The toolless hominids used to borrow such from their long suffering next door neighbours,
Back when I studied prehistory there was the idea that one of the initial advantages of stone tool use was to improve the bounty of scavenging by allowing the hominids to split bones to get at the marrow, giving them access to a food source that other scavengers couldn’t reach (unless they had jaws strong enough to crack bone) and making even a previously well scavenged carcase a useful find. Irrc there was some actual evidence for this in the form of cut marks on bones.
Yeah, you still hear this idea being put out there, and it does make some sense. Marrow has a high nutrition value, too. That is, if you’re living hand-to-mouth-- it’s high in fat calories.
This is a very interesting thread with even more interesting comments. :dubious:
My thoughts are certainly not in alignment with the mainstream beliefs and opinions, but so is the treatment of cancer and most detrimental diseases.
I have no doubt I’ll get beat up for this post.
Please know that I have ZERO intent to ‘flame’ anyone or their opinions here, but I have to admit that there’s a lot of ignorance and misinformation being thrown around based on some heavily false assumptions.
I mean, if the theme of this forum is to “fight ignorance”…
Nature is very, very intelligent and extremely efficient as well. This is the reason, for example, why most of life on Earth produces Vitamin C and humans don’t…nature recognized that in our diet we would get an abundance of it.
So, let’s take a simple anecdotal look at some basic anatomy…
If you compare the digestive systems between an herbivore and a carnivore with the digestive system of a human, you see some very interesting correlations.
The digestive system of a human is about 90% in similarity to the herbivore.
The normal pH level in the stomach of a human is the same as the herbivore.
The intestinal tract of humans is around 20 to 30 feet long to ensure a long digestive time -just like the herbivore.
The large intestine is several feed long with nodules and ‘nooks and crannies’ to slow the movement and ensure maximum digestive time-just like the herbivore.
The carnivore has an inherently more acidic stomach (lower pH), because flesh requires a lower pH for digestion compared to plant-based food.
The carnivore’s intestinal tract is only a few feet long…nature knows that flesh becomes putrid quickly and therefore must be eliminated quickly. (anyone with a common house cat has likely noticed this… they eat, then in a couple of hours or so it’s off to the litter box.)
The large intestine of a carnivore is very short and smooth to ensure waste is quickly eliminated.
The human digestive system does have the ability to digest flesh, but it is not intended to be the body’s predominant diet. The body has to momentarily “adapt” from its homeostasis to digest flesh by lowering its normal pH level through some “clever” chemistry. After all, there is no “hydrochloric acid pouch” in the stomach. Some believe the ability to digest flesh may be a survival mechanism that herbivores do not possess. And, yet, we very much like the TASTE of meat, so therefore we have rationalized that we “need” it to survive…which “non-pharmaceutical based” science and countless vegans have proven otherwise.
On a related note, people always ask about the “protein” source…which further proves the ignorance of the masses…that somehow humans must eat meat to get an adequate source of protein. Not only do all plant-based foods contain protein, the protein in plant-based foods are much more bioavailable and readily utilized by the body. Additionally, plant foods like spinach and broccoli contain more protein than red meat.
Muscle tissue in both humans and animals is largely comprised of protein. If humans must eat meat for adequate protein intake, what do cows and horses have to eat? Oh, right. They only eat plants…yet people wonder how in the world ancient man survived without meat.
On another note…anecdotally, alternative/naturopathic approaches to treating/healing and curing conditions such as cardiovascular disease, heart disease and cancer are more successful than “conventional” approaches. You’ll never see a double-blind clinical study for these approaches because these studies cost millions of dollars and only the pharmaceutical companies have the resources to conduct them. Strangely, you’re just not going to see “big pharma” sponsoring studies to prove their magic potions are less effective than what is found in nature (hard to believe, I know).
Nonetheless, you’re never going to see any naturopathic saying to a cancer patient: “Okay, you need to eat more meat/animal foods.” Literally never, never, never. But, I have personally witnessed the unbelievable progress of women move from Stage IV breast cancer to a completely clean PET scan within 12 weeks by consuming a strict diet consisting of only large amounts of raw plant-based food and completely eliminating all animal-based food from the diet. I’m not going to suggest at this point that animal-based foods necessarily “cause” disease, but they positively do nothing by way of treatment and assisting in the reversal of disease. As well, I’m not touting there is some magic cancer cure with plants. Cancer is an extremely complex lifestyle disease, and there is no cure-all. However, anecdotally, we see many more people being healed and restored to excellent health adopting a raw plant-based diet and eliminating all animal-based food.
