Ancient Americans Favored the ‘Paleo Diet’ and Mostly Dined on Mammoths

Learn why combining biomarker analysis in human bones with hunting and butchering tools found at ancient campsites revealed Clovis people favored mammoth meat.

By Paul Smaglik
Dec 4, 2024 7:00 PMDec 4, 2024 7:02 PM
A Mammoth Meal
An artist’s reconstruction of Clovis life 13,000 years ago shows the Anzick-1 infant with his mother consuming mammoth meat near a hearth. Another individual crafts tools, including dart projectile points and atlatls. A mammoth butchery area is visible nearby. The scene is inspired by the La Prele mammoth site in Wyoming and set against the Montana landscape where the Anzick burial was discovered. (Credit: Artist Eric Carlson created the scene in collaboration with archaeologists Ben Potter (UAF) and Jim Chatters (McMaster University))

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Although the contemporary Paleo Diet is trendy, there’s long been anthropological debate about what early man actually ate. Mostly fruit and berries, gathered from foraging? Small game? Or massive mammals?

“That’s been quite a controversy in the last decade or so,” says James Chatters of McMaster University. Chatters and colleagues have attempted to end this debate with a report in Science Advances that says North American people 13,000 years ago dined primarily on large mammals — with mammoth meat as their primary food source.

The report has implications beyond just food choice. What the Clovis people (named for their use of a particular kind of spear head) dined on says much about how they organized their lives.

Paleo Diet Debate Ended?

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