One particular isotope can tell us whether humans were getting most of their food from plant or animal sources. How it works is that scientists compare human isotope values to animal isotope values.
If the human values are more like that of a herbivore (such as horses or cattle) they are eating mostly vegetarian (plant) food. If the human values are more like carnivores (such as wolves, tigers, or foxes), humans are eating more meat. For further details see the article, "Bone Analysis Suggests Neolithic People Preferred Meat," by Mike Richards, March 1996. What people ate in Britain--mostly meat differed from what people ate in Turkey, for example, more cereal grains, during the Neolithic age. Interestingly, domestic cattle were eaten rather than hunting big game to extinction in those times in Europe.
When human bones from Europeans living two thousand years ago were tested, their isotope values were only a little higher than those of plant-eating herbivores. Two thousand years ago all over Europe people caught onto the idea of the cereal-eating culture of the Middle East.
Only once in a while were their diets supplemented with a small bit of meat. But in England, for example, during Neolithic times, when agriculture was first catching on as a new idea moving from the Middle East to Northern Europe, isotope values for meat eating were as high, and sometimes even higher, than stable isotope values of carnivores.
European and Middle Eastern people of the Neolithic age were not just cereal eaters spreading the idea of agriculture all over Europe, including harder-to-reach (for Middle Easterners from the Cereal Belt) Northern Europe. Mostly, the culture of farming, not the people migrated north. About 20 percent of Europeans are descended from Middle Eastern farmers moving into Northern, Southern, and Central Europe. That leaves 80 percent of Europeans descended from Paleolithic hunters of meat and their womenfolk, gatherers of seasonal root and green vegetables with some wild berries.
The high isotope values found when testing their bones suggested that Neolithic people had relatively little plant food in their diet and instead were consuming large amounts of meat. It could also mean they were eating a lot of animal by-products, like milk and cheese, as these are indistinguishable from meat itself using stable isotopes.
Neolithic economy had been based on domesticated pigs, goats, sheep, and cows kept in stables, corrals, and barns. Animal remains from Neolithic sites are generally of domestic species not wild animals such as wild boar.
In England, for example, domesticated Neolithic age cattle of several thousand years ago, for example, came from sites such as Hambledon Hill in Dorset. Those farmers of domesticated cows and pigs had ranches or corrals for cows, sheep, goats, and pigs larger than the cattle typically found in the Iron Age of two thousand years ago.
Europe in the Neolithic age before cereal farming became the mainstay perhaps ran an animal-dependent economy. The domesticated animal farms show evidence that livestock animals were well treated and kept for a very long time.
The British Neolithic age had, it's surmised, a revolution of animal husbandry. The emphasis fell on producing milk cows and cheese. The Middle East at that time had a plant-based Neolithic age focused on growing of crops such as grains.
Some grain and agricultural tools were found at Neolithic sites in Britain. Grain production and consumption there was limited. But grain and cereal was not a mainstay of the Neolithic diet in Northern Europe, such as Britian. Cereal grain eating was very limited.
Instead, grain had been used in Neolithic times there for rituals. Grain also might have been imported from sites further south in Europe at that time.
Evidence is pointing toward the use of agricultural tools for rituals at that time in Britain, compared to grain growing in the Middle East and Southeastern Europe. But if we look for flaws in stable isotope analysis, there are difficulties.
It's possible that animal stable isotope data may or may not be accurate for specific British Neolithic sites tested by scientists. The reason is that researchers work with average animal values. Databases are large. Where do you go to look at these types of figures?
One place might be the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit. It covers Europe for the last 10,000 years. But what about regional variations? You could get different figures for animal or plant isotope values. It's a possibility. That's why research is ongoing. What's the purpose? Scientists are trying to find out whether they can assume there were Neolithic farmers in Britain growing plants or raising domestic livestock animals such as cows and pigs.
It's fascinating to also study whether the largely blood type O majority of people in Britain would have gravitated towards an animal-protein based diet compared to the largely blood type A agriculturists/farmers of cereal grains in the Middle East?
With so many books out on medical variations between the extremes of blood types A and O (compared to the more balanced B and AB types in the minority) researchers wonder whether diet produced changes in blood type over tens of thousands of years. For example, blood type A is more tolerant of infections, but thicker and clogs up quicker.
Blood type O is thinner, and handles a meat-based diet better without clogging the arteries as fast, but reacts more to infections with higher fevers, sometimes. There are differences in the blood types in the way food is burned or stored as fuel or how the different blood types react to infections.
With all the medical studies on diet during the post-ice age period and how people respond to plant-based or meat-based diets, research has to continue before conclusions can be made as body shape plays a role as well as genetic inheritance overall.
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