Another connection…animal-based foods used to be VERY expensive, available only to the wealthy and elite. After all, it takes 6 to 9 pounds of plant-food to create 1 pound of meat. These expenses are now very disproportionate to what they should be because of government subsidies of crops like corn, etc. Interestingly, the elite were the people who were (supposedly) “fat and happy” (this is where the expression comes from). The worker societies could not afford these foods and were fed plants and legumes. They were thin and worked very hard. The wealthy were overweight from eating animal food rich in saturated fat. Granted, they were “organic” since there were no harmful pesticides, hormones, etc. It was (still is?) believed that the wealthy and powerful are “smarter” and one day someone came up with the notion that animal protein is what makes people smarter…since only the elite ate that kind of food, so “obviously” this class was smarter. Now, the poor and overweight eat the rich and flavorful “junk food” that was once the coveted diet of the elite. As far back as the Bible, Daniel ate a vegetarian diet and out-fought the guards. Whether you believe in this story of the Bible to be true or not is another conversation. Today, more and more athletes are moving away from animal-based foods and consuming a LOT more plant-based foods (especially leafy greens) because it not only enhances their performance but they also recover MUCH faster. The body does much less work to assimilate plant-based proteins than animal-based proteins.
So, before everyone goes to bashing my “unsubstantiated beliefs” (or whatever anyone may with to call them), I would at least challenge anyone to switch to eating a strict plant-based diet for 4 to 6 weeks, 50% raw and tell me how much better your body feels. Yes, it will be hard, but you will feel amazing.
I’m not necessarily saying it’s for everybody, and most of us are so sick and diseased from consuming so many pesticides, growth hormones, antibiotics, etc, and other toxic chemicals for so many years that they feel it is impossible to remain on a plant-based diet…which is a separate conversation, and I’m not a doctor or medical professional or practitioner of any kind. This is just my life experience, including time spent working in a naturopathic physician’s office…I’ve seen things I never would have believed if I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes.
I have personally adopted a predominantly vegan diet, but occasionally I’m too weak and cheat. I LOVE steak, but I pay a price if I eat it. On days I do heavy lifting at the gym, I eat about 3/4 lb of organic grass-fed beef merely out of convenience due to my calorie needs for recovery, and my digestive system moves much slower for a couple of days and I don’t feel as energized. So, much of this I speak from personal experience.
Anyway, to address the original question of “What did early humans eat before inventing tools?”…
The answer is simple: leafy green plants.
To this day, leafy greens are the healthiest, most nutritious source of food for the human body…and it is not the same for your cat or dog or many other forms of life on this planet.
I genuinely hope others find value in this information.
You want to eat animal foods? That’s fine, but be aware that your body cannot and will not perform at its maximum because it was not designed to survive long-term on a diet predominantly consisting of animal-based foods. Thousands of years ago our ancestors died of only 2 causes: trauma or starvation. Today, sadly, people overwhelmingly die of disease.
Enjoy.
Most of this is false. True herbivores have additional organs that humans lack, and can digest cellulose. Leafy green plants simply do not have enough caloric energy for early humans, considering that they could not digest most of the plant matter. Humans’ digestive systems are much, much closer (in all the measurements Mike01 references) to that of a pig or bear (or, for an obvious omnivorous example, chimpanzees, which routinely eat insects and hunt small animals) then a herbivore like a horse, rabbit, or cow, which makes sense- pigs and bears (and chimps) are true omnivores, as are humans. We cannot eat grass, leaves, and twigs- herbivores can. There are human societies, like the Inuit and other residents of the far north, that survive and thrive (and are very fit, healthy, and long-lived) on a near 100% animal diet.
Early humans had very tough lives- the caloric density of animal-based foods was absolutely necessary for survival. And once we had the tools to break open bones for marrow, and fire to cook (and therefore make easier to digest) meat, then we had a big advantage. Early humans also undoubtedly made use of insects and other small animal protein, as chimpanzees and gorillas do now.
Humans are not vegetarians by nature. That’s not to say that we don’t eat too much meat- most Americans do. We should eat more whole grains and fruits and vegetables, and include small amounts of lean meats, poultry, and fish, if desired. It’s certainly possible to have a healthy diet without animal matter, but one must be careful to get all the necessary nutrients (like B12 vitamin) that are sometimes hard to find without animal matter.
The idea that humans are herbivores is pseudo-scientific garbage. There are plenty of decent reasons, both health-wise and philosophical, to eat less (or cut out entirely) meat, but this is not one.
