Mesolithic Diet Across Europe

So, what were people eating in Mesolithic Europe?  A variety of foods, including fish, plants, and land animals.  In the Paleolithic, people were mainly eating big game and gathering plants; unfortunately, most of the megafauna became extinct in Europe around the time of the last Ice Age, when the Mesolithic began.  This could have been one of the triggers that caused people to change their diets; people had to adapt and find other sources of food, or die out (which, obviously, didn't happen).  Instead of specializing in just a few species, like the Neolithic farmers would, the Mesolithic people ate a wide range of food.  They ate whatever was available, and diet could change seasonally, like at the Irish site of Mount Sandel.  While it seems that many populations primarily ate fish, like at Tybrind Vig, Denmark, and at Mount Sandel, other populations didn’t.  Despite the fact that both El Collado, Spain, and Franchthi Cave in Greece are both located on coasts, people tended to eat land animals and plants more than they ate fish.  It could be because the Atlantic and the River Bann both produced more fish than the Mediterranean did, it could be a matter of cultural preference for terrestrial resources rather than marine ones, or there could be another reason.  Whatever the case may be, it’s clear that people during the Mesolithic weren’t on the Atkins diet or a high carb diet, but rather a “see food” diet: whatever food they saw around them was what they ate.

Image of fish skeleton from Franchthi Cave taken from Dartmouth Aegean Prehistoric Archaeology: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~prehistory/aegean/?page_id=107