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Extinct Species of Early Human Survived On Grass Bulbs, Not Meat
Philip Ross writes "Fresh analysis of an extinct relative of humans suggests our ancient ancestors dined primarily on tiger nuts, which are edible grass bulbs, settling a discrepancy over what made up prehistoric diets. According to a new study published in the journal PLOS One, the strong-jawed ancient hominin known as Paranthropus boisei, nicknamed 'Nutcracker Man,' which roamed East Africa between 2.4 million and 1.4 million years ago, survived on a diet scientists previously thought implausible."
But aren't tiger nuts an animal .... product?
Tiger nuts? Grass bulbs?
Come on... it's funny and you know it.
But okay. Humanoids who didn't eat meat, didn't make the evolutionary cut.
Take THAT "vegetarians."
What did they do with the rest of their day?
seem to me they didn't survive well enough
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
The paleo movement is frustrating for anthropologists. Humans ate pretty much whatever they could get their grubby little hands on: meat, nuts, edible leaves, roots, fruit, etc. We did eat quite a bit of plants, though. Mostly because they didn't run away.
Vegans who insist we're herbivores are equally frustrating, however.
Indeed. Humans are the best long distance runners on the planet, and we evolved that way so that we could chase our prey until they died of exhaustion.
That's why I eat bananas, apples, oranges, kiwifruit, various salads, carrots, tomatoes, peanuts every day, alongside my delicious, delicious meat.
A somewhat minor nitpick, but...
It is generally thought that Paranthropus bosei is an /offshoot/ of the line that ultimately led to modern man, not a direct ancestor. We share ancestors, but do not descend from his line. The two lines diverged about 3 million years ago to follow their own evolutionary paths - homo towards an omnivorous diet and world domination, panthropus to munching on nuts and extinction.
He was a relative, not an ancestor.
Since this vegetarian offshoot of man went extinct, and the omnivorous one thrived, I can draw the conclusion that being a vegetarian is bad for the longevity of the species, and thus wrong.
Indeed. Humans are the best long distance runners on the planet, and we evolved that way so that we could chase our prey until they died of exhaustion.
I thought we evolved that way so that Reebok could sell us new shoes. Huh.
"Oh no... he found the
Only Charlie Sheen dines on tiger nuts! /Winning!/
We will be said to have dined primarily on high fructose corn syrup.
Somehow I think there's going to be some big holes in what they actually do "know" about what those folks ate.
The paleo movement is frustrating for anthropologists. Humans ate pretty much whatever they could get their grubby little hands on: meat, nuts, edible leaves, roots, fruit, etc.
How is it frustrating? The diet you describe is basically the modern paleo diet.
So they were vegans and missed out on the good stuff that helped our ancestors. Extinction happens. Be a winner. Eat meat.
Eat Meat or Die!
Now scientifically proven.
.
sedges are not grass. they're a much more ancient group.
i'd link to wiki, but the are useless on the subject.
You should do some more research into the Paleo diet before posting such nonsense.
Most of it is about avoiding foods that your ancestors 100 years ago, and perhaps 10,000 years ago would not define as food (depending on how strict you are).
Highly processed foods (e.g. twinkies) very rarely end up being healthy for you, and often contain ingredients your body has not evolved to digest. Case in point: high fructose corn syrup. The pathway for your body to get rid of it involves directly converting it into fat in your liver. Burn enough fat you may be OK eating that twinkie, but in general, it's healthier to avoid.
In addition, there are more strict versions of paleo that avoid things like pasta and bread because, while perhaps not as bad for you as a twinkie, there is some evidence that it's not processed by your body as efficiently as meats and veggies.
The interesting thing is if you actually read a book on Paleo they'll point out the grey areas. For instance, we evolved to drink milk some 100,000 years ago. Depending on your background, you may be more or less able to handle milk.
You wouldn't believe the stamina of an onion on the chase. No wonder our forefathers could run so well.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
You know, we, carnivores, when we say we also can and ENJOY eating meat dont do anything unnatural. It's one of reasons our specie survived that long.
Now we have proovs that vegetarians didn't make it...
Meat eaters are naturally more murderous and capable of defense than nut eaters.
I am sure nut eating leads to a more peaceful less conflict path of life, .. can't say why it went extinct, probably evolved and mixed in with everything else, or got overthrown by new breads.
I don't think meat eaters are superior, .. we just got to where we needed to dominate first. Doesn't mean we were genetically superior or intelligently superior, we were just more advantageous and overpowering perhaps.. It's sad because we'd even kill off other superior races and branchs of the DNA in the process, stifling evolutionary process just for our own survival...
but now that there are 6 billion humans, eating whatever without regard to efficiency might not be scalable.
Wow, where are all the evolution apologists which pop out of the woodwork when some vaguly creationist/ID topic is raised. The level of ignorance as to the mechanisms and logic of evolution shown in most of these comments is terrible... as bad as, if not worse (in a way, that these people *should* know better), creationist/ID nonsense.
"Not evolved to digest". Appeal to nature fallacy!
Also please stop using computers. Man's eyes were not evolved to read computer screens and mankind's fingers were not evolved to used keyboards.
...that they weren't crushed by the dinosaurs?
Ken
Well like it or not the pathways your body uses to process and digest food ARE the results of natural evolution.
And as I evolved to be a hunter, probably sitting on my ass in front of a computer every day has resulted in my being over weight (even if I go to the gym for an hour, I just can't undue the damage of not being active).
Humans need to have a better feel for what their bodies are designed for. Little things like standing up while in front of a computer can help you be healthier and feed better.
