NEOLITHIC people quickly rejected fishing in favour of agriculture, an analysis of ancient British diets has revealed.
The accepted view was that converting to farming was so complex it took 1000 years to make the change. But Michael Richards at the University of Bradford and his team have found evidence that the switch to a farmed diet happened much more quickly right across Britain.
They analysed the ratio of carbon isotopes in bone collagen from 164 early Neolithic skeletons between 4500 and 5200 years old, and 19 skeletons dating from 5200 to 9000 years ago. The isotope ratio revealed whether…
