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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 Tuesday May 21 2019, @12:52AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 21 2019, @12:52AM (#845684)

    Sounds like they made hush puppies to go with their BBQ brontosaurus.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Tuesday May 21 2019, @01:56AM (12 children)

    by stormwyrm (717) on Tuesday May 21 2019, @01:56AM (#845695) Journal

    There's already plenty of evidence that the earliest humans could not have been strict carnivores contrary to what some of the carnivore diet advocates claim. There is that L-gulonolactone oxidase gene which is broken in humans, leaving us unable to synthesise our own vitamin C the way all true carnivores can. A strict carnivore diet will thus lead to scurvy. On the other hand, amylase genes, whose only purpose is to make enzymes to digest starch, are highly selected for in the human genome, and this newly discovered and very ancient archaeological evidence further corroborates that genetic evidence. It's pretty hard to reconcile all this evidence with a hypothesised ancestral all meat diet, or even one which is ultra-low carb.

    --
    Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
    • (Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Tuesday May 21 2019, @03:20AM

      by Farkus888 (5159) on Tuesday May 21 2019, @03:20AM (#845707)

      Those diets are a mental shortcut to cutting out processed foods. That part is a good plan. Compare the fiber and net carbs of those tubers to 10 randomly selected food items in an American grocery store. You'll find that this may not endorse Atkins or carnivore but it certainly doesn't support the standard American diet either.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday May 21 2019, @03:25AM (4 children)

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday May 21 2019, @03:25AM (#845709) Journal

      I don't know that there are many people arguing prehistoric humans were pure carnivores. Rather, the "Paleo" folks tend to argue that starch is the root of all evil (no pun intended, given the tubers in TFA), and instead argue for a diet of mostly meat and vegetables.

      Of course the meat they usually eat is often nothing like the lean game meat prehistoric humans would have had, and the vegetables and fruits are mostly bizarre giant monstrosities selectively bred by humans for hundreds or thousands of years to be easier to digest and to give more nutrition. If Paleo folks had to subsist on the meat and veggies and miniscule fruits of the prehistoric humans, they'd likely be surprised... And have large amounts of gas from the enormous fiber intake it would require to get basic nutrition from plant sources. Hence why primitive humans turned to concentrated calories in plant sources like starches.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 21 2019, @03:53AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 21 2019, @03:53AM (#845711)
        The strong selection of amylase genes and the evidence from TFA blow that Paleo diet hypothesis out of the water just as thoroughly.
        • (Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Tuesday May 21 2019, @04:48AM (1 child)

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 21 2019, @04:48AM (#845718) Journal

          Depending on what you mean, no. Dogs have has strong selection for amylase genes, and they're normally considered carnivores. I haven't heard anything about bears, but the same ancestor produced giant pandas and polar bears (though I'm not sure of the time scale). But diet is one of those things that can change pretty quickly.

          Well, I guess my actual point was that it wouldn't take strong selection. Even a slight advantage would tend to propagate until it dominated. And people's diets were pretty flexible long before they were people. Consider the diets of modern chimpanzees and baboons. The chimps that live in a good place are quite happy to eat shellfish. The ones that live in the interior are more into fruit and nuts (and an occasional monkey). Some think that a bunch of termites is the ideal meal. And since people have the same kind of variation, I expect that our common ancestor did too. You explore your surroundings looking for things to eat. Try everything that isn't too dangerous. (Watch a two year old some time...and *try* to keep inappropriate things out of his mouth.)

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 21 2019, @05:55AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 21 2019, @05:55AM (#845724)
            I dunno, a strong case could be made for classifying dogs as omnivores. They can manage with a diet of as little as 30% meat. Mesocarnivores at most. Contrast this with obligate carnivores such as domestic cats and other felids, which almost totally lack the physiology required to digest non-animal foods and are able to synthesise essential nutrients like vitamin C absent in meat, while conversely unable make other nutrients already common in meat, like retinol. Trying to feed a dog a vegan diet isn't a good idea, but it would be downright lethal to a cat. [huffpost.com]
      • (Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday May 22 2019, @05:12PM

        by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Wednesday May 22 2019, @05:12PM (#846311)

        Prehistoric animals like mammoths, seals, and hogs had plenty of fat. So I don't think the lean meats argument necessarily holds. The more important aspect of prehistoric meat consumption may be that hunter-gatherers ate a lot of organ meats: brains, hearts, lungs, kidneys, eyes, livers, pancreas, stomach, small intestines, etc....

        I haven't paid close attention to paleo diet books, my superficial impression is that organ meats are ignored save for the occasional liver recipe. So the nutritional profile is quite different.

    • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday May 21 2019, @03:26AM (3 children)

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday May 21 2019, @03:26AM (#845710)

      I thought our teeth were another way of telling that we're omnivores.

      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday May 21 2019, @04:49AM (2 children)

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 21 2019, @04:49AM (#845719) Journal

        Our teeth are clear evidence that we're not supposed to eat sweet pastries.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
        • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday May 21 2019, @09:10AM (1 child)

          by MostCynical (2589) on Tuesday May 21 2019, @09:10AM (#845752) Journal

          ... or fizzy drinks

          --
          "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 21 2019, @09:49AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 21 2019, @09:49AM (#845760)

            Didn't your ma teach you that drinks are for drinking not for eating?

    • (Score: 2) by pinchy on Tuesday May 21 2019, @10:58PM (1 child)

      by pinchy (777) on Tuesday May 21 2019, @10:58PM (#845965) Journal

      A strict carnivore diet will thus lead to scurvy

      Looks like thats not entirely true. Its in the meat but degrades over time when its stored.

      http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic32-2-135.pdf [ucalgary.ca]

      • (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.
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