Meat tastes good?
But beyond that - you continue to ignore that some types of meat - such as mussels - are easily plucked from the shoreline with no more effort than picking berries. And often less chance of getting your arm scratched by thorns.
Again, part of your pattern of conveniently disregarding anything that doesn’t support your pre-conceived position. You don’t want to let facts get in the way of your assertions, right?
It says what? “JZesbaugh’s assertion is correct”? I don’t think so.
Muscles would be available, as would as I said marrow as well. Those would present good opportunities. And in the instance of costal people, muscles might even become a staple. Well until the muscles were depopulated so I’d guess short term, a more renewable food source might be requisite, to support large populations.
Great point.
Well the diet suggested seems to favor vegetation. But it’s only one instance. It says my assertion is debatable.
You keep bringing up the Ice Man, yet your own cites show that the man had meat in his stomach. He was wearing leather for the gods sake! I truly don’t understand what point you think you are making with all of this, but whatever it is, it’s not working.
-XT
"The natural diet of a human being is primarily a herbivore diet.
I think its more accurate then just saying omnivore. The article the OP is on is 20 years old, and not up to speed with modern thinking on the issue. Applying the three prong classification system is generally correct, but as I’m trying to demonstrate, misleading.
That’s pretty much it."
Being snowed in does lend to being pretty bored.
The Neolithic revolution was based on cereal crops, not animal husbandry, which was a by-product. Husbandry is not primary, it’s secondary. Which shows why we are built/selected for cereal/starch foods, not meat.
Ok, but so what? Humans aren’t herbivores. We’re omnivores. Saying that ‘natural humans’ (whatever that means) eat ‘primarily a herbivore diet’ just means that early human hunter/gatherer societies subsisted mainly on plants except when they could get better higher value foods such as meat. Which is just another way of saying that humans are omnivorous, eating basically anything they could get.
But, you know, it isn’t. It’s more ‘accurate’ to simply state the truth instead of trying to twist and turn and play a lot of semantic word games. Humans are NOT herbivores. We were never herbivores for the entire existence of our species, and not even in the more recent ancestor species we evolved from.
Again, so what? Neolithic communities still ate meat. They were still omnivores, no matter how you twist your definitions.
Even if we accept this as true (and it’s not…it depends on the community), again…so what? They still used animal products to supplement their diet. They REQUIRED animal products to live. They were omnivores not herbivores.
Good grief. No, it doesn’t show that at all. It shows that humans used different strategies to survive, and were able to access varied food types in making up their diet. Which…makes…them…OMNIVORES! Sheesh.
-XT
Let’s define “natural human” for the sake of this as Neolithic revolution. We’re seeing more complex division of labor, record keeping, lots of things that are defining to society today. A large enough turning point to place a marker there. Objections?
I’m unsure how you think this will augment your case, or why you think that ‘natural humans’ would equal basically modern human societies, but if you want to set some sort of arbitrary boundary and make your case, feel free. You should know a couple of things about ‘Neolithic revolution’ societies though:
Physiologically speaking, Neolithic humans were basically the same hardware we have today, at least wrt our dietary needs. Depending on the society and the strata one occupied, they probably ate MORE meat than our hunter/gatherer ancestors did, since more was available. However, if you think you can somehow make your case using them as ‘natural humans’, as I said, go for it.
-XT
In fact, it doesn’t even tell you the customary, preferred, or “natural” diet for that particular individual. Can you not conceive of factors related to a guy being preserved in a glacier that might affect the evidence of his diet?
Yes admittedly so, hair as I understand it would be the best indication. It would document his consumption pattern over the ENTIRE period his hair had grown.
Hair analysis is an interesting study.
You are looking at the obvious while ignoring the subtle. (And yes I appreciate the irony of this statement)
Sure may take a bit.
My point is the foundation of post-Neolithic revolution civilizations(mouthful) is cereal grains. No cereal grains, no civilization. Does this first part seem right to you? So we can move on with common understanding on this point?
Foraged shellfish are no more or less likely to be overgathered than vegetable foods. In the specific case of mussels, it would be impossible for a pre-industrial society to drive them into extinction through over-harvesting, as the populations are constantly replenished with larval mussels arriving from places out of reach to the humans.
Furthermore, they’re not nearly as seasonal as most plant-based foods. If you concede that scarcity of vegetable foods turns humans omnivorous, I need to point out that scarcity of vegetable foods happens on an annual basis in most parts of the world. The event in which this occurs is called winter.
Excellent! Neolithic record-keeping, in the form of cave painting, seems to favour what subject material?
I don’t think anyone is disputing your minor point that humans in the past probably ate a higher ratio of vegetable to animal foods. The key sticking point here seems to be that you want to redefine the term ‘omnivore’, for some reason. You do realise that it’s an inclusive term? That being an omnivore doesn’t oblige the individual to eat exactly equal amounts of every different thing?
That is perhaps the truest thing you have said. Humans have been using technology since before we were humans. Humans wouldn’t exist without technology.
You can’t have it both ways. Either you are talking about modern man, in which case your cites to Lucy and the like are irrelevant, or else you are talking about the full historical chain of being for humans, in which case eating carrion is entirely relevant.
That evidence shows he had ibex and red deer meat in his stomach. Yep, that’s pretty conclusive - humans eat meat.
JZesbaugh, you seem to have an agenda, for some reason you are unhappy with the idea that humans developed with a diet that includes meat. You will just have to be unhappy, because all the evidence concludes that humans developed with a diet that includes meat.
If your point is that many people today eat far too much meat, then you should address that concern without fabricating and twisting the factual record.
Ok, sure…I’ll bite. With the following caveat, since you left something important out. It was the cultivation of agriculture and the domestication of animals which lead to ‘civilization’, or at least to settle communities able to sustain themselves without a foraging nomadic existence. But with that proviso, sure…I don’t think anyone disputes that both were necessary (along with a few other things) to make early settlements possible.
-XT
I almost fell off my chair at this.
Genus Homo, as I said earlier, has been around for over 2,000,000 years. If anything can be said about what we are “built/selected for” as a total system, it happened over those 2,000,000 years. The Neolithic revolution is less than rounding error in that number. (The “over” is at least 200,000 years.)
Do we see any effect to the basic physiology in the past 10,000 years? Yes, a minor mutation to a single gene means that in a minority of humanity, the signal to stop making the lactase enzyme is never sent out.
That’s pretty much it. The human digestive tract has not changed in gross anatomy for 500,000 generations. The human diet surely has. It must have changed over and over, both because of changes in local environment through time and because humans spread out to cover six continents and many isolated islands. Even on the isolated islands, given tens of thousands of years to evolve, humans like the Australian aborigines do not show any differences in gross anatomy. Full stop.
Is it possible to have a diet that on balance is bad for you? Certainly. Here are the top three factors in such a diet. Excess total calories, excess sugars, excess fats. Note that meat doesn’t even make the list.
Since you like things simple to the point of caricature, I’ll play along.
No animal that can’t digest fiber is a herbivore. Humans can’t digest fiber. Therefore, humans are not herbivores. Mate.
…plus many of his tools and possessions were made from leather, sinew, bone, rawhide, etc. Pretty absurd to imagine that these materials were the only purpose his people had for animals.
Absurdity does not seem to be a filter criteria to JZesbaugh.
Actually no amylase was highly selected for and is prevalent in the genes of peoples who adopted agriculture.’
You are missing the entire purpose of CHEWING!