Diet Analysis Challenges Current Understanding of Early Farmers

Diet analysis challenges current understanding of early farmers

A new analysis of diet data is challenging our historical understanding of why the Andes civilisations transitioned from foraging food to farming roughly 5,000 years ago.  In around 3000 BCE, ancient indigenous civilizations in the Andes Mountain range in South America began to transition away from hunter-gatherer foraging and toward farming.  The prevailing model suggests that economic hardships and insecurity were the driving forces behind the…

New Study Debunks Long-Held Myth: Early Andean Farmers Thrived, Not Struggled

Contrary to the long-standing belief that the shift from foraging to farming was driven by desperation and dwindling food supplies, a new study shows that early agricultural communities in the Andean Altiplano were thriving—and innovating—during this pivotal period in human history.Published in PLOS One, the research led by Luis Flores-Blanco of the University of California Davis and Arizona State University, along with a team of interdisciplina…