On Mon, 2 Aug 1999 Todd Moody <[log in to unmask]>

> I'd like to invite some comments on the question of human adaption to
> spice herbs.
......snip.......
> Optimal foraging theory indicates that hunter-gatherers will
> always favor calorically denser foods when they can get them, and
> certainly avoid foods that require more energy to gather than
> they actually provide.

This simply illustrates that optimal foraging theory is not everything.
Drinking water requires more calories to collect than it gives but no one
expects humans not to drink!  More seriously, humans like to exhibit what
archaeologists know as "conspicuous consumption", using resources in a
fashion that indicates you have resources to spare.

> This brings us to my question.  The various spice herbs are
> mostly vanishingly low in calories, and are pungent enough in
> taste that it seems doubtful that anyone would eat very much of
> them at a time anyway.  Many spices have potent health-promoting
> effects, it seems, because of antioxidants and other ingredients
> present in them, but prehistoric humans wouldn't have known of
> that.

Why shouldn't prehistoric people have been good herbalists?  Modern
hunter-gatherer and "primitive" populations are being tapped for their
knowledge of herbal/natural/traditional remedies which western
pharmaceutical companies may be able to exploit.

> Indeed, it's hard to see why they would have bothered with
> these plants at all.  If that is correct, the contribution of
> these plants to their diet would have been at least as negligible
> as that of grains or dairy foods.  Therefore we shouldn't be very
> well adapted to them.  Nevertheless, they seem to be good for us.
>
> What is the explanation?

I suspect the answer is that we are not adapted to consuming large amounts
of them.  For example, people have been using tobacco, coca, opium poppies
and other narcotics in small quantities for at least several millennia.
Chewing coca leaves to feel good does little harm, but taking large
quanitites of crack cocaine does much harm to a person.  Feeling good on a
few coca leaves propabbly helps one deal with the stresses of life in a
way that optimal foraging theory doesn't account for.  Similarly I guess
the plant that produces quinine is worth eating if you have malaria but
not worth bothering with otherwise.

Andrew

 =========================================================================
 Dr. Andrew Millard                              [log in to unmask]
 Department of Archaeology, University of Durham,   Tel: +44 191 374 4757
 South Road, Durham. DH1 3LE. United Kingdom.       Fax: +44 191 374 3619
                      http://www.dur.ac.uk/~drk0arm/
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