When you purchase through links on our site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it figure out .
Everybody poops , but only some of that stern fossilizes , turning into coprolite . While ancient dung may go everlasting — after all , who need to go toil through feces that are centuries or even millennia previous — they can offer a cornucopia of data point to scientists .
For instance , coprolite can uncover which foods people eat , the parasites that lived in their guts and even prove that mankind endure in an area , like North America during the last ice age , accord to coprolites find in a cave in Oregon .
What can this poop tell us?
Here are eight times human coprolites dropped knowledge on modern scientist .
Related:10 amazing things we memorise about our human ascendent in 2022
1. Parasites galore
Human after part establish in old latrines unveil that catgut parasites were rearing in the ancient world . For example , biblical - era lav in Jerusalemhad excrement with protozoon that caused " traveler ’s diarrhea";human dissipation from the Roman Empirehad whipworms ( Trichuris trichiura ) , roundworms ( Ascaris lumbricoides ) andEntamoeba histolytica , which can cause dysentery ; and 800 - year - oldCrusader poop from Cypruswas stream with whipworms and ringworm .
These distasteful hitchhikers bring out that people in these time in all likelihood ate undercooked meat , such as the uncooked and fermented fish sauce live as garum that was democratic in Romanist times . Or , perhaps these parasites spread through defective sanitation practices , such as contaminate piddle or a lack of hand washing .
2. Ancient humans in Oregon
For nearly a century , research worker thought that thefirst humans in the Americaswere the Clovis , a grouping that make it in North America shortly before 13,000 years ago . But in recent decades , researchers have found grounds indicating that humans arrived G of years before . One of those findings , of human coprolite in Oregon ’s Paisley Caves , shows that hoi polloi were in what is now the United States by14,500 years ago .
When the written report total out in 2012 , these ossified BM were the " oldest directly dated human remains ( DNA ) in the Western Hemisphere , " the researchers wrote in the journalScience .
3. Stonehenge-era builders ate parasite-infested meat
Neolithic building worker leave behind more than just Harlan Fisk Stone structure . At Durrington Walls , a Neolithic settlement about 1.7 mi ( 2.8 klick ) fromStonehengein England , researchers foundfossilizedclustersof human shit , suggesting that these builders had heroic wintertime feast in which workers and their dogs chowed down on undercooked inwardness rife with the eggs of parasitic worms .
" This is the first time enteric leech have been recover from Neolithic Britain , and to ascertain them in the surroundings of Stonehenge is really something , " study tether researcherPiers Mitchell , a biologic anthropologist at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. , said in a program line .
4. Disappearing high-fiber diets
The autochthonic people of the American Southwest used toeat high - fiber foodssuch as bristled Pyrus communis , yucca and flour soil from plant source , consort to an analysis of fossilized fecal matter from A.D. 1150 and earlier . This diet was 20 to 30 times more sinewy than a distinctive modern dieting , a2012 studyfound . The rapid change from gamy - fiber to low - fibre processed foods prevalent in New diets may explain why many Indigenous multitude havetype 2 diabetestoday .
" When we depend at Native American dietary alteration within the twentieth C , the more ancient traditions melt , " cogitation researcherKarl Reinhard , an environmental archaeologist at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln , previously told Live Science . " They were bring out to a whole new spectrum of solid food like Roger Fry - clams , which has got a super - eminent glycemic index . "
5. Arctic archipelago poop
Sometimes you do n’t bump a coprolite , but the chemical substance leftover from human waste . That was the example for researchers investigating periods of human occupation in the Lofoten Islands , a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Circle . Theteam have several sediment coresso they could look for chemical factor of human and livestock waste . They also looked for chemical footprints of sting botany .
consort to these chemicals , people and animals came to the area around 2,300 years ago and burned botany , likely to clear forests to make way for farming and grazing acres . But poop output lessen around the time that Iceland was discovered , probable because people decided to migrate there . Poop tier also dropped when plague strike the area . When the Little Ice Age hit ( circa 1300 to 1850 ) , poop chemical stayed constant while burned botany theme song increase , probable because settler were stoking blast to stay ardent .
6. Our Mesolithic ancestors were cannibals
In case you require proof that Middle Stone Age , or Mesolithic humans were man-eater , await no further than their coprolites . Bits of human finger cymbals were found in human being poopfrom 9,000 to 10,200 years ago deeply in a cave in Alicante , Spain . Some bones had collation , burn and scrape mark , the investigator found . However , it ’s unknown if these mass were run through during rite or because the man-eater were lust .
7. People ate cotton
Ancient DNA from 1,500 - year - onetime coprolites in the Caribbean unwrap foods favored by pre - Columbian cultures . Two groups in Puerto Rico , the Huecoid and Saladoid , used to eat up an regalia of foods , including lemon , sweet potato , chili capsicum , peanuts , papaya , tomato and , unexpectedly , cotton and tobacco , according to faecal analyses . It ’s possible that cotton plant seminal fluid or petroleum were consumed , but cotton oils are caustic , according to the researchers , who issue their 2023 finding in the journalPLOS One . So another possibility is that Indigenous women who wove with cotton fiber fibers used their spit to prepare the raw recital , the squad noted .
These civilization may have also chowed down on a " variety of dietary , medicinal , and hallucinogenic plants , " the researchers write in their 2023 study , publish in the journalPLOS One .
8. Ancient hyenas ate humans
— ' Wonderfully - shaped feces ' found inside ancient Pisces skull . What bequeath the pretty poops ?
— maculation of atomic number 47 in poop of ancient Cambrian puppet baffle scientists
— Woolly gigantic with carry on poop , wool and ligaments dredged from Siberian lake
The remains of Roman latrines in Leptis Magna, Libya.
Coprolites from ancient hyena and their pungency marks on bones reveal thathumans were on the menufor these carnivore up to 4,500 years ago in Saudi Arabia . The hyena take up residence in a lava - tube cavern for several millennia , leaving behind pile of old bone , including those of humans .
It ’s undecipherable if the hyenas had killed or scavenged their human target . Other bones in the lava tubes include those from domestic ass , caprines ( a type of goat ) , gazelles , camel and Hugo Wolf or dog .
Dennis Jenkins, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History, holds an ancient human coprolite from the Paisley Caves.
The Neolithic workers who helped build the famous Stonehenge monument also left fossilized “poop balls” littered with parasitic worm eggs.
Prickly pear cactus was a high-fiber staple of the early Southwest Native American diet.
Poop detectives revealed when settlements at the Lofoten Islands in Norway were populated.
Researchers excavate the cave with the Mesolithic-era bones.
The ancient DNA of cotton was found in the mummified poops of people who lived in Puerto Rico about 1,500 years ago.
A sampling square in an ancient hyena den, including bones from human remains.
