Isotopic evidence for dietary variability among eastern Africa’s first pastoralists
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.
Authors
- Katherine M. Grillo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0131-6061)
- Thure E. Cerling (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3590-294X)
- Marta Mìrazón Lahr (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5752-5770)
- Kendra L. Chritz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8026-6428)
- Steven T. Goldstein (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6703-7033)
- Anneke Janzen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6371-7469)
- Elizabeth Sawchuk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4398-2174)
- Julie Dunne
- Lee-Thorp Julia
- Scott A. Blumenthal
- Emmanuel K. Ndiema (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1335-2924)
- Fredrick K. Manthi
- Jensen Wainwright (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-4501-1382)
- Fredrick Odede
- Elisabeth A. Hildebrand (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4071-6068)
- Thomas W. Plummer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4804-1285)
- Mary E. Prendergast (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0275-6795)
- Purity Kiura (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7111-0229)
Institutions
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- University of Oregon (US)
- Maseno University (KE)
- University of Utah (US)
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Cleveland Museum of Natural History (US)
- University of Florida (US)
- University of Bristol (GB)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Queens University of Charlotte (US)
- Oxford Archaeology (GB)
- National Museums of Kenya (KE)
- Stony Brook University (US)
- Rice University (US)
- University of Tennessee at Knoxville (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2026-05-18
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2532741123
- Primary Topic
- Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Wenner-Gren Foundation
- National Geographic Society
- Natural Environment Research Council