Here's something that might interest our fruitarian friends and others who
would like so very, very much to believe that prior to Paleolithic times,
our ancestors ate only fruit. Well, who knows, maybe they're talking about
PRIOR to three million years ago. Ya never know.

Love, Liza


--
[log in to unmask] (Liza May)

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[From Beagle Science Magazine review, Vol. 283, No. 5400, January 15, 1999]


Cuisine before the Stone Age

Our ancestors, the great apes, were vegetarians. We humans are omnivores.
At what point in hominid evolution did our ancestors learn to eat meat? A
new study challenges the
widely held view that our three-million-year-old hominid ancestor
Australopithecus africanus ate mostly fruits, herbs, and bushes from the
forest. By examining the tooth enamel of Australopithecus, researchers
showed that, rather than just plant foods from the forest, the animal ate
grassland plants and, possibly, the small mammals that fed on them. The
results could spur scientists to re-examine the prevailing view of human
evolution, which holds that an animal-based diet fueled the evolution of a
large brain.
Reference: Sponheimer, M. and Lee-Thorp, J.A. 1999. Isotopic evidence for
the diet of an early hominid, Australopithecus africanus. Science
283(5400):368-370.