At the Bilancino II site (Florence), 25,000 years ago, the rhizomes of Typha, the common reed, fern, and various other wild grasses were ground with mortars. There was no oil, because the domestication of the olive tree, which occurred in the Middle East between 8,000 and 6,000 years ago, took several thousand years, but animal fats were abundant. There were no citrus fruits, almost all of which were of Asian origin, and obviously not all the American plants such as tomatoes, potatoes, corn, peppers, eggplants, and cocoa. A few legumes were present, such as wild peas and perhaps broad beans, whose wild ancestor has not been found. But above all, there were dozens of animal and plant species that have now been lost. We have no idea of the rate of species extinction at the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic, but the climate changes caused by the end of the Ice Age, the many meters of sea level rise, and the human impact of slash-and-burn agriculture must have had a significant impact. This means that just as the aurochs, the Otranto donkey, the wild horse, the great auk, the mammoth, and many other animals disappeared, so too did many plant species that Paleolithic humans undoubtedly knew how to exploit. A precise reconstruction of what the Paleolithic diet of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals might have been like is therefore almost impossible, since it is impossible to reconstruct the nutritional values of species we don’t know. However, we do know that Neolithic farmers and herders ate much worse than their predecessors, and we know this by observing their remains. Height decreased, teeth fell out, and bones became more fragile.
