2026-05-18 カナダ・ブリティッシュコロンビア大学（UBC）
Domestic cattle in the Turkana region, Kenya Credit: Katherine Grillo
＜関連情報＞
- https://news.ubc.ca/2026/05/some-early-herders-didnt-quit-fishing-and-foraging-for-a-millennium-after-first-keeping-livestock/
- https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2532741123
東アフリカ初期の牧畜民における食生活の多様性を示す同位体分析による証拠 Isotopic evidence for dietary variability among eastern Africa’s first pastoralists
Kendra L. Chritz, Elizabeth A. Sawchuk, Mary E. Prendergast, +14 , and Elisabeth A. Hildebrand
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Published:May 18, 2026
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2532741123
Significance
Isotopic studies of human remains can track changes in dietary variation across transitions from wild food procurement to food production. In Kenya and Tanzania, foragers and fishers of the African Humid Period had highly varied approaches to subsistence, both within and between archaeological sites. The region’s first herders—pastoralists buried in communal cemeteries around Lake Turkana c. 5000 years ago—had similarly varied individual diets. More specialized approaches to herding appeared in central Kenya and northern Tanzania >1,000 years later. This study shows an extended period between initial use of domestic livestock and the development of more specialized pastoralist economies in eastern Africa.
Abstract
During the terminal Pleistocene through Holocene, changes in dietary diversity signaled fundamental shifts in the way humans related to food resources in many parts of the globe. To understand local and regional dietary variation across the transition to food production in Kenya and Tanzania, we compare isotopic values of biological tissues (tooth enamel and bone collagen) from 111 ancient foragers and herders dated ~9,500–230 B.P., alongside isotopic data from contemporary eastern Africans, and contextualize these findings with ancient leaf wax and ceramic lipid residues. Fisher-foragers had remarkably diverse approaches to subsistence, and the earliest pastoralists in Kenya’s Turkana Basin ~5,000 years ago retained dietary diversity amid major environmental and cultural changes. The shift to more specialized pastoralist diets did not occur until a millennium after the initial introduction of livestock.