It's not about outlawing things like computers because they're "unnatural"
Or, you can come up with a pill / treatment that will allow me to counteract the fact that I'm living a sedentary lifestyle.
I'm open to either one :D
Since your comment history strongly suggests you are American and the study was carried out by paleoanthropologists from Oxford University, I can safely say you have no need to be concerned about your tax dollars funding this research.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Since when did American taxes support universities in Spain?
You missed the poop joke...
I sit in front of my computer all day, too, but I've never had a weight problem. If anything, I have a problem keeping it on. Of course, I drink water all day rather than soda, and when I eat at a restaurant I usually take half the meal home because it's just way too much food.
As to the anonymous idiot you responded to who said "Man's eyes were not evolved to read computer screens and mankind's fingers were not evolved to used keyboards," what a moron. Computer screens and keyboards were designed to work with the fingers and eyes we evolved. HFCS wasn't.
Free Martian Whores!
I am from India and never ever heard of Elephant penis being delicacy!! Where do you get your facts?
Wow, by any chance did you read "Born to Run"??? Because long distance runners are the ones saying persistence hunting is a thing. Most scientists aren't.
Persistence hunting is impossible in anything but big open fields, and precludes the idea of humans working together in camps (nobody's dragging an antelope back 20 miles). Humans get foot injuries easily.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
You may be blessed with great genetics. Feel lucky LOL
Yes and a huge number of them suffering and dying of nutrition related illnesses. We have massive morbid obesity and massive diabetes. We have massive other problems related to the chemicals we use to kill pests of all sorts including plants, insects, varmints and more. It's insane how bad our modern food actually is.
I dreamed I was a dinosaur
A mighty fearsome beast
All day I'd run and hunt for fun
On weaker beasts I'd feast
Then I thought "I am a man,
the fiercest beast of all"
And then I went and hunted down
A giant pretzel at the mall.
What in the hell is an anti-science dimwit doing at a nerd site?? You just come here to troll?
I guess you'd rather use that money to bomb foreigners and spy on Americans?
Free Martian Whores!
So many different hominids separated by vast distances.
don't need all that fancy DNA, billions could be made on a virus that only need deliver the "bigger"
Probably from the ex-wife of the bull elephant?
You're from Birmingham. While it may seem like it's India, it's actually in England. In England, people typically don't eat penises. They aren't completely a third-world culture just yet, so at least some of them realize that eating the gonads and genitals of beasts of burden is not a sensible thing to do.
http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/thecounties/article/2000101890/three-morans-mauled-by-lioness-they-set-out-to-kill
There are international grants?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
"No more so than the far more desperate folks here on slashdot who are ferociously denying it."
I bow before your certainty that you are the smart clued in one and everyone else is the dimwitted fool who will pay the cost at their death. (Funny how that sounds so similar to fundy Christians)
I do wonder where those extremely long lived and far more healthy vegans throughout history are. They seem to have hidden themselves very well among the miserable sick and dying everyone else whose average lifespan has increased over the past century.
Why just steal calories from animals? Spread the suffering to those dratted plants as well! :)
I think the key word here is "extinct".
Have gnu, will travel.
I think you missed the "crap" science joke about studying the "poop" of extinct species. It is literally crap science and he had to find a way to put that in a post.
So lets take a second, pull not knots out of our panties because the got all bunched up over a comment, and get back to treating people respectfully.
We can't have people hearing that humans aren't supposed to eat animals! Quick! Repeat "hunter-gatherer" over and over and over...
Human beings quite clearly aren't supposed to eat meat. Humans don't have claws. We can't open our mouths wide enough to grab an animal in our jaws, unless it's tiny. We most certainly can't kill animals by biting their vertebrae, or by biting them to death, again unless they're tiny. We can't run fast enough to catch animals.
But LOL at all the brainwashed Slashdot sociopaths who can't bring themselves to THINK or QUESTION what they eat. That would be like, scary, wouldn't it...
Your so-called 'friends' wouldn't like you if you started caring about innocent creatures who are brutally tortured to death, would they...
Naw. We'll bomb the foreigners with bombs made out of coprolite.
If they're extinct, can you really say they "survived"?
Because long distance runners are the ones saying persistence hunting is a thing. Most scientists aren't.
If it's good enough for Attenborough, it's good enough for me.
Go to africa and live with the hunting tribes for a few weeks and see if you still believe that.
However, humans do seem to be adapted for something like persistence hunting. Our ability to run long distances in the hot African midday sun would soon cause an antelope to drop dead of heat exhaustion probably way before they got to be 20 miles away. Our lack of thick hair and sweating ability do point towards a remarkable ability to withstand heat. Also, animals running tend to loop in a large circle rather than travelling a long distance.
And, I'm not a runner (although I do a load of cycling which is also endurance based).
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
If they were ancestors of modern humans, I'd say that they "made the evolutionary cut" quite nicely. We may not be "the fittest", but we are still around.
This is so stupid. An anscestor of modern homo sapiens was not an meat eater, big f*cking deal. If you go back far enough in the evolutionary chain, a really early anscestor relied on photosynthesis. This article isn't news.
"Not evolved to digest" is subtly different from an appeal to nature. Evolution tends to take lots of generations for an adaptation to be distributed throughout a population, so our bodies might not be well adapted for eating some foods. Cow milk is a classic example where most people can digest lactose, but about a third of adults have trouble with it.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
EXTINCT
In fact, I would consider becoming vegan.
Except for weasels...
Damned weasels! Eating's almost too good for 'em!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Shoes aren't good for running. The best long distance runners run barefoot.
