News Archaeology

These Stone Age humans were more gatherer than hunter

Counter to traditional ideas about how agriculture started, they never grew the plants they ate

The view to the landscape from inside a cave in Morocco that archaeologists have been excavating. You can see trenches in the foreground and a few trees and a hillside with some vegetation beyond.

A group of late Stone Age hunter-gatherers used this cave in Morocco as their cemetery. Researchers analyzed some of the human remains from those burials to uncover what the people ate.

Abdeljalil Bouzouggar

By Jude Coleman

Unlike many of their mostly meat-eating peers, a group of late Stone Age hunter-gatherers living in what is now northeastern Morocco had a largely plant-based diet.