On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 16:20:55 -0400, Don Wiss wrote:

>Keith Thomas wrote:
>
> > The point is, how would eggs have been eaten in
> > the Paleolithic (and they certainly were).
> > Eggs would have been seasonal - available for
> > 3 months max.  Eggs would have been mostly from
> > ground-nesting birds (swans, ducks etc.).
>
>And as we started as apes we were
>climbing trees long before we were walking on the ground.
>So earlier we would have simply been taking from tree nests.

Yes, but that would have been well before the Paleolithic.  Ground-nesting
birds also lay larger eggs (hence more attractive to Homo sapiens) than
the passerines.

>Also we evolved in warmer climes. Do birds only lay eggs for three months
>there? Chickens lay for more than three months. What about the wild
>versions of what our domesticated chickens evolved from?

Here I am only guessing, but I would expect that the ancestors of our
present poultry lay many more eggs than other wild birds of similar size:
pheasants, ravens, magpies, hawks, pigeons.

I should have added in my earlier post that, of course, eggs eaten by our
Paleolithic ancestors would generally be fertile and many would have well-
developed embryos.

Keith