Patrick Nunn

Imagine you were one of the first groups of people to arrive by boat on an island in the middle of the tropical Pacific Ocean in ancient times.

You had been at sea for weeks, your concern growing as your supplies were exhausted and you had to depend on the fish and the birds you could catch…and the rain that fell from time to time.

Then the high islands you had been searching for appeared faintly over the eastern horizon, so you steered a course towards them.

Quenching your thirst from the rivers you found there, you looked for a ready source of food and found abundant shellfish, clinging to rocks or buried in the sand of the shallow sea floor and the mud of the river estuaries.

You gorged yourself on the soft parts of these shellfish, discarding their hard shells in piles along the shoreline.

And these piles grew. And grew. Until…

Scientists in the 21st century start exploring these remarkable shell middens, revealing history, geography – and the dietary preferences of the people who lived in such places long, long ago.