As family members enjoy the feast,

 As family members enjoy the feast,

 I watch their little boy, Alfonso, who had been sick all week. He is dancing around the fire, happily chewing on a cooked piece of coati tail. Nate looks pleased. Tonight in Anachere, far from the diet debates, there is meat, and that is good.

The people of Crete, the largest of the Greek islands, eat a rich variety of foods drawn from their groves and farms and the sea. They lived on a so-called Mediterranean diet long before it became a fad.Ann Gibbons is the author of The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors. Matthieu Paley photographed Afghanistan’s Kyrgyz for our February 2013 issue.

The magazine thanks The Rockefeller Foundation and members of the National Geographic Society for their generous support of this series of articles.