Ancient Proteins from Unwashed Dishes Reveal the Diets of a Lost Civilization | Hacker News Reader

Ancient Proteins from Unwashed Dishes Reveal the Diets of a Lost Civilization

smithsonianmag.com

79 pointsohjeez12 comments

There's always a little breadcrumb of possibility in HN posts. Bitter vetch works as an appetite suppressant, and might have uses in the health food industry:

http://www.bitter-vetch.com/

But looks like it must be cooked first or can be toxic (so could be a potentially dangerous weed for livestock in certain places):

http://thepoisondiaries.tumblr.com/post/30390306446/lathyrus...

Or at least the bachelors in that civilisation.

TL;DR:

The potsherds yielded proteins from numerous plants—barley, wheat, peas and bitter vetch—as well as the blood and milk of several species of animal, including cows, sheep and goats.

The milk offered even more insight, as the researchers could distinguish whey from other parts of the liquid—and in one jar they found only whey, indicating the ancient Anatolians were actively transforming the milk into something like cheese or yogurt.

Or whey protein. No way those chiseled olympians weren't taking supplements

Sometimes being lazy, pays off.

There may be an ancient protein diet that comes out before the year is up.

OK, dumb question. Why are ancient sites always excavated, under several feet of soil. Is the soil comprised of 1000's of years of decayed plant matter? That all has to come from carbon dioxide.

Well, in cities, a house might get destroyed to make room for a new building, and it is often easiest just to tear it down and build on top of it than to cart away all the old building materials. Not to say valuable building stones and other things aren't simply reused in other structures. Or, a lot can happen in 1,000 years like floods (depositing silt), earthquakes (making lots of rubble), wars, and fires, that would wreck a building. Not sure what your CO2 angle is though.

This is the jist of it:

https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/why-do-we-have-to-...

One of my friends is an archaeologist. My view of an archaeologist was always one where they are leisurely researching history, finding locations for finds, cautiously digging in the fields, sorting shards of pottery, etc. She described instead a potentially stressful job performing surveys on urban sites to determine the historical significance of a location to give a go/no-go to developers looking to build a multi-million dollar apartment complex on top of what once might have been the governors home, which was once on top of an officer's quarters, which was once an indigenous settlement.

Not an expert, but as I understand it most ground is sedimentary rock. It accumulates slowly with time, with things like dust, organic dead matter and yes, part of it comes from carbon sequestration.

Survivor bias? You couldn’t excavate something that had already been washed away.

Not a dumb question, as I recall reading that in Darwin's time the rate of formation for soil or rock was a big topic of scientific debate. It was apparently somewhat of a breakthrough to realize that "ground level" changes over time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com