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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?
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."
seem to me they didn't survive well enough
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
If they're extinct, then they didn't survive on anything, did they?
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.
What did they do with the rest of their day?
Not (enough) sex, otherwise they wouldn't be extinct
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
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.
Whew.
If the prerequisite hurdle for reproduction includes a steady diet of tiger nuts, I, for one, an quite certainly glad those bad motherfskerers aren't around to compete with for mates.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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.
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.
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
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.
What did they do with the rest of their day?
Probably proselytize to their meat-eating neighbors about how their vegetarian diet is superior.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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.
...being a vegetarian is bad for the longevity of the species, and thus wrong.
Humans did not evolve to be vegetarians. Vegetarians and particularly vegans will end up needing to take supplements of some vitamins found solely in meat (e.g. vitamin B12).
humans did not evolve to be vegetarians is a nonsense statement. evolution implies there is no intent.
[citation needed] on the supplements.
i've been a vegetarian for 26 years. i do not take supplements. for many years i biked up to 100 miles a day, including a 3100 mile month. now it could be, i'm a stan lee superhuman, but i doubt it.
my personal suspicion is that like other areas in dietary research, there's a lot of self-affirming bullshit floating around.
What did they do with the rest of their day?
Probably proselytize to their meat-eating neighbors about how their vegetarian diet is superior.
Who got fed up with hearing that crap that they killed them off... :)
This proves it: Vegetarism damages your humour. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
"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.
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.
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
You seem to be implying that meat consumption means that you don't have to pay attention to what you eat. Really, it just seems like your girlfriend was more conscientious about her diet than you were. Which maybe isn't that surprising - being vegan implies that you're paying attention to what you eat.
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.
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!
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.
Milk, cheese, and eggs are all animal products. Vegans wouldn't touch them.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
No, actually not. The paleo diet stresses it's not just eating meat that's healthy, but healthy cuts of meat.
Our ancestors would have slaughtered and killed a buffalo that had spent it's days running around all the time.
Modern humans eat a cow that's been force fed grain to make it fatter.
One is healthier then the other. And certainly eating grass fed beef is both delicious and more healthy.
The problem (and the reason I am no longer paleo) is the difficulty it really is to be "healthy." Pretty much if you're not rich you're fucked. And forget about going out to a restaurant and getting something to eat.
They scrawled graffiti on public rocks. We humanoids haven't evolved much since then.
That's the difference between a Vegan and a Vegetarian...
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
True. My girlfriend is vegan and she takes B12 supplements, which is fine by me. The way I see it, it's much more environmentally friendly to produce a B12 tablet then it is to grow, slaughter and cook an animal.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
You can get B12 from fermented foods, milk products, eggs, and algae. In fact, it's not even produced by animals, only by bacteria.
B12 is produced by bacteria in fermentation tanks and then ends up in tablets for vegans to eat, and in animal feed for farm animals to eat. The B12 you get from meat comes from the same exact place as the stuff in tablets.
There are actually no essential nutrients created by animals.
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
Human hunter gatherers, at least the ones in the richer environments, also only foraged a couple of hours a day. The ones that lived around here actually could get by with 2 weeks work a year harvesting the salmon.
They spent a lot of time sitting around the fire bull shitting, visiting the nieghbours and such. Artistic things like carvings and if bored, little things like making a dugout canoe could eat a lot of time. Cutting down a 10 ft thick tree with fire and stone, carving it out with fire and stone, dragging it to the ocean, then paddling to Hawaii to snag a cute chick.
The meme is that being primitive was a horrible life and while it was horrible if you needed dentistry or such and of course those years when there was a famine, much or the time was leisure time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Shoes aren't good for running. The best long distance runners run barefoot.
In England, people typically don't eat penises.
It must be this little fact that accounts for the high divorce rate. It's the French, who fuck with their faces, and fight with their feet... ;-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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.
57 million people died during WWII, yet the Earth finished it with 20 million more people than it started with.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Obligatory: SMBC Developmental biology :)
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
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
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.
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
Most vegetarians know about rennet in cheese. I always check the label.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
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.
P.boisei survived for around (2.8-1.4 ~=) 1.4 million years ; "Anatomically Modern Humans" have been around for about one tenth of that, if not less.
Who were you calling a too-specialised non-survivor?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"