Have reminded myself of those days of yore and long ago when I was subjected
to mugging up archaeology 101 for pre-med.

The Palaeozoic Era was 570-354 million years ago, so Palaeofood is a
misnomer.

Man did not appear until perhaps the Pleistocene Epoch, which began 1.8
million years ago (I say 'perhaps' because that depends on what you define
as 'man', Homo erectus, Neanderthal, H.sapiens?)  Our area of study probably
should begin when fire was tamed for cooking, supposedly about 40,000 years
ago, but many of you may say your area of interest was before that.

Could we have a definition, so we all know what we are talking about, and
better still, are agreed on that?


My interest is centered on the suspicion that we have been opportunistic
hunter-gatherers for virtually all of our evolutionary life;  we nibbled
buds, fruits, nuts, leaves, roots, grain, insects, whatever, whenever we
chanced on it, with only an occasional meat-feast for most of us.  Only the
river and sea-coast dwellers could have the luxury of a dependable
continuous protein supply.  So I suspect that three or four square meals a
day is too new to have impinged on our evolutionary development, and our
digestive tract may be to some extent unable to cope with that;  certainly
our insulin metabolism is insulted by the USA non-stop absorbtion of
sugars-in-a carbonated water-can.

So  I would like to converse with people who nibble here and there whatever,
with no set times, and rare pig-outs.  A 5ft 11 elderly male who weighed 195
lbs, I am now at 165, and still going down.  I nibble a hazel-nut of cooked
sausage every hour on the hour, which I swallow almost unchewed to lengthen
the absorbtion time.  I have abandoned sucrose (table-sugar) and use
fructose (honey-suagar) only occasionally.

No, I'm not a diet-freak.  I'm an MD who did not like being overweight, and
wondered how best to lose it without re-lighting my old duodenal ulcer.
This is working so far.  Any comments?

For a good short summary of prehistoric time periods, try
        http://www.fossil-company.com/time_line/index.html and also

/caenozoic.html

Geoff     [log in to unmask]