Read the full UBC Science article here: Even after adopting cattle, early herders kept hunting and gathering 

Dr. Kendra Chritz, Geochemist and Assistant Professor in EOAS, and a team of international collaborators have contributed new insights into the diets and lifeways of the earliest herders in eastern Africa, revealing that people continued hunting, fishing, and gathering long after adopting livestock. The study, recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), helps fill a major gap in understanding how early food production developed during a period of rapid environmental change. 

The research focused on early herder communities living in the Turkana Basin, primarily located within modern Kenya and Ethiopia, of roughly 5,000 years ago. By analysing carbon isotopes preserved in human tooth enamel, the team reconstructed ancient diets and found that these early herders maintained highly varied food sources despite keeping cattle, sheep, and goats. “Rather than relying entirely on those livestock, they still maintained a really variable diet, like the fisher-foragers that came before them,” says Dr. Chritz.

The findings suggest that dietary flexibility may have helped these communities adapt to major climatic shifts occurring at the time, including rapid drying and dramatic lake-level decline in the region. The work also highlights the importance of eastern Africa in the broader history of food production and human adaptation. “It fills in this record that was missing for a really long period of time and gives us this more holistic picture of how people might have coped with large-scale environmental changes in prehistory,” shared Dr. Chritz.  

The project brought together an international group of archaeologists, geochemists, and collaborators from the National Museums of Kenya, building on more than a decade of partnership and field research. Alongside the dietary analysis, the team also worked to carefully document and consolidate museum collections to reduce unnecessary repeat sampling of human remains and support long-term stewardship of the collections.