Subject: | |
From: | |
Reply To: | |
Date: | Mon, 12 May 2008 13:04:30 +0000 |
Content-Type: | text/plain |
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
The controversy about Wrangham's hypothesis is not whether paleo people ate tubers at all. It's about whether tuber consumption was on a scale that could explain rapid brain evolution a couple of million years ago. Personally, I think the answer is no; I think meat played that role. But that question isn't decisive for the question about whether tubers were eaten by paleo people.
The evidence for cooking becomes clear at around 250,000 year ago. This is, by most estimates, just before the dawn of anatomically modern homo sapiens. It is certainly well within the "paleo" time frame, by any plausible definition. Furthermore, as Wrangham pointed out, there are tubers that are edible raw. So there is really very little reason to doubt that paleo people ate some tubers, in some places, some of the time. That, of course, doesn't translate into a license to follow a "tuber based" paleo diet in the belief that it has some kind of scientific basis.
Todd Moody
[log in to unmask]
|
|
|