Firstly we are here longer than 200K, we have a *direct* lineage to the first archeo bacteria a billion or more years ago. If we are here that's because *all* our ancestor including those which were present as the same offshoot as the article mention, survived. So your "we are at it sicne 200K" is wrong. We were at it before 200K, even if the specie was different looking.
Secondly, we are here. They are not. They are extinct. To evolution it does not matter if you stayed longer than other, you are extinct, you are a loser. Sauropode went on for million of year. And now are extinct. Nobody will say they were better at survival than us, as *we are still here*.
...sponsored by PETA.
It could be that this person had no other things around to eat and in his/her last days months was willing to eat anything to try to stay alive. A few peoples diets does not represent what everyone was eating at the time.
Even the first sentence of the linked article comes to a conclusion that I don't think can be made.
Fresh analysis of an extinct relative of humans suggests our ancient ancestors dined primarily on tiger nuts, which are edible grass bulbs, settling a discrepancy over what made up prehistoric diets.
How can a suggestion settle a discrepancy.
Like, say, the open savanna where homo sapiens evolved?
If your hunting party has any strategy, you won't chase it those 20 miles in a straight line.
Humans who have worn shoes all their lives get foot injuries easily.
I think this could also be a by-product. Having low amounts of body hair greatly reduces problems with parasites. It gives us most flexibility for the temperatures that we can collect fruits in.
Reducing the hair and especially increasing the number of sweet glands are probably quite simple modifications. And we had over a million years to become what we are, so only minimal selective pressure is needed.
It takes a remarkable amount of calories to run each mile. Lean meat has very few calories. You're quite unlikely to come out ahead with this strategy. Finding an already sick or injured animal (or a very young one) without much "run" left in it is a much better plan. Ambush and a short chase is a much better plan. There's a reason no actual predators use the "run until the prey dies of exhaustion" strategy.
Never be both a beater and a shooter, as the saying goes. Amusing, but true.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No. But the album is great. Some of Bruce's best work.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Wow, by any chance did you read "Born to Run"??? Because long distance runners are the ones saying persistence hunting is a thing. Most scientists aren't.
Persistence hunting is impossible in anything but big open fields, and precludes the idea of humans working together in camps (nobody's dragging an antelope back 20 miles). Humans get foot injuries easily.
I don't believe it is. It's more about our ability to swear and control our body temperatures and heart rate that allows us to have more endurance. You don't have to be running after an animal. Some of these are 2 day hunts to wear down an animal. Ask a sprinter how'd he'd fare being chased by a group of marathoner's for a day or two that had spears. Their endurance wouldn't last. Now put him in a fur coat and take away his sweat glands.
Here's a picture of them.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Or maybe they just read The Time Machine by H. G. Wells and want to adopt the depicted Eloi diet of fruit and nuts out of horror at the Morlocks' "cannibalism".
The Paleo diet might be efficient for the species to survive. Individuals in a modern context? Not so much. You're talking about a species of hunter-gatherers who lived in small bands. A good strategy might be having the women pop out a baby every other year, men who die at 40, and a handful of post-menopausal women live to 50 to care for the extra children. That's probably not what you're expecting with the Paleo Diet.
If longevity is your goal, I think you're better off studying the habits of people who live in regions with long life spans. There seems to be a general consensus that happiness and daily physical activity are important. Diet is just a part of it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
// ate grass instead of meat Not hard to figure why they are extinct.....
HFCS in your eyes and on your fingers is such a waste though. It was designed to be used in your digestive tract.
Well we all know that scientists are infalible right? After all we had many 100 years ago that believed eugenics was the solution to protect mankind. And today we've got others in wingnut territory.
And with that, if you believe that persistence hunting is impossible in anything but big open fields, I'm sure that after getting their first few foot injuries various individuals will have figured out that wrapping animal skins around their feet would help stop the problem. This is most easily recognized with various groups that live in the far north. And there's no real easy way to say that they did, or didn't in other areas of the world. After all, if someone died on a hunt it would be gone in no time, and all that.
Om, nomnomnom...
A picture is worth 1000 words. Shouldn't an article about tiger nuts include a picture of what the hell they are?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cyperus_esculentus_MS_4388.jpg
It's even better when you see them. They do look like tiger nuts, wrinkles and all.
Obligatory: SMBC Developmental biology :)
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
You could be right, but conversely if losing body hair is so beneficial to humans, you'd have thought there'd be more bald animals that use the same advantage. The other good reason for losing hair is if we spent large amounts of time in water - fishing most likely. There's the whole Aquatic Ape theory, but it's not given much credence.
Also, hmmm sweet glands!
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Besides being horribly unethical in the short term and having historically poor selection criteria, there's nothing wrong with the principle of eugenics. It's basically just a breeding strategy for humans and if done correctly it could work out well. (Of course, "done correctly" means maintaining overall diversity, only selecting for actually heritable traits, etc.)
It's easy to pick on because it's historically been used as a pseudo-scientific means to legitimize racism and it's hugely at odds with the idea of individual liberty. But scientifically, the theory is sound.
Surprisingly fewer calories to run than to walk, and that's why you eat the fatty bits first. There's a reason that Prometheus covered the bones in fat...
While longevity in early humans was often on average considerably shorter, there's no evidence that a hunter-gatherer lifestyle/diet makes people drop dead at 40. Rather, there was a wide range in lifespans, with plenty of people living 60-80 years, and also lots who died younger due to what would now be trivially preventable causes (infections, disease, etc.). Indeed, there are many factors necessary to produce long life (including a bunch of luck); but, "primitive" hunter-gatherer diets are not historically a particularly strong limiting factor.
> It takes a remarkable amount of calories to run each mile. Lean meat has very few calories.
