Seaweed was part of folks’s food regimen for an extended interval and it grew to become a marginal meals solely comparatively just lately.
Seaweed isn’t one thing that typically options right this moment in European recipe books, regardless that it’s extensively eaten in Asia. However our staff has found molecular proof that reveals this wasn’t at all times the case. Folks in Europe ate seaweed and freshwater aquatic crops from the Stone Age proper up till the Center Ages earlier than it disappeared from our plates.
Our proof got here from skeletal stays, specifically the calculus (hardened dental plaque) that constructed up across the enamel of those folks once they had been alive. Many centuries later, this calculus nonetheless incorporates molecules that document the meals that folks ingested.
We analysed the calculus from 74 skeletal stays from 28 archaeological websites throughout Europe. The websites span a interval of a number of thousand years beginning within the Mesolithic, when folks hunted and gathered their meals, by means of to the earliest farming societies (a stage known as the Neolithic) all the best way as much as the Center Ages.
Our outcomes recommend that seaweed was a routine a part of the food regimen for the time durations we studied, and have become a marginal meals solely comparatively just lately.
Unsurprisingly, many of the websites the place we detected the consumption of seaweed are coastal. However we additionally discovered proof from inland websites that folks had been ingesting freshwater aquatic crops, together with lilies and pondweed. We additionally discovered an instance of individuals consuming sea kale.
How are we certain folks ate seaweed?
We recognized a number of kinds of molecules within the dental calculus that collectively are attribute of seaweed. We refer to those as “biomarkers”. They embrace a set of chemical compounds known as alkylpyrroles. After we detect these compounds collectively in calculus, we could be pretty certain the place they got here from. The identical goes for different compounds attribute of seaweed and freshwater crops.
To have grow to be embedded in dental calculus, the seaweed and freshwater crops needed to have been within the mouth and most likely chewed. Biomarkers don’t survive in all our samples, however the place they do, they’re discovered persistently throughout many people we analysed from totally different locations. This implies seaweed was in all probability a routine a part of the food regimen.
Perceptions of seaweed
At this time, seaweed is usually seen because the scourge of seashores. It accumulates on the high-water mark the place it may create a slippery and typically smelly barrier to the ocean.
However it’s a wondrous world of its personal. There are over 10,000 species of seaweed worldwide dwelling within the intertidal zone (the place the ocean meets the land between excessive and low tides) and the subtidal zone (a area beneath the intertidal zone that’s constantly coated by water). Round 145 of those species are eaten right this moment and in elements of Asia it’s commonplace.
Seaweed is edible, nutritious, typically medicinal, ample and native. Though overconsumption may cause iodine toxicity, there aren’t any toxic intertidal species in Europe. It’s also out there all 12 months spherical, which might have been significantly helpful previously, when meals provides had been much less dependable.
Reconstructing historic diets
Reconstructing historic diets is difficult and is usually harder as you return in time. This helps clarify why we’ve solely simply realised how a lot seaweed was being eaten by historic Europeans.
In archaeology, proof for historic diets typically comes from bodily stays: animal bones, fish bones and the exhausting elements of shellfish. Proof for crops as a part of the food regimen earlier than farming, nevertheless, is uncommon.
Strategies to check molecules from archaeological stays have been round for a while. A key methodology is named carbon/nitrogen (C and N) secure isotope evaluation. That is extensively used to reconstruct historic human and animal diets primarily based on the relative proportions of those parts in bone collagen.
However the presence of crops has been troublesome to establish, as a consequence of their low nitrogen content material. Their presence is masked by an awesome sign for animals and fish.
Hiding in plain sight
The proof for seaweed had been current all alongside, however unrecognised. Our discovery gives an ideal instance of how perceptions of what we regard as meals affect interpretations of historic practices.
Seaweed was detected in chunks that had been chewed (and presumably spat out) on the 12,000-year-old web site of Monte Verde, Chile. However when it’s discovered at archaeological websites, it’s extra generally interpreted as having been used for issues aside from meals, comparable to gas and meals wrappings.
In European archaeology, there may be a longstanding notion that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers ate plenty of seafood, however that when folks began farming, they centered on meals sourced from land, comparable to their livestock. Our findings hammer one other nail into the coffin of this principle.
At this time, just a few conventional recipes stay, comparable to laverbread created from the seaweed species Porphyra umbilicalis in Wales. It’s nonetheless not clear why seaweed declined as a staple supply of meals in Europe after the Center Ages.
What are the implications?
Our sudden discovery adjustments the best way we perceive previous folks. It additionally alters our perceptions of how they understood the panorama and the way they exploited native assets. It suggests, not for the primary time, that we vastly underestimate historic folks. That they had a information, significantly in regards to the pure world, that’s troublesome for us to think about right this moment.
The discovering additionally reminds us that archaeological stays are minute home windows into the previous, reinforcing the care required when creating theories primarily based on restricted proof.
The consumption of crops, upon which our world relies upon, has been habitually unnoticed of dietary theories from our pre-agrarian previous. Inflexible theories have typically forgotten that people had been behind these archaeological cultures – and that they had been in all probability just like us of their curiosity and wishes.
At this time seaweed sits, largely unused as meals, on our doorstep. Making the edible species an even bigger element of our diets might even contribute to creating our meals provides extra sustainable.
This text was written by , a professor of Prehistoric Archaeology on the College of Glasgow, and a analysis fellow on the Division of Archaeology of the College of York. It’s republished from The Dialog below a Artistic Commons license. Learn the unique article.
