Earliest Roasted Root Vegetables Dated to 170,000 Years Ago
Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2020 1:03 am
https://www.newscientist.com/article/22 ... cave-dirt/
Charred fragments found in 170,000-year-old ashes in a cave in southern Africa are the earliest roasted root vegetables yet found. The finding suggest the real “paleo diet” included lots of roasted vegetables rich in carbohydrates, similar to modern potatoes.
“I think people were eating a very balanced diet, a combination of carbohydrates and proteins,” says team leader Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
In 2016, her team found dozens of bits of charcoal in an ash layer in the Border cave in South Africa. This ash layer is what is left from the fires of early people.
Seeds of root vegetables and other plants have found at an 800,000-year-old site in Israel where early humans lived, but Wadley’s find is the earliest clear evidence of roasting.