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About 4,000 years ago, the prehistoric inhabitants of present-day Murcia and Almería lived in a class society with a centralized system and advanced agricultural techniques. They protected their cities with walls and fertilized the fields, leading to grazing cattle. But the diet of the common population, based on cereals, was progressively worsening.
A new international study, in which the Autonomous University of Barcelona ( UAB ) has participated and which has been published by Plos One , has managed to reconstruct both the diet of the El Argar culture - as this society is called - and the strategies agricultural on which it was based.
The research was the first to scientifically analyze, using carbon and nitrogen isotopes, not only human remains, but also animals and cereals. In this way, it has been possible to rebuild the entire food chain and the economy on which it was based.
The intense agricultural exploitation of the land that surrounded the populations of El Argar -or Argaricas- led to a growth that made this culture one of the most important in the Bronze Age. However, everything "ended very badly" for this society, based on "an unsustainable economic strategy," as Cristina Rihuete-Herrada, one of the authors of the report from the UAB, explained to this newspaper.
The cultivable fields near the enclaves studied were left vacant. "Food was clearly increasingly impoverished." In the end, "a combination of worsening climate and an unsustainable economic strategy" led to the collapse, not of the Argaric society itself. "It ended so badly that none of the subsequent societies had a memory of them, " said Rihuete-Herrada.
A first "surprise" of the new study, pointed out this expert, is that the diet of the El Argar society " was not as stratified as we thought ." Although previous research had already determined that this culture had three social classes, the new analysis of isotopes, capable of discerning between different classes of food consumed, has revealed that only the highest, which encompassed around 10% of the population, consumed meat and dairy.
The rest, from people with political rights to serfs and slaves, had a similar diet to each other, in which barley stood out. Also, her diet was getting worse . Nearby fields were vacant, proteins were scarcer and El Argar ended up collapsing without leaving any cultural trace.
Food chain analysis
The investigation analyzed the remains of the excavations of La Bastida (Totana, Murcia) and Gatas (Turre, Almería). The first was an important city, inhabited by around 1,000 people. The second enclave had a population of about 300 people. In La Bastida, exploitation was more intensive, which explains both its success first and its eventual collapse, in which, being a centralized society, it dragged the rest.
«One of the lessons is that, for a time, you can do well with an unsustainable system, but ... until when? », Summarized Rihuete-Herrada.
For the first time, isotopes have been analyzed in plant and animal remains, not just humans. When comparing the entire food chain, it has been concluded that, if only people had been taken into account, wrong conclusions would have been reached .
The reason is precisely the use of compost that fueled their agriculture. The isotopic footprint of the animals thus passed to cereals and humans, who consumed barley and wheat. But not like this, except for very few, milk and meat.
The disappearance of a culture
In the near future, researchers want to delve into the relationship between the impoverishment of the diet, the environmental degradation caused by El Argar in its environment and the disappearance of this culture.
"Poorer protein diets and more intensive agricultural management are indications of the subsistence crisis that, according to our hypothesis, caused the abrupt end of Argaric society , although we need to continue investigating to confirm it," says Roberto Risch, also a researcher from Prehistory. from the UAB and another of the signatories of the report.
In one way or another, the truth is that one of the most advanced societies of its period disappeared overnight around 1550 BC . Until their archaeological remains appeared, in the 19th century, no one remembered them.
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