News Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians

[tom_mai78101]

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. If you listen to one camp, our ancestors got most of their nutrition from gathered fruits and nuts; successful kills of big mammals may have been more of a treat than an everyday reality.

Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians

blogs.scientificamerican.com

 

[Accname]

Not surprising to me, humans arent really carnivores, our stomach is not very good in digesting raw meat. It makes you sick if you try to eat it.
And i can bet the very first humans didnt know how to cook, or if they already knew how to use fire to make meat edible, the supply in fire-making tools and knowledge were probably too little to eat meat on a regular basis.

 

[FireCat]

There's Just one thing that you forget. Chimpanzees and gorillas and monkeys are not our ancestors, they share a common ancestor with us. Just saying.

 

[Accname]

I was never talking about those Oo?

 

[FireCat]

No But the article did.

 

[Nyph]

Not surprising to me, humans arent really carnivores, our stomach is not very good in digesting raw meat. It makes you sick if you try to eat it.
And i can bet the very first humans didnt know how to cook, or if they already knew how to use fire to make meat edible, the supply in fire-making tools and knowledge were probably too little to eat meat on a regular basis.

Raw meat is edible, just needs to be fresh. It probably takes a good deal more work to digest though. Theres a reason why certain sulfur compounds smell really really bad and thats to be able to tell whether meat is safe to eat or not. (bad meat gives off thiols and whatnot)
Humans have forward facing eyes which iirc are predatory features.

 

[Fatmankev]

Humans have forward facing eyes which iirc are predatory features.

But so do apes, and they're largely herbivorous. I think. Right? If that's the case, I'd say it's more coincidence than anything.

Though I'm sure you could tell me whether I'm right or not.

 

[KaerfNomekop]

Some animals, usually but not always prey animals, have their two eyes positioned on opposite sides of their heads to give the widest possible field of view.

Other animals, usually but not always predatory animals, have their two eyes positioned on the front of their heads, thereby allowing for binocular vision and reducing their field of view in favor of stereopsis.

Some predator animals, particularly large ones such as sperm whales and killer whales, have their two eyes positioned on opposite sides of their heads. Other animals that are not necessarily predators, such as fruit bats and a number of primates also have forward facing eyes. These are usually animals that need fine depth discrimination/perception; for instance, binocular vision improves the ability to pick a chosen fruit or to find and grasp a particular branch.

Source.

 

[Fatmankev]

Yeah. That's what I'm sayin'.

 

[FireCat]

Binocular Vision Allows Animals To 'See Through' The Clutter In The World

Most animals - fish, insects, reptiles, birds, rabbits, and horses, for example - exist in non-cluttered environments like fields or plains, and they have eyes located on either side of their head. These sideways-facing eyes allow an animal to see in front of and behind itself, an ability also known as panoramic vision.

Humans and other large mammals - primates and large carnivores like tigers, for example - exist in cluttered environments like forests or jungles, and their eyes have evolved to point in the same direction. While animals with forward-facing eyes lose the ability to see what's behind them, they gain X-ray vision, according to Mark Changizi, assistant professor of cognitive science at Rensselaer, who says eyes facing the same direction have been selected for maximizing our ability to see in leafy environments like forests.
All animals have a binocular region - parts of the world that both eyes can see simultaneously - which allows for X-ray vision and grows as eyes become more forward facing

 

[Nyph]

Still, I believe our sense of smell is finely tuned to particular sulfur compounds because humans in the past needed to be able to tell whether meat is safe to eat or not. But I suppose that shows that humans were scavengers and opportunists rather than predators.
Also I remember reading somewhere that our ability to run hugely large distances evolved from chasing prey until the prey collapsed from exhaustion. Dunno if this is true or not.

 

[rover2341]

Its not that people dont know what they should eat, its they pick not to.

 

[KaerfNomekop]

Still, I believe our sense of smell is finely tuned to particular sulfur compounds because humans in the past needed to be able to tell whether meat is safe to eat or not. But I suppose that shows that humans were scavengers and opportunists rather than predators.

Humans and other animals have an exquisitely sensitive sense of smell toward the odor of low valent organosulfur compounds such as thiols, thioethers, and disulfides. Malodorous volatile thiols are protein degradation products found in putrid food, so sensitive identification of these compounds is crucial to avoiding intoxication. Low valent volatile sulfur compounds are also found in areas where oxygen levels in the air are low, posing a risk of suffocation. It has been found that copper is required for the highly sensitive detection of certain volatile thiols and related organosulfur compounds by olfactory receptors in mice. Whether humans, too, require copper for sensitive detection of thiols is not yet known.

Source.

Proven right.

Also I remember reading somewhere that our ability to run hugely large distances evolved from chasing prey until the prey collapsed from exhaustion. Dunno if this is true or not.

According to my P.E. teacher it is. Apparently humans were built for long-distance running so we could outlast prey in a chase until it becomes an easy kill.

 

[FireCat]

Its not that people dont know what they should eat, its they pick not to.

Yeah! And there's not only one thing to choose, there are "hundreds of different junk food" products out there.

 

[FireCat]

According to my P.E. teacher it is. Apparently humans were built for long-distance running so we could outlast prey in a chase until it becomes an easy kill.

Hmm Doesn't it depends what kind of "poor animal" they did hunted? doesn't it?

 

[KaerfNomekop]

Most animals either run slow or run fast in short bursts, both of which allow the hunters time to catch up and impale with spears. They probably wouldn't have gone after animals they knew they wouldn't be able to catch.

 

[FireCat]

They probably wouldn't have gone after animals they knew they wouldn't be able to catch.

True Well, we are not even close to being the champions out in the wild.

 

[KaerfNomekop]

Not us, not now. But we number over 7 billion for a reason.

 

[FireCat]

What's the reason eh?

 

[Accname]

What's the reason eh?

I guess sex is too damn good.