Mike01 the major flaw in your thesis is the notion that an animal is EITHER an herbivore OR a carnivore.
The truth is, humans are neither. They are omnivores. We eat just about everything that isn’t cellulose.
In fact a lot of animals that used to be thought herbivores are omnivores, from chimpanzees to parrots.
The fact that in the “wild” humans would not be eating meat on a daily basis (outside the arctic, with a suite of specialized tools and cultural adaptions) and would eat a lot of other stuff, like fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, and fungi, does not in any way make it unnatural for humans to eat meat.
Likewise, even though many adults no longer digest lactose, the fact that a significant subset of humans do retain that ability into adulthood just further underscores how flexible and adaptable the human omnivore really is. Such a mutation would not have survived and become widespread on two continents (Europe and parts of Africa, meaning it’s likely it arose twice) if it did not convey some sort of advantage.
Additionally, transit time in the gut varies with different foods. Not everything travels at the same rate. The human body has the ability to modify not just pH but also travel time and enzymes to accommodate a wide range of foods.
The problem isn’t eating meat, or eating grains, it’s allowing either to dominate the diet. Humans do best when eating a wide variety of stuff. Such a diet necessitates also eating a lot of fruit and vegetables, but it doesn’t rule out other items.
No, it isn’t.
“Nature” doesn’t even exist in any meaningful sense. In the sense that you are using it, to mean “evolution”,the statement is flat out wrong. Nature has no intelligence, no desires and is hideously inefficient.
So how do you explain that humans produce, for example, essential fatty acids that we also get in abundance in our diet? Isn’t that horrendously inefficient?
And the answer is that of course it is. We still produce those things because a random mutation hasn’t yet occurred to prevent their production, or if it has occurred it hasn’t become fixed. It’s got nothing to do with efficiency.
No it isn’t. Humans don’t have a four chambered stomach, for example. Nor do we have the enlarged caecum of a herbivore.
Utter bollocks. The pH of a cow’s rumen is about 5.5. The pH of a human stomach is in the range of 1-3 depending on the individual. The pH of a cat’s stomach is about 2.
These are figures you can easily confirm for yourself with about 2 seconds on Google.
More nonsense.
To quote Cecil Adams " the human small intestine, at 23 feet, is a little under eight times body length (assuming a mouth-to-anus “body length” of three feet). This is about midway between cats (three times body length), dogs (3-1/2 times), and other well-known meat eaters on the one hand and plant eaters such as cattle (20 to 1) and horses (12 to 1) on the other.
Our gut length is nothing like that of a herbivore.
Utter nonsense.
Can you name a single carnivore of human size with a digestive tract just a few feet long? In dogs’ for example, the digestive tract is around 15 feet in length.
Umm, no. That simply isn’t true
In the real world, the transit time for food in cats is about 40 hours. If you have cats that are voiding their food within a couple of hours, you really need to get them to a vet.
No, it is short because meat doesn’t require fermentation in order to become nutritionally available.
Intended by whom? God?
To the extent that a majority of HGs derive the majority of their nuitritional requirements from meat, I think we can safely say that meat is indeed intended to be the body’s predominant diet.
What does that even mean?
There is also no amylase pouch. Which would seem to argue equally against eating plants.
If anybody believes that then they are grossly ignorant. All herbivores can and do digest flesh. Everything from squirrels and sloths to antelope and gorillas eat flesh and they digest it just fine.
“We” have not rationalised any such thing.
There are vitamins in meat that we will die if we do not get. In the modern world we can overcome that by using chemically engineered supplements. But the same can be said of plant products.
We don’t need “meat” to survive, nor do we “need” plants to survive. By taking the right suplements people can and do live perfectly well without either.
However in the world of “nature” that ou seem to have so much respect for, people such as the Inuits actually do live on a “natural” diet that is 100% meat. In contrast, nobody ever lived on an entirely plant-based diet before the advent of modern industrial societies.
Utter nonsense. Plant based proteins are contained within cellulose cell walls that the humen gut can’t even digest. They can only be released by extensive physical working or though the actions of gut bacteria.
In contrast the proteins found in, say, steak, is immediately bioavailable without any mechanical work.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
The protein content of spinach and brocolli are utterly insignificant, around 3%
The protein content of steak is over 10 times higher, at 30-40%
WTF? 
Are you seriously suggesting that humans can live on a diet of grass, like cows and horses?
And at this stage I think I can stop debunking this claptrap. As easy as it is, the author has just destroyed his credibility utterly with this line.
