What did our Ice Age ancestor eat ? Once a question primarily hold by archaeologist and fossilist , this interrogation forms the cornerstone of dining choices a greater swath of the universe is making every day to judge to stick with the “ Paleo Diet . ” For these dietary devotees , this imply more meat and treating cereal grain as if they do n’t exist , befit the stereotypic image of prehistorical people as carnivorous nomad .
The trouble is that our ancient ancestors had an fantastically pliable dieting that ranged from angelical potatoes to mastodons . Here ’s a short list of actual items that people have been eating for thousands of age , including items that would be anathema to today ’s paleo dieter .
1. Mammoth and Mastodon
While they did n’t barbequeFlintstones - panache rack of giant ribs , prehistoric the great unwashed really did deplete mammoths and mastodont . We know this because they give their mesa scraps in the fossil record . In North America in special , paleontologists and archaeologists occasionally find bones of the Ice Age behemoth bearingbutcherymarks from ancient mass whocarved upthe massive carcasses into more doable chunks . Unfortunately , no one has yet discovered an ancient tome titledHow to Serve Mammoth .
2. Giant Sloths
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This one ’s a little iffy , but deserving consider . Ata 30,000 year erstwhile sitein Uruguay , paleontologists have found a monolithic accumulation of giant sloth bones . How the acedia got there is a mystery , but at least some of the bone seem to show cut mark indicate that people sliced up some sloth steak . The independent arrest is that the web site is older than accepted particular date for the arrival of humans in South America , but that could mean thatLestodonleftovers are among the early indicators of humans on the continent .
3. Lemurs
Thanks to the internet , we hump that lemurs are too precious — and too peril — to eat these day . But the other inhabitants of Madagascar think otherwise . Distinctive damage to lemur pearl show that people often becharm and eat the hound - present primates , and a taste for the tree - inhabit mammals play a role in driving the larger mintage to extermination in the not - too - distant past . The very last of the island ’s gorilla - sized lemurs may have twine upas entrées .
4. Lizards
They ’re not extend to show up at Whole Foods anytime presently , but lizard were collation for people who lived in northeastern Brazil around 10,000 age ago . Poop preservedthe crucial clues . Ancient human feces found at one site contained the eggs of nematode worms peculiar to lizards and amphibians . The researchers behind the scatological scientific discipline also found a few lounge lizard scales inside one of the coprolites , confirm that at least one somebody tried a reptilian morsel .
5. Shellfish
Almost any time people settle down next to a water source , they dined on shellfish . Shell dunghill make this abundantly clear . These dumps of stock split mussel , halved clams , and open oysters show that shellfish has been on the human being menu fromthe Pleistocene through the present tense . Best of all , these human - created assemblages contain a wealthiness of information about prehistoric surround and ancient climates . One person ’s trash is an archaeologist ’s treasure .
6. Veggies
Prehistoric people were the original locavores . Not that they had much choice ; multitude all over the world picked and processed what mature nearby long before the advent of agriculture . People who last in Northern China around 20,000 year ago , for example , boom onbeans , snakegourd source , and yam . ( gratefully , message boards had not yet been forge , so there was no place to contend about whether or not sweet potatoes count as a paleo food . ) And our close Neanderthal relatives , despite their rather carnivorous reputation , manducate greens , too . oafish coprolite rule at a site called El Salt in Spain contained biological compound tied todigesting plant foods , likely tubers , nut , and Chuck Berry base upon what maturate in the area at the sentence .
7. Beer
Do n’t grease one’s palms into the modern paleo dieting guilty conscience stumble . Humans have been throwing back brew since the finis of the Ice Age . At an 11,000 year honest-to-god site site called Göbekli Tepe in Turkey , archaeologists have found troughs that were likely used forbrewing beer , not to mention an area nearby to store about 42 gallon of the crapulence . Other masses around the world were doing the same . residual leave on clayware trace that people in China were fermentingbeer - like drinksby 9000 twelvemonth ago , which you could even try ina recreated form . prehistorical partying really can admit beer .
8. Sweets
The modern paleo trend may make a braggart deal about eschewing carbohydrates , but prehistorical human race were n’t so uppish about sugars . The fossil remains of people who lived in Morocco ’s “ Cave of the Pigeons ” between 12,000 and 15,000 age ago show that cavities and tooth decline was permeative in their population . The cause?Acorns . Even though meat and snail in the raw were staples of their diet , these people popped acorn like candy , much to the same gist . That ’s a sign of the real paleo diet — making the most of the local fare , be it mammoth steak or sweet acorn .
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