On Sun, 27 Sep 1998, Geoff Stanford wrote:

> Have reminded myself of those doays of yore and ong ago when I was subjected
> to mugging up archaeology 01 for pre-med.
>
> The Palaeozoic Era was 570-354 million years ago, so Palaeofood is a
> misnomer.

The "paleo" that use around here refers to Paleolithic, not
Paleozoic.  Here's an encyclopedia entry:

        The Paleolithic Period, or Old Stone Age, is the earliest
        and longest stage of human cultural development, lasting
        from about 2.5 million to about 10,000 years ago.

> 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?)

It also depends upon your *opinions* concerning the lineage of
human descent, about which there is still no expert consensus.
It seems safe to say that hominids of some sort have been around
for 2.5 million years, however.


> 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.

What's the reason for beginning at that relatively recent date?
The point is to understand the diet to which we are best adapted.
Since adaptation takes time, it's reasonable to conclude that the
longer we have been exposed to a food, the more opportunity we
have had to adapt to it.  These opportunities did not begin
40,000 years ago.

Of course, this is not to say that humans or hominids survived on
a single diet from 2.5 to 10,000 years ago.  It merely sets
boundaries to the kinds of diets that can be called Paleolithic.

> 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.

There appears to be clinical support for the idea of small meals,
of whatever sort.  The frequency of meat consumption would have
varied widely across different environments, just as it does
among contemporary hunter-gatherers.  Small animals--rabbits,
squirrels, birds, turtles, etc.--must have been common dietary
items.

> 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.

Even without the junk foods, the fact that we can only utilize
35g of protein at a time suggests that we are built for nibbling.
The fact that we tend to store more than that as fat suggests
that massive protein intake was a relatively infrequent
opportunity to "tank up" calories against future shortages.

> 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?

Sounds right to me.

Todd Moody
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