Before the HIDDEN FOODS project, knowledge about the use of plants in hunter-gatherer societies of southern Europe was quite elusive. HIDDEN FOODS provided the unambiguous evidence for the consumption and processing of wild cereal-type grains among other types of edible plants by ancient hunter-gatherers in Italy and the Balkans through the analysis of human dental calculus, macro-botanical remains, and stone technology from key Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites.
HIDDEN FOODS revealed that familiarity with various species of wild grains date back to at least 15000 years ago in Italy and ca. 11500 years ago in the central Balkans. In the Danube Gorges area of the central Balkans, it seems that the use of specific wild grains was passed over generations up to the first contacts of these foragers with Neolithic farming groups. Our evidence from Serbia suggests that some exchange between Late Mesolithic foragers and first Neolithic groups in the southern Balkans might have allowed for the introduction of the domesticated cereals in this area 8500 years. Such results challenge the established view of the Neolithization in Europe based on which domestic grains were introduced to the Balkans around ∼8200 calibrated years ago as a part of a “package” that also included domesticated animals and toolkits, which accompanied the arrival of Neolithic communities. We infer that Neolithic domesticated plants were transmitted independently from the rest of Neolithic novelties from 8600 years ago.
The analysis of ancient DNA preserved in the dental calculus of individuals from archaeological sites in Italy and the Balkans, dating back over 15000 years, has made it possible to reconstruct the evolution of the oral flora of the ancient foragers and the first groups of farmers who arrived from the Near East during the Neolithic period, thus outlining the stages that marked the transition to agriculture in Southern Europe. The genetic variability and phylogeography of a bacterial species that inhabit the oral cavity, the Anaerolineaceae bacterium oral taxon 439, allowed to reconstruct the migratory flow of the first farmers who, around 8,500 years ago, moved from the Near East to the Balkans and Italy.
Plant micro-remains in the dental calculus of Paleolithic individuals the consume different plant resources during the Late Glacial (i.e. from ca. 15000 years ago) including wild cereals, seeds, forgotten millets and forest fruits. Such data are supported by micro-dental wear and macro-plant remains.
