Preliminary investigation of the plant macro-remains from Dolní Věstonice II, and its implications for the role of plant foods in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Europe

Abstract

For the most part the Pleistocene, and even the earliest post-glacial, is a blank when it comes to evidence of humans eating plants. No wonder the old men's stories, of chaps who hunt great mammals and eat their meat, still dominate our unthinking visions of hunter-gathering in that period. Some real evidence, slight though it is, from a classic European Upper Palaeolithic site provides a more balanced view.