Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians

07-23-2012 • http://blogs.scientificamerican.com, By Rob Dunn

Right now, one half of all Americans are on a diet. The other half just gave up on their diets and are on a binge. Collectively, we are overweight, sick and struggling. Our modern choices about what and how much to eat have gone terribly wrong. The time has come to return to a more sensible way of eating and living, but which way? An entire class of self-help books recommends a return to the diets of our ancestors. Paleolithic diets, caveman diets, primal diets and the like, urge us to eat like the ancients. Taken too literally, such diets are ridiculous. After all, sometimes our ancestors starved to death and the starving to death diet, well, it ends badly. Yet, the idea that we might take our ancestral diet into consideration when evaluating the foods on which our organs, cells and existence thrive, makes sense. But what did our ancestors eat?

Here is where the trouble starts. Collectively, anthropologists have spent many a career attempting to hone in on the diets of our most recent ancestors. Typically, they focus on our stone age (AKA Paleolithic) human ancestors or our earlier pre-human, hominid ancestors. Even if we just consider our stone age ancestors—those folks whose stories span the time between the first stone tool and the first agriculture—the sides of the debate are polarized.

1 Comments in Response to Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians

Comment by Powell Gammill

Entered on: 7/24/2012 4:39:49 AM

This is an interesting propaganda piece by an already well known to be dubious "scientific" publication.

The so called paleolithic diet--another take on the carb free Adkin's diet--deals with what HUMANS used to eat up until a mere 15,000 to 30,000 years ago when domestic agriculture first impacted our diet. Rejecting the modern diet.

What our vegetarian ancestors WELL over a quarter of million years ago who possessed the digestive tract and teeth of herbivores ate is irrelevant, as humans possess digestive tracts and teeth patterns intermediate between carnivores and herbivores placing us squarely in omnivore camp.

"Scientific American" knows this. So why would they publish this? Because they oppose anyone who deviates from the state approved agriculturally lobbied high carb diet pyramid of farming special interest consumption. They are paid to say it by the same too. Dutiful corporate press.

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