Stoneground doesn’t come any more original (Image: IIPP)

Forget the idea that hunter-gatherers lived on low-carb meat diets. Palaeolithic mammoth burgers were eaten with a bun.

Anna Revedin of the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Early History in Florence and colleagues analysed the wear-marks and traces of plants on 30,000-year-old grindstones found in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic.

This showed that they had been used as mortars and pestles to grind plants like cat’s tail and fern roots, which packed a starchy, high-energy punch. The find suggests that Stone Age humans across Europe even knew how to make flour – a complex process involving harvesting roots, then drying, grinding and finally cooking them to make them digestible. Revedin says the development of flour may have helped hunter-gatherers survive changes in the climate, from chilly winters to parched summers.


The reason Palaeolithic humans were thought to have lived solely on wild meat, says Revedin, is that previous plant evidence was washed away by overzealous archaeologists as they cleaned the tools at dig sites. “This is the first time anybody has tried to find vegetable material on them,” she says.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1006993107