Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39761385›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025

Starch-rich plant foods 780,000 y ago: Evidence from Acheulian percussive stone tools.

Hadar Ahituv, Amanda G Henry, Yoel Melamed, Naama Goren-Inbar, Corrie Bakels, Lyudmila Shumilovskikh, Dan Cabanes, Jeffery R Stone, Walter F Rowe, Nira Alperson-Afil

Erratum issuedAbstract readHistorical Article
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Review
  3. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

10 authors.

Hadar AhituvThe Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel.ORCID 0000-0002-8659-4916
Amanda G HenryDepartment of Archaeological Sciences, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden 2333CC, The Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0002-2923-4199
Yoel MelamedThe Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences & The Archaeobotanical Laboratory, Institute of Archaeology, Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 5290002, Israel.ORCID 0000-0003-0952-708X
Naama Goren-InbarInstitute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel.ORCID 0000-0002-6707-8676
Corrie BakelsDepartment of Archaeological Sciences, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden 2333CC, The Netherlands.
Lyudmila ShumilovskikhDepartment of Palynology and Climate Dynamics, Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Göttingen 37073, Germany.ORCID 0000-0002-7429-3163
Dan CabanesCenter for Human Evolutionary Studies, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8558.ORCID 0000-0001-6347-2513
Jeffery R StoneDepartment of Earth and Environmental Systems, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN 47803.
Walter F RoweDepartment of Forensic Sciences, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20007.
Nira Alperson-AfilThe Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel.ORCID 0000-0001-8594-485X

Funding

EC | European Research Council (ERC) STG-677576
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

In contrast to animal foods, wild plants often require long, multistep processing techniques that involve significant cognitive skills and advanced toolkits to perform. These costs are thought to have hindered how hominins used these foods and delayed their adoption into our diets. Through the analysis of starch grains preserved on basalt anvils and percussors, we demonstrate that a wide variety of plants were processed by Middle Pleistocene hominins at the site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in Israel, at least 780,000 y ago. These results further indicate the advanced cognitive abilities of our early ancestors, including their ability to collect plants from varying distances and from a wide range of habitats and to mechanically process them using percussive tools.

Indexed as

ArchaeologyHominidaeStarchAnimalsDietFossilsHistory, AncientHumansIsraelPlants, EdibleTool Use BehaviorStarchArchaeobotanyhominins dietMiddle Pleistoceneplant foodsstarch

Identifiers

PMID39761385
PMCPMC11760500

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.