WSU researchers found that Native Americans had diverse diets that did not rely solely on lean meat, which debunks previous findings that suggested Native peoples’ diets along the Pacific Rim were almost exclusively made up of salmon.
It is impossible that Native Americans would have lived almost exclusively off of salmon, said Shannon Tushingham, WSU anthropology professor and lead author of the study. They would have suffered “salmon starvation,” similar to the rabbit starvation many European explorers experienced.
Diets that are reliant on lean meat like salmon or rabbit would not be possible for humans to live on because it causes protein poisoning, she said. The human body requires other nutrients to survive, so diets consisting almost exclusively of salmon would be unsustainable, leading to death.