This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Around 15,000 years ago, the way of life of human communities in the southern Levant underwent a fundamental change. Groups of hunter-gatherers, who until then had been nomadic, reduced their mobility and established small, permanent settlements for the first time.
This culture, called the Natufian, is considered an important stage in the history of human sedentism, even before the development of agriculture. The reduced mobility also had an impact on people's diets—they could no longer be as selective about their food resources as they had been. A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides the first evidence that people of the Natufian period hunted reptiles.
"Lizards and snakes became an important part of their diet during this period," says Dr. Maayan Lev, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in the "Kiel Training for Excellence" program (KiTE) at Kiel University (CAU). The study is based on excavations at the 'el-wad Terrace' archaeological site in the Nahal Me'arot Nature Reserve on Mount Carmel in Israel, and it includes 20 archaeological layers of repeated settlements over a period of around 3,000 years.
Using radiocarbon dating, these were dated to between approximately 15,000 and 12,000 years ago. Lev, along with co-authors Professor Mina Weinstein-Evron and Professor Reuven Yeshurun of the University of Haifa, identified thousands of lizard and snake bones in the settlement layers at 'el-wad Terrace.' "Through meticulous microscopic examinations, we were then able to distinguish reptile remains that died naturally at the site or were preyed upon by mammals and birds from those that served as food for humans," explains Lev, who also conducts research at the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa and is an associate member of the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence at Kiel University. For the first time, the researchers were able to identify cut marks made by flint knives at consistent locations on the bones of large snakes such as the large whip snake (Dolichophis jugularis) and the eastern Montpellier snake (Malpolon insignitus).
In addition, there was indirect evidence of the consumption of the European glass lizard (Pseudopus apodus), whose hard scales required a different method of butchering than that used for snakes. The team sought to understand why these particular species were chosen as food and why their relative abundance changed over the course of the settlement sequence. "Our hypothesis is that the Natufian people preferred to catch reptiles that were relatively large, relatively slow and not dangerous.
In other words, the glass lizard was an ideal choice, and if none could be found, the hunters would instead catch relatively harmless snakes. Venomous snakes such as vipers, on the other hand, were rarely caught," explains Lev. The high frequency of bones from the 'more productive' reptile species, particularly the glass lizard, across all archaeological layers suggests that they constituted a reliable and sustainable food source even during periods of growth and population increase in the Natufian settlement.
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