There is no value, nor is their any information. It’s worthless, ignorant noise.
Oh, so all those Olympic Gold medalists do not have bodies that perform at their maximum? One wonders why all the gold medals are not going to vegetarians.
Better tell that to every single HG groups on the planet then. They have managed to scrape by for 200, 000 years, but it clearly isn’t a long time option. :rolleyes:
:rolleyes:
Lots? Some birds of prey, maybe, but apart from them, what? Sure lots of animals can see certain things better than us, or even certain things we can’t see at all (like the mantis shrimp and circularly polarized light), but that does not amount to over all better seeing, just specific abilities, often dedicated to a single, quite specific task. (For instance, wolf spiders have a special pair of eyes that seem to be dedicated entirely to recognizing the legs of other wolf spiders, so that they get treated as potential mates rather than potential prey.)
And actually I wonder if even those birds of prey really see better than we do over all. It is not just the optics of the eye and the retina that count. We devote a very large proportion of our large brains to visual control and visual processing, which suggests that we can probably extract a lot more information from the visual stimulus than a birdbrain can, even if they have better optics and very high acuity for certain specific sorts of things (such as likely prey).
It depends on what you mean by “see better”. We have better color vision than most mammals, for instance… But on the other hand, there are plenty of mammals that can function visually in lower light levels than we can. Does a cat see better, or does a human?
Birds devote quite a lot of brain to visual processing. In additional to better acuity, they also see more colors than humans do, and some see a greater spectral range as well.
While there are some exceptions, in general the statement “birds see better than humans” is largely true.
Note that Mike01’s screed on alternative digestive theory revived a year old thread and only applies to zombie nutrition.
I can’t give a scientist-like answer but here is what I have in mind. Ancient people hunt for food using available resources from the nature. Then later on, they learned how to produce their own food by planting.
The lament of many a married man.
The other issue is that modern human diets, especially in the first world, have only a superficial relationship to what ancient and proto- humans ate.
First, there was never an issue of obesity being an endemic condition in early humans; they may have eaten enough, but even 'enough" was a lot less than today. (Even 60 years ago - Look at McD’s or Coca Cola - a “normal” meal was that tiny hamburger we feed kids today; a “normal” sugar soft drink was that 8-oz or 10-oz coke bottle. Those tiny tea cakes at formal tea, were considered a reasonable serving. Recommedned meat serving is “size of a deck of cards” or “size of your palm”, about half or a third what the average steakhouse sells today; And so on…)
Also, when comparing evolution and diet, keep in mind taht the current “experiment” is less than 10,000 years old, since we switched from living off what we found for (for some) growing a small range of plants and animals to provide the majority of our diet. Problems like the current issues with type II diabetes show that evolution has not caught up with this yet - assuming that, with modern mediciane, it even has a change to work.
Another point, to go back to the OP. Before humans were a scourge upon the land, food was plentiful. Watch reports of life in large wildlife refuges; read Farley Mowat’s “Sea of Slaughter” on how incredibly abundant life was in the Gulf of St Lawrence and the North American environs; or read about the massive herds of buffalo that roamed North America before the settlers arrived. Mowat mentions some roosting birds so placid that you could sneak up on them and pick off one after another on a branch without disturbing the flock.
Early humans probably had no problem sneaking up on a large flock or herd, heaving a bunch of rocks to stun a few victims before the rest run away, and then finishing off dinner. It was probably a short stretch from there to “get a long stick, wave it and hit things, but don’t throw it away”.
As for curing by diet, breast cancer or any cancer, once it’s expressed - seriously? Is that all it takes? Wow, cue the Nobel Prize committee.
This is interesting to me. It seems excessive for us to have so many good and expensive traits.
Where do we stand compare to the other apes? I understand it that they are significantly stronger than we are, but not as precise. What do you mean by “fast” exactly. That we can move our arms fast, or that we can run fast? Is our eyesight better?
Another way to look at this would maybe be to compare our calorie intake to that of other apes. My guess is that its higher. (Proportional to body size.) Even accounting for the increased energy usage by the brain. (But maybe not.)
So a theory is that we improved many of our attributes in tandem with the brain. Eg better eyesight, better endurance. And that this was partly caused by the development of our large brains. While the brains get radically larger, they also require a highly increased calorie intake. And since the brain already requires so much, the body can as well improve some other attributes also. Like if you are already running a good hotel (in a warm country), you should also have air condition in it - the price is low compared to your overall budget.