Angela
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See:
http://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/1.757109
"Prehistoric man ate more than elephants, hippos, rats and anything that didn’t eat him first 780,000 years ago. He also subsisted on a rich plant diet, archaeologists have discovered, following analysis of nuts, seeds and other floral remains found from that time in waterlogged ground by Lake Hula in northern Israel... a rich assortment of fruit, nuts, tubers, roots, seeds from trees and shrubs, as well as anything that moved and could be caught."
Is the article correct? Is this the real Paleo diet? It's certainly one of them, yes?
I've always been rather skeptical that the "Paleo diet" was necessarily all animal and fish protein based, if for no other reason than that the human intestinal tract, in terms of length, is sort of in between what would be expected of total protein eaters (very long) and total plant eaters (rather short). I think the reason that the "paleo" diet was/is assumed by some to be almost completely animal and fish protein based is because the studies were of people who lived in frigid conditions where plants were entirely unavailable, or at least unavailable for most of the year. I think the reality is that we're "built" to be omnivores.
That was brought home to me a couple of years ago when the diet of early humans in North Africa was examined and they were found to be very reliant on filberts, so much so that they all suffered from cavities. I'm sure it was worth it; so much nutrition, and so good tasting, and right there for the picking. (I'm a great lover of filberts, also known as hazel nuts. They're my favorites.)
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24817-ancient-hunter-gatherers-had-rotten-teeth/
Likely, it was the same way in the Near East, which was blessed during many eras with a multitude of edible plants.
It's still true, of course, that a change to a vast majority plant diet favored mutations that facilitated that kind of nutrition, just as a recent paper I recently posted posits that the early Native Americans show increasing signs of mutations that facilitate high protein consumption, which was probably necessary if they were going to survive a long stint in far northern Siberia and Alaska.
http://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/1.757109
"Prehistoric man ate more than elephants, hippos, rats and anything that didn’t eat him first 780,000 years ago. He also subsisted on a rich plant diet, archaeologists have discovered, following analysis of nuts, seeds and other floral remains found from that time in waterlogged ground by Lake Hula in northern Israel... a rich assortment of fruit, nuts, tubers, roots, seeds from trees and shrubs, as well as anything that moved and could be caught."
Is the article correct? Is this the real Paleo diet? It's certainly one of them, yes?
I've always been rather skeptical that the "Paleo diet" was necessarily all animal and fish protein based, if for no other reason than that the human intestinal tract, in terms of length, is sort of in between what would be expected of total protein eaters (very long) and total plant eaters (rather short). I think the reason that the "paleo" diet was/is assumed by some to be almost completely animal and fish protein based is because the studies were of people who lived in frigid conditions where plants were entirely unavailable, or at least unavailable for most of the year. I think the reality is that we're "built" to be omnivores.
That was brought home to me a couple of years ago when the diet of early humans in North Africa was examined and they were found to be very reliant on filberts, so much so that they all suffered from cavities. I'm sure it was worth it; so much nutrition, and so good tasting, and right there for the picking. (I'm a great lover of filberts, also known as hazel nuts. They're my favorites.)
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24817-ancient-hunter-gatherers-had-rotten-teeth/
Likely, it was the same way in the Near East, which was blessed during many eras with a multitude of edible plants.
It's still true, of course, that a change to a vast majority plant diet favored mutations that facilitated that kind of nutrition, just as a recent paper I recently posted posits that the early Native Americans show increasing signs of mutations that facilitate high protein consumption, which was probably necessary if they were going to survive a long stint in far northern Siberia and Alaska.