Here’s the latest buzz on ancient farmers in Southwest Asia and Europe — they were big into honeybees.
Farmers spreading west across that wide swath of territory acquired beeswax and probably consumed honey around 9,000 to 5,000 years ago, say biogeochemist Mélanie Roffet-Salque of the University of Bristol in England and her colleagues. Fragments of organic material clinging to pottery from early farming sites display a chemical signature typical of beeswax, the scientists report in the Nov. 12 Nature.
The new study is the largest analysis of chemical residues on pottery to date and the first to document the widespread use of bee products among ancient farmers, says bioarchaeologist Oliver Craig of the University of York in England, who did not participate in the study.