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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 21 2019, @12:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the did-you-want-fries-with-that? dept.

ScienceDaily:

New discoveries made at the Klasies River Cave in South Africa's southern Cape, where charred food remains from hearths were found, provide the first archaeological evidence that anatomically modern humans were roasting and eating plant starches, such as those from tubers and rhizomes, as early as 120,000 years ago.
...
"Our results showed that these small ashy hearths were used for cooking food and starchy roots and tubers were clearly part of their diet, from the earliest levels at around 120,000 years ago through to 65,000 years ago," says Larbey. "Despite changes in hunting strategies and stone tool technologies, they were still cooking roots and tubers."
...
By combining cooked roots and tubers as a staple with protein and fats from shellfish, fish, small and large fauna, these communities were able to optimally adapt to their environment, indicating great ecological intelligence as early as 120,000 years ago.

"Starch diet isn't something that happens when we started farming, but rather, is as old as humans themselves," says Larbey. Farming in Africa only started in the last 10,000 years of human existence.

"Meat and potatoes" is much older than you thought.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @02:30AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @02:30AM (#846028)
    Yes, there is vitamin C in some animal parts, but not a lot, and cooking tends to destroy the vitamin. 100 g of raw chicken liver has 17.9 mg of vitamin C, but cooking reduces this to something like only 2.7 mg. So, you'd need to consume something like 223 g (about half a pound) of raw chicken liver to get the 40 mg minimum RDA of vitamin C. Compare that to 45 mg vitamin C in a single orange.