On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 21:43, Tom Bridgeland wrote:

>On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 10:14  PM, Keith Thomas wrote:
>
>> What sort of balance would humans have been
>> able to practice in the Pleistocene?  Plentiful, tasty fruit on odd
>> days in autumn,
>
>I agree with your opinions except this point. Fruit,
>depending of course on your environment, would
>have been available from late spring to late fall,
>even into the winter. Here where I live now,
>cherries are first, in mid spring, followed
>shortly after with strawberries ...  Some
>fruits like wild apples and grapes etc are
>only good after a frost.
>
>If you stretch it to include all edible wild

>fruits, it is quite a variety, and not just
>in the fall at all. In more tropical climes there
>would have been even more. I expect that even
>meat eating hunters would have gathered
>wherever fruit was ripe, to hunt the animals attracted
>there, as well as to eat the fruit themselves.

Tom, you are quite correct.  The only points I would add are

(a) the fruits available would have been different species as the seasons
progressed (hence my emphasis on the importance of variety and instability
in a Paleo diet).  In the tropics, there is _generally_ a seasonal pattern
to fruit availability, depending on rainfall rather than temperature.

(b)  Tubers and roots (mainly in the tropics) were available throughout
the year (Wrangham's hypothesis), but once our ancestors became dependent
upon them (Boesei - not Wrangham's example), they were vulnerable to
climate ch
ange.  Omnivory was the key.

(c)  fruits, while pleasant, tasty, pretty and rich in many nutrients are
also low on protein and even energy (in terms of bulk).  I could imagine
Paleolithic people snacking on whatever was available for most of the
year, gorging on those in sweet abundance on rare occasions (rare in terms
of being a dietary staple), but only infrequently using fruits as the main
source of, say, 3,000 kcal a day energy requirements.

On this point, I remember my experience in Highlands of Papua New Guinea
in the early 1970s.  The villagers used to get up at about 2:00am for a
snack of kau kau (sweet potato) to keep them going as the food was so
bulky they had to keep shovelling it in to deal with their hunger.

Keith