Diet of 780,000 yr old hominids"

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.
 
Read somewhere quite a while ago that erectus already got at least 30% of his energy from plant food. About animal proteins - they hunted hippos and elephants for their fat, not primarily because of their meat, which they could hardly digest except for their inner organs. They were perhaps not so good at using fire as we want them to be, which may explain why we have neither the proper teeth nor the proper digestion system for eating tough meat in the first place.
 
I like this video on youtube about man vs animal :


I have been thinking about it.
Probably finding enough food was not the biggest chalenge for the early hunters.
The biggest chalenge was not to be eaten by other predators.
 
Read somewhere quite a while ago that erectus already got at least 30% of his energy from plant food. About animal proteins - they hunted hippos and elephants for their fat, not primarily because of their meat, which they could hardly digest except for their inner organs. They were perhaps not so good at using fire as we want them to be, which may explain why we have neither the proper teeth nor the proper digestion system for eating tough meat in the first place.

they ate what they found in order to survive
and it depended on where they live what that was
in the tundra you won't find much plant food, the reindeer hunters were relying on meat primarily
where fish was to catch, they ate fish
were plants and nuts were to be found , they ate that
 
they ate what they found in order to survive
and it depended on where they live what that was
in the tundra you won't find much plant food, the reindeer hunters were relying on meat primarily
where fish was to catch, they ate fish
were plants and nuts were to be found , they ate that
That wasn't exactly my point. Of course humans could only eat what they could find, that's not disputed.

The really interesting thing is, that stable isotope data and microwear analysis of the teeth together with the obvious lack of perfect genetic adaption to usual predator anatomy, suggests that mammal meat protein was not the preferred diet of hominids. Wherever there were alternatives available, they would choose more of other food sources like veggies, fruit, fish and other seafood, or animal fat, which is easier digestable than the meat itself. The human body is by far less able to digest great amounts of proteins than their animal predator counterparts either. The kidneys won't allow it.

The deer and berries diet, which is filling our schoolbooks of early human life (and the paleo-fad-diet books), can't explain the data derived in the last 10-20 years. All the findings together indicate that periods of restriction to mammal meat were not very long lasting during human evolution and that the hominids preferred variation in their diet from the beginning until the neolithic revolution.
 
Have any of you been to the island of Crete or other Mediterranean isles? You will find grapes, figs and many other fruits growing all over the place so I am pretty sure people were just collecting a vegetarian diet quite frequently as it would take a lot less effort than hunting. I am pretty certain that the concept behind the Paleo diet is not only reliant on our ancestors' locations, but also certain personality traits and food preferences. Fish appears to be an obvious choice as it isn't the degenerate version of a wild animal as farm animals tend to be ... fish was always fish. Chicken, beef, pork etc. obviously isn't as nutritious. Turkey is close to the wold turkey so voila. In addition, man was responsible for the extinction of many animals once common diet as they were easy to hunt down, like the Glyptodon.
 

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