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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."
If they're extinct, then they didn't survive on anything, did they?
They survived 1,000,000 years. We've been going at it for 200,000 years or so, and we're constantly at risk of killing ourselves off en masse. I'd say they did a lot better than we are doing on the species survival front.
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.
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.
Plus it is pretty iffy to base too many conclusions on a handful of skeletons (or in the case of such old homonids it's usually skeletal fragments). If archaeologists of the future only had five 20th century human skeletons available that were all found in the general area that used to be New York they might conclude that most humans of the 20th century were over weight and lived off a meat rich diet. If those five skeletons came from the horn of Africa they would conclude that during the 20th century the human race suffered from frequent famines. If the five skeletons came from the graveyard of a vegan colony they'd conclude humans of the 20th century were predominantly vegan. If the discoveries in Dmanisi, Georgia have taught us anything it is that one should not base too many sweeping conclusions on a handful of samples.
http://rt.com/news/skull-homo-georgia-species-373/
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
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You mean vegans, more precisely. Vegetarians usually (not always) eat animal products which do not involve slaughter of the animal, such as eggs & cheese -- both of which supply B12. The body only needs an extremely small ammount of B12, the smallest amount of any vitamin.
Anyhow, until vegans evolve away from the requirement for B12, or go extinct, it's really not hard for them to get enough from commonly B12 fortified products. Much tofu, nutritional yeast, and other common vegan ingredients are fortified with non-animal sources of B12.
You only need to go back 200 years before we had anything like modern refrigeration and the food had to be very fresh and very local. Most people were subsistance farmers, meaning they primarily ate what they produced. If you had game, you ate game and if you didn't, you didn't. If you had a river or lake nearby with fish you ate fish, if not you didn't. If barley grew better than wheat, you ate barley. Your diet was defined by your surroundings.
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