What Did Ice Age Humans Eat? — A Qingming Festival Reflection on Prehistoric Diets

During the Qingming Festival, families gather to honor their ancestors, offering food and other symbolic items as part of long-standing cultural traditions. This practice naturally raises an interesting question: if our distant ancestors could see the offerings placed before them today, would they recognize or even appreciate them? For people who lived during the Ice Age, long before the emergence of agriculture, daily life revolved around hunting and gathering. Their culinary world must have looked very different from ours. What kinds of foods would such ancestors have valued the most?

Figure 1. Portrait of a Clovis individual（圖片來源：Ali Eminov，採用 CC BY-NC 2.0 授權）

A study published in 2024 in Science Advances offers a fascinating glimpse into the dietary habits of Ice Age humans. The research was conducted by Professor James C. Chatters of McMaster University and his colleagues, who have been investigating the subsistence patterns of Clovis culture populations in what is now Canada and the northern United States. By examining archaeological remains and associated fauna from multiple Clovis sites, the researchers reconstructed the kinds of foods that sustained these early people.

Their findings suggest that Ice Age populations relied heavily on large herbivorous animals. The most frequently represented remains belonged to the Columbian mammoth, Mammuthus columbi. Other important prey included elk (Cervus canadensis), bison (Bison), and various additional grazing mammals. Plant foods such as wild fruits and gathered vegetation likely supplemented this diet, but the archaeological record indicates that large game formed the core of their subsistence strategy. Among all the animal remains recovered from Clovis sites, mammoth bones appear particularly abundant, hinting at the animal's central role in the human diet.

Figure 2. Location of the Anzick site, faunal samples used in this study (circles), and major Clovis sites (triangles)（圖片來源：James C. Chatters，採用 CC BY-NC 4.0 授權）

To determine whether Clovis people truly depended so heavily on mammoths, the research team analyzed a remarkable archaeological specimen known as Anzick-1. This individual was an infant about eighteen months old whose remains were discovered in Montana and represent the only known human skeleton directly associated with Clovis artifacts. Although the infant itself could not have consumed large quantities of meat, its bones provide an indirect record of maternal diet. Infants obtain most of their nutrition through breastfeeding, and the isotopic composition of their bones reflects the chemical signatures of their mother's food.

In particular, the ratios of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes, expressed as δ13C and δ15N, can reveal the types of animals or plants that contributed to a person's diet. These isotopic signals pass through the food chain and eventually become incorporated into bone collagen. Because the infant's bone collagen largely derived from nutrients provided by the mother, analyzing these isotopes allows researchers to reconstruct what the mother herself had been eating.

Figure 3. Isospace plot showing mean faunal collagen δ13C and δ15N values for Anzick-1 and regional fauna（圖片來源：James C. Chatters，採用 CC BY-NC 4.0 授權）

To place the infant's isotopic signature in context, the team compared it with the isotopic compositions of numerous animals recovered from the Anzick region. These included large herbivores such as bison, elk, mammoths, horses (Equus), bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis), and pronghorn (Antilocapra). Smaller mammals were also examined, including packrats (Neotoma), cottontail rabbits (Sylvilagus), and marmots (Marmota). By comparing the isotopic patterns of these animals with the isotopic signals found in the infant's bones, the researchers could determine which species most likely contributed to the mother's diet.

The results were striking. A large proportion of the isotopic signal matched that of mammoths, indicating that mammoth meat played a major role in the mother's food intake. Elk and bison also contributed significantly, but their proportions were smaller. Small mammals, by contrast, accounted for only a minor share of the dietary signal. In other words, the data strongly suggest that mammoths were a central food resource for Clovis people in this region.

Figure 4. Model of the Anzick-1 maternal diet based on bone collagen δ13C and δ15N values（圖片來源：James C. Chatters，採用 CC BY-NC 4.0 授權）

The researchers also compared the infant's isotopic values with those of Ice Age predators such as the American cheetah (Miracinonyx inexpectata), the short-faced bear (Arctodus simus), the gray wolf (Canis lupus), the dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus), and the scimitar-toothed cat (Homotherium serum). Among these carnivores, the isotopic pattern most closely resembled that of the scimitar-toothed cat. This extinct predator is widely thought to have specialized in hunting mammoths and other large herbivores. The similarity suggests that Clovis hunters occupied a comparable ecological niche, capable of taking down massive prey animals that required skill, coordination, and effective weaponry.

Such evidence reinforces the idea that Clovis people were highly capable big-game hunters. Rather than relying primarily on small animals or plant foods, they appear to have focused on large herbivores that could provide enormous quantities of meat and fat. Mammoths, bison, and elk would have represented valuable targets, offering substantial nutritional returns for the effort invested in hunting them.

Figure 5. Diets of the Anzick-1 mother and other predators (mean proportional dietary contribution per taxon) using model 2 (10-source model) in SIMMR（圖片來源：James C. Chatters，採用 CC BY-NC 4.0 授權）

These findings also touch on a longstanding debate in archaeology: the role humans may have played in the extinction of Ice Age megafauna. Mammoths and many other large animals disappeared near the end of the Pleistocene, and scholars have long debated whether human hunting contributed to their decline. The isotopic evidence from Anzick-1 does not prove that humans caused these extinctions, but it does confirm that mammoths were an important food source. Combined with climatic changes and shifting ecosystems at the end of the Ice Age, sustained human predation may have been one of several factors influencing the fate of these animals.

Beyond its scientific implications, the study provides a vivid reminder of how different human life once was. Ice Age communities lived in landscapes dominated by enormous grazing mammals roaming open steppe environments. Their survival depended on mobility, cooperation, and the ability to track and hunt animals far larger than themselves. Mammoth hunts would have been extraordinary events, requiring planning, courage, and specialized tools.

So if we imagine honoring these distant ancestors during Qingming Festival, the foods that might please them would likely differ greatly from the offerings placed on modern altars. Instead of rice cakes or fruits, the most valued gift in their world might have been a massive cut of mammoth meat, freshly taken from the frozen plains of the late Pleistocene.

Notes:

1. Anzick-1 is not only an infant; it is also the only known human skeletal individual directly associated with the Clovis culture.

2. Human diets during the Ice Age varied widely across regions. Evidence from the Anzick site represents one local population and should not be taken as a universal pattern for all Ice Age humans.

Author: Rodrigo

Reference:

Chatters, J. C., Potter, B. A., & Fiedel, S. J. (2024). Mammoth featured heavily in Western Clovis diet. Science Advances, 10(49), eadr3814. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adr3814