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Tue, 13 May 2008 12:12:36 -0400 |
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Todd Moody wrote:
> Why famine only? Tubers are a high energy density food.
Also high carbohydrate.
> They are not unduly difficult to gather. The Expensive Tissue hypothesis, which I accept, stipulates that the evolutionary decrease in the gut-brain ratio depends on a higher density diet.
High carbohydrate consumption = big belly.
> I believe meat must have dominated but I don't see any reason to suppose it did so to the exclusion of other high density foods, such as tubers.
Carnivores should be more likely to survive.
> Moreover, the fact that cooking shows up about 25-50,000 years before homo sapiens, but a long time before the Neolithic, is at least suggestive.
Fire /= cooking.
It was and is a tool, including social.
> I understand that paleolithic tubers would have been pretty gnarly in comparison with modern selectively bred mega-starches but I just don't see any reason to think that paleo people ignored them.
>
They might have used them for bait for animals unlucky enough (small
brains) to not know the difference between food and fodder.
>
William
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