Hi Edith, Of course no one knows for sure what happened in the past. But people like Loren Cordain and Mary Enig have made educated guesses, and shared them with their peers for review and debate. See http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?S1=paleodiet&D=0 for details. As far as the specialists can discern, roughly four million years ago our species began differentiating from the gorilla and chimpanzee. Those ape- like ancestors were forest dwellers. When the climate changed, they adapted to living on the savanna. They learned to eat the leftovers from the lions and jackals, which consisted primarily of brains and bone marrow, both of which are high in omega 3. Their brains gre w (and their offspring developed a need for those "essential" fatty acids). Eventually our ancestors learned to drive off the jackals and finally to hunt and kill on their own. That was about one million years ago. Around 10,000 years ago, someone in the Fertile Crescent discovered how to grow and harvest grain, (hence my claim that 99% of our ancestors ate salad and meat). There is clear evidence in the fossil record that their bones were negatively impacted by the change in diet. Sally Fallon, in her book Nourishing Traditions, explains all of the whys and wherefores. A researcher in South Africa (his name escapes me) has indeed analyzed the coprolites left behind at early habitation sites to determine what our ancestors ate. And while it is not 100% conclusive, the basic pattern of salad and meat is well documented. People like Weston Price (Price- Pottinger Foundation) traveled the wo rld in the 1930's, documenting what the hunter-gather groups of that time ate. Again it was basically salad and meat. There is one thing you can defintely prove about what humans ate. Until the end of the 19th century, sugar and white flour were not available to the masses, and heart disease, cancer, and the other maladies of modern civilization were rare or non-existent. People will always try and make a buck. Right now, the food processors make a lot more money on sugar water and carbohydrate fried in transfatty acids than they do on fresh produce and organ meats. But if they figure out a way to charge top dollar for the foods our ancestors ate, the TV commercials will be full of new and improved lettuce and bone marrow ads. I can hardly wait ;o) Cheers, Rob ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list send an email to [log in to unmask] with the words SIGNOFF EVOLUTIONARY-FITNESS in the _body_ of the email. To get a copy of the old archives or the FAQ, look in the EvFit folder at http://briefcase.yahoo.com/dryeraser