological excavations, for example in South America, where LiDAR’s ability to penetrate dense tropical forest canopy is particularly valuable. However, the Parion study is one of the largest UAV-based surveys ever carried out in northwestern Anatolia.

'Unlike a conventional camera, a laser beam can pass through gaps between leaves and tree branches. The reflected signals are then processed by a computer, which filters out reflections from vegetation and retains only the laser pulses that reach the ground and return to the drone’s receiver. The result is a digital model of the terrain, as if all vegetation and structures had been removed,' the researcher explains. 

Additional visualisation algorithms functioned like a digital filter, detecting and highlighting even the smallest terrain irregularities. For example, the Sky-View Factor illustrates how open a location is to the sky: enclosed depressions appear dark, while elevated areas appear light, helping identify features such as artificial terraces or moats. In archaeology, this method is used to detect micro-topographic anomalies, including buried ruins, walls, ditches, and mounds. It is based on high-resolution digital terrain models. Unlike traditional topographic visualisations, which simulate a single light source, the Sky-View Factor calculates the proportion of the sky hemisphere visible from any given point on the Earth's surface.

The UAV completed seven flights over Parion, with a total data acquisition time of 90 minutes. The resulting point density of 796 points per square metre is considered exceptionally high, even for the most demanding archaeological applications. For comparison, conventional airborne laser scanning from aircraft typically yields between one and eight points per square metre, with high-end systems reaching up to 60 points. UAV-based scanning made it possible to visualise objects measuring just a few centimetres in size. 

'The density of 796 points/m² represents a fundamentally new level of detail. We can now visualise not only large underground structures but also individual walls, structural corners, and a system of terraces that were previously indistinguishable against the natural terrain background,' comments İdil Malgil.

The most significant findings were made on the acropolis of Parion, located on the rocky cape of Bodrum. Because the area was not subject to intensive agriculture, the underground structures have remained well preserved. 

The researchers were able to identify a rectangular building to the north of the previously known excavation area, as well as a group of walls and terraces in the northwestern part of the cape. The orientation of these features varies between 74 and 120 degrees, which, according to the author, suggests a deliberate adaptation of the urban layout to the complex natural terrain.

The data obtained does not replace traditional excavations; however, instead of digging indiscriminately across the site, archaeologists can now target specific areas where structures are most likely to be located.

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Journal

Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia

DOI

10.1163/15700577-20252937