Discovery News
Originally Posted: November 25, 2015
Early Native Americans Raised Turkeys, But Not to Eat
There is little doubt that Native Americans at a Utah site appropriately called Turkey Pen Ruins raised turkeys, but new research concludes that they rarely ate them, and instead raised the large birds for their coveted feathers.
The study involved extensive analysis of amino acid signatures resulting from diet that can be detected in human hair. The research, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, represents one of the first analyses of human hair from the American Southwest.
The findings indicate that Native Americans from the Ancestral Pueblo Tradition (also sometimes known as the Anasazi) heavily relied upon corn, showing that “about 80 percent of the calories and protein came from maize,” co-author R.G. Matson from the University of British Columbia Department of Anthropology told Discovery News. READ MORE