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Early Neolithic bog pot from Olvig Mose and wooden spoon from Tømmerup in Åmosen, Denmark Photo Credit: Arnold Mikkelsen, The National Museum of Denmark (CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED) |
Pioneering early farmers who arrived on the Baltic coast from six thousand years-ago may have taken up fishing after observing indigenous hunter-gatherer communities, a major new study has found.
Previous studies of prehistoric cooking pots in areas including Britain, Spain, France and Portugal have indicated that people completely stopped cooking fish once they started farming crops and animals, even in coastal areas.
In stark contrast, the new research, led by academics at the University of York in collaboration with the British Museum, has found that farmers who arrived on Northern Europe’s Baltic coast adopted a mixed diet which embraced both fish and domesticated animal products.
The researchers say their study, which looked at fats preserved in fragments from more than a thousand prehistoric vessels uncovered in the coastal area stretching from western Denmark to southern Finland, suggests there may have been close cooperation and interaction between new arrivals and local forager communities.