Both of these claims are simply incorrect.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Highly processed foods (e.g. twinkies) very rarely end up being healthy for you
Once upon a time we called avoiding eating foods like that eating healthy, not whatever fad diet is in vogue this year.
Case in point: high fructose corn syrup. The pathway for your body to get rid of it involves directly converting it into fat in your liver.
HFCS is treated basically the same as sugar, just don't overdo it.
there is some evidence that it's not processed by your body as efficiently as meats and veggies.
And there's lots of evidence that any more than moderate amounts of meat are pretty bad for you, but 'no bacon' doesn't sell fad diets very well.
For instance, we evolved to drink milk some 100,000 years ago.
Put that 10000-20000 year ago for more accurate park of balls.
Modern humans have lost many enzymes their ancestors had and can't enjoy all the great nutritional delights nature had to offer for our ancestors. For this reason the Paleo movement should be renamed as Health movement. Genetic Eating movement might be accurate as well.
What has the "open field" to do with that? Neither the deer hunted, nort he man hunting, cares if it is in an open field or in a wood.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Ha..Paranthropus boisei survived for over a million years. They then apparently evolved toward modern humans, which have been around at the outside for ~100,000 years.
What this study does do is blow the so-called "Paleolithic diet" out of the water. For several years I've laughed at people who advocated the Paleolithic diet as disillusioned. My contention was that early man basically ate mostly grasses and bark along with various bugs and grubs. If they ate meat other than that it was scavenged kill left by predators.
Erm, actual predators do that. Ever heared about a "wolf"?
Human muscels work different then most animals muscels do. Anymals usually use the whole muscle, all fibres, for actions. Humans only roughly 40%. The fibres used in human muscles change, the tired ones stop working, fresh ones spring in.
Bottom line that means less heat is produced, less callories are burned.
Fort he animal it means, espeacially if it can not cool via sweating or similar means, it will collapse due to OVERHEAT not due to exhaustion.
So, saying that: many hunting animals have the same metabolism as the prey. A lion simply can not hunt like a wolf (cooling via the tongue, similar muscle system as humans) because he also has a 100% on muscular system (like his prey) and also has no cooling (like his prey).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You would be surprised how few callories even the most serious sport/excerise takes.
Main reason why people are fat: oh, with a bit of sports it is no problem to eat 2000 extra kcal (not mentioning ofc, that those people usually don't do any sports at all).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The leaver does not store fat.
It stores sugar.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The only incorrect thing here is your claim.
First, running is one of the more strenuous sports. Second, lean meat has indeed few calories (~110 kcal for 100g). That amount is barely enough for a single mile. Besides, ever heard of "rabbit starvation"?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Bulb eaters. Remind me of chipmunks. Grrrr!
01/01/01
It's more about our ability to swear and control our body temperatures
I'm no expert, but I doubt we insulted animals to death. Unless it was a lion or a tiger, I hear they are very sensitive to insults.
My sig has no nature
Since your comment history strongly suggests you are American and the study was carried out by paleoanthropologists from Oxford University, I can safely say you have no need to be concerned about your tax dollars funding this research.
We are indirectly supporting you Limeys by defending you against Communism, Fascism, and Islam. While we Americans may not have directly funded your wussy study, our manly meat eating military made it possible which is funded by us. On these grounds I object, and demand they close Oxford immediately and turn into a food court.
I saulote you excellent speling nd gramer. Well done.
You could probably exhaust a 100g animal in a 1 mile chase easily... Or you could get 200miles worth of energy by eating a 20kg animal. Sounds pretty energy efficient to me.
It does what?
In any event, the evidence suggests it's not treated any differently than table sugar. The problem is that it's cheap, and our society developed a sweet tooth as a result. Look at this graph on US sweetener consumption. Note that as HFCS started to take off, so did overall sweetener consumption (the orangish line is HFCS; the cyan one is overall consumption of sweeteners).
Wolves circle and attack their prey, killing it by tearing it apart. They don't chase faster prey than the wolf by chasing until the prey dies from exhaustion. A man could do this with many animals, if he really wanted to, but it would be a terrible strategy to gain calories.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
But we can only cope with low body hair because we know ho to make clothes. Animals can't do that and will either loose to much energy keeping their body warm or cool down and become slow and easy prey.
What?No, it doesn't. I don't know where you've gotten your information but it's wrong. ANY website anywhere, that has information about fitness is going to tell you that you burn more calories running. The harder the exercise the more calories you burn. Google it...look at scientific journals.....
Modern food has nothing to do with game meat. Meat is for protein, not for calories (it's thought that Scott's expedition to the Antarctic died because that wasn't well understood at the time, and they packed in lots of preserved meat and nowhere near enough calories).
Check out the nutritional information at a KFC sometime: the chicken fried in fat has less calories than the sides. A drumstick has ~120 (original recipe), a biscuit ~200. We seriously lard up our meals, a holdover from a time not that long ago when getting enough calories was still expensive (plus it tastes good), but lean meat is a poor source of calories.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You would be surprised how few callories even the most serious sport/excerise takes.
I think everyone who's ever tried to lose weight via exercise is aware how hard it is. You get endurance and strength but burning surplus calories is really slow. Roughly 2000 kcal and you're keeping your weight, add 1000 kcal and it'll take me two hours of exercise to get rid of it. And if you have the food, we can consume a lot of calories. Here's an example of 72oz steak eaten in less than 3 minutes. Extreme endurance athletes often consume 10.000 calories a day.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I suggest you read a book about wolves or watch a movie ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why do you post this?
Half is true, half is wrong.
