Lizards and snakes were commonly eaten by foragers in the Levant across three millennia, using methods passed down the generations, a study has found.
Fossils found at El Wad Terrace in present-day Israel, dating from 11,700 to 15,000 years ago, have revealed that reptiles made up a significant part of the diet of Natufian culture, which thrived in the region at that time. They are known to have been the first hunter-gatherers to live in permanent villages before the invention of agriculture.
Researchers said many small-scale human societies in tropical and warm desert environments were known to include reptiles in their diet, but archaeological records have been limited.
Maʻayan Lev, Mina Weinstein-Evron and Reuven Yeshurun of the University of Haifa found that fossil remains of squamates – reptiles such as lizards and snakes – accounted for more than a third of animal remains associated with food consumption, including 82 snake vertebrae with cut marks indicative of butchering.
They found the longer people stayed in one place, the greater proportion of their diet was made up by squamates. The most common types found were European glass lizards, large whip snakes and eastern Montpellier snakes.
Although large-bodied, easy to catch and safe species were the main targets for eating, squamates comprised a “substantial and consistent portion of the Natufian diet across three millennia”, they said in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr Lev told The National that snakes “weren't the main food source, but more of a continuous, supplementary one that people could rely on alongside other prey”.
She said: “Their subsistence economy relied on intensive hunting and gathering of a broad range of resources. The main prey was the mountain gazelle, alongside numerous smaller species including mole rats, hare, small carnivores, water birds and tortoises.” She said it had not been possible to tell exactly how the snakes had been caught and cooked.
“We don't have direct evidence for how they were hunted, but research on hunter-gatherer groups suggests a range of possible methods, including catching them by hand, using nets or a rope noose, or hunting them with sharpened sticks, small bows and arrows, or hand-held spears.
“We found repeating cut marks on the left side of the trunk vertebrae, consistent throughout the site's occupation. This suggests people were butchering snakes the same way for thousands of years, pointing to a culturally inherited practice passed down over generations. The burning marks detected on the bones suggest the snakes were likely cooked directly over a fire.”
The foragers turned to eating snakes because of the intensity of occupation at the site," she said. "When fewer people were living there, there was less overall pressure on food resources, so there was less need to hunt snakes and lizards. As more people stayed for longer, that pressure increased and reptiles were exploited more."
