Dental calculus reveals potential respiratory irritants and ingestion of essential plant-based nutrients at Lower Palaeolithic Qesem Cave Israel Karen Hardy a, * , Anita Radini b, c , Stephen Buckley b , Rachel Sarig d, g , Les Copeland e , Avi Gopher f , Ran Barkai f a ICREA (Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies), Departament de Prehist oria, Facultat de Filosofia i Lletres, Universitat Aut onoma de Barcelona, Spain b BioArCh, University of York, UK c University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS), School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, UK d Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory, the Steinhardt Museum of Natural Historyand National Research Center, Tel Aviv University, Israel e Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, University of Sydney, Australia f Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures, Tel Aviv University, Israel g The Department of Orthodontics, the Maurice and Gabriela Goldschleger School of Dental Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Israel article info Article history: Available online xxx Keywords: Lower Palaeolithic Diet Plants Respiratory irritants Dental calculus abstract Reconstructing detailed aspects of the lives of Lower Palaeolithic hominins, who lived during the Middle Pleistocene, is challenging due to the restricted nature of the surviving evidence, predominantly animal bones and stone tools. Qesem Cave, Israel (420e200 ka) is a site that has produced evidence for a wealth of innovative features including controlled use of fire, represented by a repeatedly used hearth. Numerous charred bone and stone tools as well as wood ash have been found throughout the ten metres of archaeological deposits. Here, we describe the presence of a range of potentially inhaled, and ingested, materials extracted from samples of dental calculus from the Qesem Cave hominins. These finds offer an insight into the environment in and around the cave, while micro-charcoal highlights the need for smoke management in enclosed environments. Plant fibres and a phytolith may be evidence of oral hygiene activities or of using the teeth to work raw materials. Starch granules and chemical compounds provide a direct link to ingested plant food items. This extends the evidence for consumption of plant foods containing essential nutrients including polyunsaturated fatty acids and carbohydrates, into the Lower Palaeolithic. Together, these results represent a significant breakthrough towards a better understanding of Middle Pleistocene dietary breadth and highlight some of the challenges facing the adoption of the habitual use of fire for cooking by the Qesem Cave hominins, as well as offering an insight into their ecological knowledge and technological adaptability. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The Middle Pleistocene was a period of major biological and behavioural change in human evolution (Nowell and White, 2010). Qesem Cave is a karst chamber cave in Israel (420,000e200,000 BP) (Gopher et al., 2010; Mercier, 2013) that has been in excavation since 2001 (Fig. 1). Its finds add weight to the notion that the Late Lower Palaeolithic period was crucial in terms of biological, economic and cultural development of the human species, even- tually leading to the appearance of anatomically modern humans as well as Neanderthals. At Qesem Cave, evidence for innovative behaviour includes development of a new mode of adaptation, possibly triggered by the disappearance of elephants, which led to an increasing need to hunt the abundant medium-sized ungulates (Stiner et al., 2009; Ben-Dor et al., 2011; Hershkovitz et al., 2011; Barkai and Gopher, 2013; Blasco et al., 2014; Shahack-Gross et al., 2014). This in turn led to a requirement for higher efficiency in processing food (Ben-Doret al., 2011; Barkai and Gopher, 2013), to maximize dietary yield of both animal and plant based calories (Groopman et al., 2015). The use of fire inside Qesem Cave, recorded * Corresponding author. E-mail address: khardy@icrea.cat (K. Hardy). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.04.033 1040-6182/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e7 Please cite this article in press as: Hardy, K., et al., Dental calculus reveals potential respiratory irritants and ingestion of essential plant-based nutrients at Lower Palaeolithic Qesem Cave Israel, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.04.033