Prehistory
Text: What's for dinner in the stone age?

It’s much easier to get food now than at any time in history – look in a shop and you will see many different foods on offer for people to buy. In prehistory, getting your dinner was a little trickier.

8,000 years ago, before farming came to Britain, people were called hunter-gatherers for a reason: if they wanted food, they had to hunt and gather it from the landscape around them. Have a look at the types of food on this page to find out what kinds of tasty things people were tucking into in the Stone Age.

Image: illustration of a cartoon stone age man with food in front of him

 

It's dinnertime in the Stone Age, but what's on the menu? Click below to download a colouring sheet and use pencils, pens or paints to create your own scene!

Download your colouring sheet

What's on the menu?

  • Meat

    Eating meat meant sharpening a spear and going out to hunt a wild boar, deer or aurochs (giant wild cows). People weren’t fussy either: all the guts and eyeballs were eaten too!

  • Fish

    People who were living near a river or the sea would have tried their best to catch fish using elaborate fish traps, and hooks and nets. Shellfish like crabs would also have been on the menu.

  • Eggs and Honey

    Hunter gatherers would have eaten whatever wild birds’ eggs (or birds) they could find. When they weren’t raiding nests, they also raided bee hives to collect honey.

  • Fruits and plants

    Foods that didn’t run or swim needed to be gathered, including plants like nettles, dandelion leaves and mushrooms. Fruits like plums and wild berries would have made a tasty treat in autumn.

  • Nuts

    Prehistoric people ate a lot of nuts, including hazelnuts and acorns, to get the protein and natural fat they needed in their diet. Wild grass seeds could be pounded to make a gruel or porridge.

  • On the farm

    From about 6,000 years ago, people in Britain started farming. They grew crops like wheat and kept cows and goats for milk and cheese, though many foods were still hunted and gathered.

Over to you...

It’s 8000 BC, and this tribe have set up their camp by a river. People would have lived a nomadic lifestyle, moving from place to place and hunting, fishing and gathering food as they moved around.

Could you survive as a hunter-gatherer? See if you can answer these questions to find out! (Answers at the bottom of this page)

  1. Why do you think they chose this location for their camp?
  2. What food can you see them hunting for or collecting? 
    Tip: hover over the image with your mouse to zoom in!

Personal challenge: imagine only eating food you can find in the wild. Make a list of your 10 favourite foods you would miss – could you give them up?

An interview with a real-life Stone Age man, Will Lord

Interview with a Stone Age Man at Grime's Graves

We sent English Heritage Members Flo and Alfie Tyrrell to Grime’s Graves, a neolithic flint mine in North Norfolk, to meet prehistoric survival expert Will Lord and learn about what life was like here in the Stone Age.

Watch the video to discover how Grime’s Graves got its name, how the miners saw what they were doing underground, where prehistoric people slept and where they went to the toilet.  Will even tells his favourite prehistoric joke!

Watch the video
This mineralised human poo was found at Durrington Walls and is over 4,000 years old. It contains tiny remains that can tell us what the person ate
This mineralised human poo was found at Durrington Walls and is over 4,000 years old. It contains tiny remains that can tell us what the person ate
© Mr & Mrs SJ Rawlins and Mr & Mrs WH Rawlins (Photo English Heritage/Clare Kendall)

You are what you eat!

How do archaeologists know what people ate over 4,000 years ago? Evidence can be gathered from food remains at archaeological sites, and by analysing human bones, teeth and preserved poo, called coprolites (pictured).

Evidence found on teeth can give scientists a lot of information about the types of food people were eating in the past. Tooth decay is the result of eating too many starchy crops made from grains like wheat or too much sugar. Gritty, fibrous or hard foods can wear teeth down gradually over time, and plaque (which was common before the invention of the toothbrush) can preserve tiny fragments of food.

By measuring the amounts of carbon and nitrogen in human bones, scientists can tell whether a person was eating mostly shellfish and fish or land animals, and whether they had a vegetarian, meat or mixed diet. Sometimes, when a body is preserved in ice, in a peat bog, or by mummification, the contents of their stomach can survive. Ötzi, a Bronze Age man whose mummy was found in an Alpine glacier, had eaten preserved goat meat for his last meal.

  • Answers:
    1. There is a source of fresh water from the river, lots of foods to collect and eat, and an open space for the camp site.

    2. Nuts, apples, berries, eggs, fish, wild boar