But I don't get to which of my previous posts you even refer or what your point is. Perhaps quote a bit next time?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Sorry, 10kcal is way off.
You hardly can metabolize 6k, you hardly can burn 5k - 6k (like cyclists do).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why would you assume they ate only the lean meat? Everything I've read about modern hunter-gatherers and cultures that ate mostly animals (such as the Inuit) is that they focused on the fats and fatty tissues and that the lean meats were often left for their dogs.
In the Western diet, we tend to focus on the lean meats and throw out the fats (the most energy-rich part of the animal) but that doesn't necessarily apply to humans living in the wild.
I don't, rather the opposite - but the animal itself need to have that fat in the first place. Animals with a lot of fat can be run down without needing an ultramarathon to do it. A short run for a large animal is the way to go. Chasing a lean animal for days is beyond ridiculous.
But on the whole, it seems unlikely that stone age societies got many calories from hunting (fishing can be a different story), but rather hunting filled in the gaps in protein while calories came primarily from gathering.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
In the equatorial region, you don't need clothes.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
LMFAOROFL!! What a fucking name!
The ability to swear is important if an animal escaped. It helps you to release your emotion, so you then can go on hunting the next animal.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The notion that exercise burns few calories can only be said when compared to modern, high-calorie foods and large portions. For most of human history, finding enough calories to survive was a daily struggle, and doing a lot of exercise to get meat only makes sense for the protein, while the calories to survive came from gathering, not hunting.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Tell that the Inuit/Eskimos or the Maori.
What exactly is your point again? Did I contradict you somewhow regarding thi post of yours in a previous post?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Maori where known to be cannibalistic up until christian missionaries made a big fuss and they stopped. With New Zealand having no large mammals native it was either eat fish and birds (some bigger then ostridge like the Moa) or the taste sensation of eating humans defeated in battle or captured for slavery and food.
I read what may have been the first paleo-diet book 15 or so years ago. That book and almost all Western "talk" on the subject since then, pro and con, almost never mention eating insects and other bugs. So, add bugs to the menu.
The paleo movement is frustrating for anthropologists. Humans ate pretty much whatever they could get their grubby little hands on: meat, nuts, edible leaves, roots, fruit, etc. We did eat quite a bit of plants, though. Mostly because they didn't run away.
Vegans who insist we're herbivores are equally frustrating, however.
I'm curious: in what way has the paleo movement frustrated anthropologists? Care to enlighten me.
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
Prey animals don't run in a straight line, they tend to circle back where they came from. Hunted rabbits with beagles for years, and 90 percent of the time they will loop back towards the point where they were originally jumped up. Wolves will station pack members ahead of the running prey to turn it whatever direction is desired, early humans, with even better communications and planning skills, almost certainly did the same.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Go stand in the sun near the equator for an hour, or run through elephant grass, or move through a thicket, and then tell me if you're still of the same opinion. Clothes are not only for the cold.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Wolves, African wild dogs, dingos, some hyenas and some jackals use both strategies, as will packs of domestic dogs gone wild. You're right, the prey doesn't "die of exhaustion", but it does stop running. You only need to keep the prey in sight until it is tired enough that it decides not to run any longer, then the tribe moves in with the spears.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Sorry, miswritten. Surprisingly fewer extra calories to run instead of walk. It's really about how far you travel, not how fast.
I can come up with random theories too. Here's one of my theories why humans evolved to run long distances: War.
Evolving to run faster than your prey stops after a while when your prey is the same species. Being able to run long distances gives you the chance to run till it gets dark or you find a hiding place.
It's easier to carry a trusty stick if you run on two legs.
Selection pressure is very high with war.
There weren't any extinct species of early humans. We were created by God 6,000 years ago. Watch Kent Hovinds videos for information on this.
Chasing a lean animal for days is beyond ridiculous.
Which is why no one in the entire thread except you said it.
A hunt might last for days, tracking a herd until you're close enough; but once you've isolated an animal, the actual run lasts only for a few hours.
According to Mythbusters, it also increases your tolerance of physical pain.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Ask a sprinter how'd he'd fare being chased by a group of marathoner's for a day or two that had spears. Their endurance wouldn't last. Now put him in a fur coat and take away his sweat glands.
You know, this is why Mom won't let us play with you any more.
It takes a remarkable amount of calories to run each mile.
You overestimate how much running takes. Running is only about 40% more calorie burn than walking the same distance. About 150 v. 110 for a 200 lb. man. You also underestimate the amount of calories in lean meat. 1 lb of venison is 540 calories or so. Obviously, it's profitable if you make more than one meal of it, and it's profitable for a small tribe to take turns doing it.
Here's an example of a person doing it in real life. Takes about 8 hours of tracking and periodic chasing.
Humans are the only primates that can do endurance running. (Not many other kinds of animals can; canines and horses are notable exceptions). As the video above notes, we're one of the few species that sweats for thermoregulation (horses again being a notable exception). We're uniquely well adapted to exploiting heat exhaustion in other species in the part of the world we were thought to have evolved in.
Hell, humans have ran down cheetahs this way.
Last time I checked weasels chase rabbits until they are exhausted and deliver bites to the neck. That's just one thing off the top of my head.
Rabbit starvation isn't a thing if the creature your chasing has fat on it..there is a reason it's "rabbit starvation" and not "meat starvation."
I will try to explain this in the easiest way possible with my limited skills in the English language.
Deer runs fast but not for very long.
Man runs slower but can keep at it longer.
Deer runs away from human in a field, man keeps looking at deer and keeps running forcing the deer to sprint again and again until it can no more.
Deer runs away from human in the woods, man doesn't know where deer is and goes home to play nintendo*.
