Ray Audette wrote:

>From: Amadeus Schmidt
>>>Didn't hunter gatherers consume HIGH fat diets, for the most part?

>>Which ones do you mean? Inuit are not our anchestors.
>>Africa, where all the autralopethines and most homo habilis/erectus
>>remains were found doesn't look like fatty animals have been
>>running around there. Even not in autumn/winter (like Ray
>>portrayed),

>For most of the last 2,000,000 years that humans (Homo sapiens) have
>existed the world was in a series of ice ages. ...

Hello Ray, thanks for your post regarding ice age environments
of our anchestors.

I'm still missing the reason why/if our anchestor hunter and
gatherer consumed HIGH fat diets, as the original poster asked.

What speaks against it, are in my memory two points:
1.The interview with Loren Cordain elaborated an average
of only 1-8% fat in (todays) wild game. (this is whole animal,
including brain and marrow, i think)
Also, a vegetable matter percentage, high enough to equal out
the acid balance -and therefore avoid the calcium loss which
paleo-humans did *not* experience- might
contain an already high energy intage from these same plants.
2.Ice age africa (including *todays* tropics) had long times
when rainforest changed to steppe and thundra.
But these were never cold and ice-covered so exactely which fatty
animals would you expect there?

I may ask for a few further clarifications to your explanations:

>These abundant areas covered large parts of every continent
>including Africa and were far more conducive to human habitation
>than tropical climates.
Tropical climates are not what we would expect during glaciations
(cold phases) in todays tropical areas, right?

>...
>In many ways this steppe-tundra was more like today's tundra than
>today's steppe (even fewer trees due to permafrost).
And also no permafrost (no frost at all, but less humidity,
restricting the growth of trees) , right?

>Indeed, Arctic people (including the Inuit as well as several
>Eurasian peoples who are genetically
>related) may be considered the last of the Pleistocene
>hunter-gatherers.
>... their culture is far older
>and they are much closer relatives of yours genetically than the
>genetically older bushmen of Africa.
You carry out, that the arctic *cultures* are closer to our previous
culture than the australians'.
You also call Inuit genetically closer relatives to us than
african bushmen.
This could mean we are descending from common anchestors.
But you aren't implicating that such an artic population moved back
to wormer areas and is constituting *our* anchestors, are you?

>The forrest of central Europe are very recent. For most of the
>Pleistocene,Europe was dominated by steppe-tundra.
Europe was in times of glaziations eather covered by ice shields
(emerging from the alps or the poles) or by tree-less tundra
(africa not).
In worm times woods came back in a certain sequence
from birch over hazel to beech.
Last worm time is called Eem and lasted about 50kyears
- nice weather for neanderthals , in between :-)
In the cold times time europe was populated too --
by homo erectus (up to about 200k years back)
and then by the neanderthals (about 200k - 30k years back).
Each of this pre-humans became *extinct*, beeing at last replaced
by the Cro Magnon- the modern human - which shows the oldest remains
about 100kyears back in southern africa.
The anatomically modern humans lived for about 30k years in
the european ice age thundra.
I know, that you suspect the northern neanderthals to have had
a genetic part taking to our anchestors.
Be this the case, then *we* had genes is us from a pre-human
(neanderthal) who access to fatty animals for 100kyears more.

Do you suspect that Cro-Magnon derived from european neanderthals,
and that these derived from european (or cold area) homo erectus?
Or do you count the 1.800.000 years before neanderthals as
evolving time in africa ?
The latter might implicate heavy meat but IMHO not heavy fat diets.

I'd be sorry to find out that fat-consuming time was not so
long, because i'm a heavy fat consumer...

Thanks in advance for your clarifications and opinions,
i'm looking forward to.

regards

Amadeus Schmidt

>Ray Audette
>Author "NeanderThin"


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