(* I'm assuming the prehistoric humans played nintendo, I don't think Playstation was invented yet)
Of course they're extinct! - They didn't eat meat!
Humans still need meat in order to survive. Adults can work around it but children and especially babies cannot. Stupid vegan parents trusting the goveg-website by the lunatics in PETA have killed their children through malnutrition and are now serving time for homicide.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
[[citation needed]]
"If a stage has three big climbs, we'd expect riders to burn off anything between 8,000 to 10,000 calories per day," said Child.
But hey, he's only a nutritionist actually working on the tour.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Since I don't have sufficient pigment in my skin, it certainly would not do any good to me. However I would expect the humans back then to be as well adapted to the environment as the people living there today.
And yes, clothes may be helpful even for inhabitants of equatorial regions. But they are not necessary.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Just because you've never heard of it, doesn't mean that I've just made it up.
Well done on thinking up your own theory, does it help explain human characteristics better than other theories?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Mark 7:18 And [Jesus] said to them, âoeThen are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?â Thus he declared all foods clean.
Depends on what you're running on...
Agreed, lions don't hunt like wolves - for one thing, the typical lion runs only about 30 meters to hit prey from ambush. But lionesses hunt a bit more like wolves than male lions do.
Averaging close to 250 Kg., Male lions don't do more than 5% of the routine hunting. They do, however, handle other predators for the pride. Hyenas, in particular, would probably love it if male and female lions both weighed only about 100 Kg. Dog-like pack tactics would probably beat the more loosely organized cat group tactics consistantly, except the male lions are just too damned big. (And yes, Hyenas are not really very close to wild dogs, but they use pretty similar methods as pack hunters.). Female lions have proportionately larger hearts than males, but in both cases, the heart is proportionately smaller than for a wolf or other sustained runner. Lions do have some cooling systems and are observed to pant, but the male's typical heavy mane menas they have less efficiency at cooling than even their size differences would suggest, and again, cooling is less efficient than for a wolf.
Who is John Cabal?
Ancient humans had things called spears. They didn't need to chase prey until it died of exhaustion, they only needed to chase it until it slowed down enough from heat exhaustion for them to stick a spear in it.
Wolves are also excellent endurance runners (in cold weather though, unlike humans) and they often catch rabbits and things that are faster than them.
And in both cases, teamwork and strategy play a big role. Not a coincidence that both humans and wolves developed large brains.
The talk was about lean meat. Which has low fat content by the very definition.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Persistence hunting have been filmed tracking their prey to exhaustion. I'd like to know what evidence those scientists have to reject observations.
It takes a remarkable amount of calories to run each mile. Lean meat has very few calories. You're quite unlikely to come out ahead with this strategy.
Meat is for protein. Most of our calories come from vegetables.
And persistence hunting doesn't require an all-out run. Ultrarunners (which is basically the same trick, just without prey) generally alternate between running and walking. That mix apparently gives the best combination of speed and endurance.
Ambush and a short chase is a much better plan.
And yet we suck at short chases. Almost any land animal runs faster than us. For a short while. And then we catch up as it gets tired.
There's a reason no actual predators use the "run until the prey dies of exhaustion" strategy.
Wolves do it in a way.
Ah, I get it. You've never heard of the art of tracking. That explains it.
There's a good reason why hunting predators bigger than you is not a very popular strategy.
We may not be "the fittest", but we are still around.
That's all that fittest means: being the one that survives. You don't have to be able to run; evolutionary speaking, you just have to eat and reproduce.
Early ancestor of humans was bacteriophagic.
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Sugar has 4kcal/g, protein has 4kcal/g, fat has 9kcal/g. Lean meat--discarding the bone and weighing meat--should be 60% water and 40% caloric material. You should be able to get like 200kcal out of 100g.
Second, a chihuaha has roughly 1kg meat on it; a deer, roughly 30kg. There's a good 60,000kcal on that thing at least, maybe more. Unless you're spending hours chasing a squirrel or two, I can't imagine not eating quite well if you ever catch anything--even sharing it with 30 people.
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Didn't say you made it up. I'm well aware of the theory - it shows up on Slashdot and elsewhere every now and then. But I don't think it's a better theory than some other random one.
Just because a few tribes do persistent hunting doesn't make it so plausible that persistence hunting is why we evolved to run. A few tribes do some other random stuff too. There could be other reasons. My theory makes about as much sense if not more so.
Warfare seems a lot more prevalent in hominids, especially humans than persistence hunting. And I'd claim the selection/evolutionary pressures are a lot higher.
Chimpanzees conduct warfare and genocide quite regularly: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/science/22chimp.html?_r=0
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2011/05/17/ugandan-chimpanzees-may-be-hunting-red-colobus-monkeys-into-extinction/
Babboons go to war: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8400000/8400019.stm
Even monkeys: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/wild/videos/monkey-gang-turf-war/
Maybe running started with a few persistence hunters, but once a bunch of hominids started going to war running around with spears the survivors were mostly those who could run whether with spears or not. That's a far stronger evolutionary pressure than failing to chase down some meat - could survive for a fair bit by eating some grass bulbs, insects or worms which don't run that fast.
Yes but land predators do not want to deal with 30 or 40 mud-covered primates with pointy sticks, so they stay the hell away. Nothing chases us. We can, however, chase the shit out of anything.
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As a "humans were primarily frugivorous but ate whatever the heck they could find because a low-tech life in the wild is really really hard" theory advocate, I do believe that many proto-humans hunted, but I doubt they ran down their prey. I used to mountain bike 10-20 miles in a saturday with my trusty dalmatian at my side. This wasn't African Sahara hot, but it was New England July hot and the pup would indeed plunge into water to cool off if he could, but even without sweat glands honestly quadrupeds totally blow away humans. The only long distance chasing would be if the animal had a few spears sticking out of it and was bleeding to death.
The only way humans were successful as hunters of more than rabbits was by being smart and organized or having better tech (spear throwers etc)
I'd argue that our brains were mostly useful in identifying fruit "ah blueberries are blooming, I should come back in 3 weeks before the birds eat them", "hmmm ramps grow on hillside", "wow this is where to dig for grass bulbs", etc
Eugenics is a good way to improve the population, but it needs to be handled well. It solves so many things though, especially overpopulation. The problem with classical eugenics is the focus went straight to "Racial Purification".
The first thing to establish is that everyone gets the right to maintain their bloodline. Everyone gets 2 kids (the way this is factored out is complex, but it's basically max(a,b) for a coupling(a,b), which does create a hole...). Then you get additional licenses to breed by passing physical, emotional, and mental fitness standards--you're stronger, smarter, able to remain motivated and focused, and so on.
The whole proposal is ridiculously complex--it started too simple, became over-complicated, then went through optimization to establish identical function in far fewer rules--but the main ideal scenario is that most people can have a family of 2-3 kids, all people can have a family of 2 kids at least, and so population and genetic diversity is maintained. Breeding is biased toward those who are better fit, and in small part biased toward those who are motivated--if you're going to actually put in some effort, you should be able to tag at least one additional license.
The meta-game is important though: it's easy to come up with a fair, non-abusive, socially-acceptable eugenics strategy (if you can operate in objective reality, and not get a call-back to Hitler along with people swearing it's their "god-given right" to have 18 children); the problem is that those in power will seize control of it and try to breed a population of loyalists, operating patently unfairly to political opponents. Even child protective services is often used simply to destroy the lives and families of political opponents--not just politicians, but "I don't like you and I work for the school board so YOU ARE FUCKED HAHAHAHAHAHA THEY'RE COMING FOR YOUR CHILDREN!!!"
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It's not hugely at odds with individual liberty. I know people with 16 or 18 children. They love to breed, they're proud of their huge families, and they want more. It's not a welfare grab; it's an over-active biological clock that keeps ringing the "MAKE BABIES!!" alarm. Never mind the pressure on the healthcare system to sustain them, if they're not rich. Never mind the additional unemployment, the cost to the school system (you don't pay a tax on every child; opposite, you get more tax credit up to 3), and so on.
Every extra baby you have encroaches on my personal liberty. Stop having more than everyone else!
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Yeah, he sucks. The deer in the woods could get out of sight and run-rest-run-rest, while man chase-track-chase-track. A deer in a field is going to have to run its ass off non-stop. Deer in the woods has much better chances.
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Wolves and humans have the same communications skills in cooperative context. Planning not so much: humans can develop language--grunts and hand motions, all the way up to complete linguistics. Wolves were domesticated (into dogs) because we share the same social structures and the same implicit communications: we're nearly the same species, minus genetics and physical shape, in that respect. Other social animals communicate entirely differently and are impossible to interact with; but we interact very naturally with wolves.
Dogs are useless on their own. Dogs cooperate with humans extremely well. Really, wolves hunt prey; they do not hunt other packs, and they will not try to get in a scuffle with a group of a dozen or so humans because they're well aware of what will happen. Cats just don't want to hunt that many things at once--they stay out of groups of zebra, ffs. Wolves look at humans hunting and have an absolute understanding of what they're looking at and why they want to stay away, because it's 'familiaris'.
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Funnily enough, dogs are one of the few animals that can *almost* keep pace with a long distance human runner and some people think that is why dogs were such a good choice to be domesticated.
I did a bit of searching on this topic a while ago and found this interesting 22 mile race between humans and horses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon/
It's not entirely fair as the horse has to carry a human, but it does show how humans are better runners than you might think. Conversely, midday African sun would make it much harder for the horses than racing in Wales (typically cold, rainy weather).
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
You seem to be a bit confused. I mentioned the "persistence hunting theory" in relation to adaptations in humans. Your theory about hominids carrying spears doesn't seem to make much sense - why don't other hominids run like we do or carry spears?
I'm not saying that your theory is right or wrong, but it doesn't seem to have much descriptive/predictive power. That could be because organised large-scale warfare depends on society and is thus too recent for evolution to have caught up with.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
If you're defending them against fascism, you're not doing a very good job.
Yes but land predators do not want to deal with 30 or 40 mud-covered primates with pointy sticks, so they stay the hell away. Nothing chases us. We can, however, chase the shit out of anything.
So go chase a bear on your own. See how far you get.
The fact that theoritically we can run down any animal, does not mean that any animal will always try to run away from us.
Yeah, he sucks. The deer in the woods could get out of sight and run-rest-run-rest, while man chase-track-chase-track.
Depends on the ground conditions. I'm not convinced a skilled tracker always needs a long stop to follow recent tracks.
You have to earn that.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I have seen different kinds of primates wage war but I have never seen them running long distances.
Have you ever tried to convince your hunted prey to stay on a track?
And there's lots of evidence that any more than moderate amounts of meat are pretty bad for you
Certainly true, but there's also evidence that you don't necessarily want to avoid animal fat and eat mostly lean meat. Of course, then you have to be careful to eat even less meat.
ate mostly grasses and bark
We have a single stomach and can't really process cellulose. If our ancestors could, that's not really relevant.
It's a bit of a stretch to say they survived on grass bulbs, given they are extinct. The opposite of survival.
How long's your GI tract, carnie-boy?
"Humanoids who didn't eat meat, didn't make the evolutionary cut."
I think that's probably just plain fact. Hence, we're here to defend our theories, and they're not.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I highly doubt that primitive man that managed to get their hands on fish or some other game animal decided not to eat it because they felt bad doing so or because they were concerned about the conditions in which that animal survived before it became dinner.
I also highly doubt that primitive man questioned the growing conditions of a source of harvested fruits or vegetables.
They ate what they could find. If it was killing a bison or gazelle, they killed and ate bison or gazelle. If it was gathering nuts or fruits, they ate nuts or fruits.
Check out the Calapuya people of Oregon, who used field burning to encourage oak savannahs to grow. They had no permanent settlements during the summer (their villages were winter only) and their favorite method of hunting was to climb a hill, spot the prey, light a big fire around it, and wait for it to be done cooking.
One of their favorite foods was grasshoppers, but they'd kill bear and deer the same way.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I'm struggling to think of a field with less credibility than nutritionists. Investment bankers maybe?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'd rather have shoes running on sharp rocks. Not you?
No, we were intelligently designed that way so that Reebok could sell us new shoes.
There's the whole Aquatic Ape theory, but it's not given much credence
Of course not, no one has written a best selling book on it yet.
I for one, don't buy any scientific theories until I read a bestselling, true-adventure book that dumbs it down for me and admits no counterpoints.
I am trying to take up swimming though, so I could use a "Born to Swim" if it's out there somewhere. Christopher McDougall do your thing; Make me excited about my evolutionary drive to learn the backstroke.
Do you hear that wooshing sound just above your ears?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Aquatic-Ape-Elaine-Morgan/dp/0812828739/ or better yet http://www.amazon.co.uk/Descent-Woman-Elaine-Morgan-ebook/dp/B00796E5H2/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389641341&sr=1-1&keywords=descent+of+woman/.
I think the idea fits a lot of "strange" facts about humans. Losing body hair, but keeping hair on the top of your head suggests lots of time standing in water. Breath control for swimming/diving leads on to changes suitable for spoken language. I haven't read either of those books, so I don't know the details.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
I explicitly said that the only ones close in that range are cyclists. Or didn't I?
Anyway: they have trained their metabolism to do that. So there are perhaps 2000 people in the world to:
a) burn
b) eat/digest
so many calories.
Even triatleths who arguable have a even more tough sports use less calories.
A world class boxer perhaps half of it.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Grass cloning giant Monsanto has announced plans to launch a new division to exploit quantum time travel in an attempt corner early grass' seed markets.
"Where did this apple come from?"
--Alan Turing
I don't know if a bear is going to stand up to 30 or 40 people chasing after it. Plus if we all have pointy sticks, we might kill it first!
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For starters, one man does not reflect an entire species, also how do the know the "tiger nut" isn't what killed the man? Let's see these so-called scientists eat some themselves and see how long they survive?
Bipedalism also makes a big difference, aside from reducing our cross section it makes running more efficient because we have fewer moving parts than 4-leggers. Our achilles, arches, and gluts also make a big difference. Compared to our modern ape relatives we clearly have pathetic arms but are much better suited to bipedalism and I'm not sure what drives that other than locomotion.
I stole this Sig
You lose, thinking being a grammer nazi adds to the discussion. And you really should aim higher than f**ing morons, or is that what you call your solo activity, or is your tourettes playing up again?
Beware of Poe's Law. There have been way too many anti-science trolls here lately all complaining about their tax dollars being "wasted" on some "useless" research being discussed.
If he was trying to make a pun he failed hard. "I object to my tax dollars being used to research (project name)" is a troll. A joke would have been "Poor guys, the ones digging up bones are lucky, these guys have a crap job."
Free Martian Whores!
I'm certainly blessed with good genes; most of my relatives in their 90s are still kicking. My mom's brother is 95 and Mom says he looks 70. My paternal grandmother lived 100 years (Grandpa died from an industrial accident) and my other grandparents were in their late '80s. Mom's 84 and goes bowling.
I got lucky in the gene lottery.
Free Martian Whores!
Flamebait? I mustve offended the cavemen from the television commercial.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
They ate tiger nuts, and they went extinct. Coincidence? I think not.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
20 miles away
Or even 200 miles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara_people#Athletic_prowess
Supports your point: http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm "Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times. ..."
The idea that hunter/gathers worked hard is a convenient one to promulgate if your objective is to keep long-suffering agricultural serfs from revolting... Some suggest the expulsion from the Garden of Eden story in the Bible is about the transition from hunter/gathering to agriculture (and similar painful stories are in other cultures).
As you point out, the work hunter/gathers had to do to get food depends on things like the specific living situation as well as population density. As population density goes up because of the success of hunter/gathering, sadly, it makes it harder and harder to live that way. Then militaristic bureaucracies can arise to control the most productive lands (including estuaries) adding another dimension to the issue. In the past, those might eventually collapse and a cycle would start over (see Daniel Quinn who in Beyond Civilization points out how often this cycle happened). But nowadays a collapse would probably involve nukes that could render much of the Earth uninhabitable plus our global populations based on agriculture and advanced technology are many many times what hunter/gathering would support. So, our collective best bet is to keep things going and take advantage of new possibilities, like creating and living in self-replicating space habitats that duplicate themselves from lunar or asteroid ore and solar energy as well as making advanced Earthly cities including in the ocean and so on. And with robotics and a basic income, most humans can go back to the better part of a hunter/gather lifestyle, including having time to raise children well and to be part of a socially-connected community.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
We aren't herbivores anymore. I guess we evolved.