Geoffrey Purcell wrote:
> Re plant-foods:- Arguably, the only major expansion in plant-foods in the diet
> was when the Neolithic era came around, since grains, tubers and legumes
> were then consumed in large quantities. And, it's unquestionable that tubers
> would have been a rarity before 250,000 years ago, given that many/most
> have toxic substances in them such as cassava with its cyanide-content, and
> even after that period, it would have presumably taken many generations to
> work out which foods were only edible cooked but inedible raw. As for when
> tubers were eaten in sizeable quantities, the only definite proof thereof is from
> the start of the Neolithic era - as regards the period between 250,000 years
> ago to 10,000 years ago, we will just have to agree to disagree.
>
The connection between the Neolithic and grains and legumes is clear.
The Neolithic is defined by the transition to agriculture, and cereal
grains and certain legumes were the earliest known crops. But the
connection between the Neolithic and tubers is far less clear, since
these were not staples of early agriculture. You say that it's
"unquestionable" that tubers would have been a rarity before 250,000
years ago, but your reason for this claim leaves it highly questionable.
You say that it would have taken many generations to figure out which
tubers were only edible cooked. But that question only became
interesting after the advent of cooking. Prior to cooking, hominids
would have simply been interested in knowing which tubers were edible
raw--and they had plenty of time to work that out, *long* before cooking
became an option.
Consider this statement: "Today, there are 40,000 kilograms of tubers
per square kilometer in Tanzania's savanna woodlands, for example."
(http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Pennisi_99.html). Suppose, for the
sake of argument, that only 1% of them are edible raw. That's still
nearly a half ton of edible, energy-dense food per square kilometer,
*prior* to cooking. I think the burden of argument is on anyone who
supposes that paleolithic people would have chosen to ignore this food.
> Re tubers/malnutrition:- I don't think that the famines resulting from tuber-
> consumption can be merely blamed on the not eating of meats. I mean, people
> have already (wrongly, IMO) tried to use the same explanation re not eating
> enough meats for the Neolithic era, but when one looks more closely at the
> data, one finds that eating Neolithic foods like grains and dairy lead to all sorts
> of specific problems(eg:- coeliac disease) which are not related to the not
> eating of meats but the eating of those particular Neolithic foods.
>
Well, you were talking about famines and malnutrition, not specific
medical reactions to foods. Do you have data that indicate that the
mere consumption of tubers, in general, led to specific medical
problems, apart from the absence of meats in those impoverished areas
where meats became scarce?
> Re "Palaeo"/cooking etc.:- The way I see it, the term "palaeolithic epoch" is
> rather arbitrary and artificial, given that there are so many different variations
> in it(eg:- the initial high raw vegan ideas, raw palaeolithic diet, and , lastly,
> cooked-palaeolithic diet). Plus, it's absurd that a diet(ie "cooked, palaeolithic)
> can be held as the "main" diet of the Palaeolithic, when this only covers a
> mere 10% of the entire Palaeolithic period(cooking was definitely NOT invented
> in the middle of the Palaeolithic(!) as cooking was invented only 250,000 years
> ago, with the Palaeolithic era starting c.2.5 or 2.6 million years ago, and
> ending in the Mesolithic(roughly 20,000 years ago).
>
The term "paleolithic" is not especially vague. It refers to the period
that begins with the first stone tool-using hominids, about 2.5 mya, and
ends with the Neolithic, about 10,000 ya. The transition to agriculture
comes at the end of the Mesolithic, roughly 11,000 ya. The rest of the
Mesolithic is characterized by fancier flint tools and dwellings and
even boats, but is still decidedly pre-agricultural.
It may be absurd to assert that a diet that is cooked is the "main"
paleolithic diet, but since I didn't assert that, I don't care whether
it's absurd or not. Cooking nevertheless *is* a paleolithic practice
that has existed longer than there have been anatomically modern homo
sapiens.
> Re technology:- People have been trying for ages to find out the one unique
> innate quality or cultural behaviour that separates humans from all other
> animals, and have failed time and again, as it was found that things like
> laughter and tool-use etc.
Indeed, these essentialist musings are of little use. But this has no
relevance to what I said, which is that the *extent* of dependence upon
technology for food is a distinctive characteristic of the entire
hominid-human lineage, and I stand by that. From the beginning of the
Paleolithic to the present day, the dependence upon technology has only
increased. This is not contradicted by the fact that other species use
tools to some extent. The point is: There is no such thing as a
pre-technological paleolithic diet. It never existed.
> Another obvious point to make is that using flints and the like doesn't radically
> alter the nature of the food in the way that cooking does. Such tools as flints
> were used to gain better access to a food(eg:- by breaking open the skull to
> get at the brain etc.), much like chimpanzees use sticks to flush out termites
> from termite-mounds etc., they were not used to "process" the meats in the
> extreme way that cooking does. So, since tool-use is also prevalent in wild
> animals, it seems clear that "technology" only started when humans first
> invented fire, which is something no other animal has ever managed to do.
>
Your argument appears to be that since other animals use tools, but only
humans use fire, tools are not technology but fire is. This argument
depends upon the unstated premise that only uniquely human practices
count as technology. That premise is left unstated for the good reason
that when it is stated it's clear that there's no reason to accept it.
Moreover, the third sentence, the conclusion, doesn't begin to follow
from the first two. Does fire change food? Yes. Does that fact make
it non-paleo? No.
Suppose savanna hunter-gatherers got, say, 10% of their energy from
tubers, 10% from fruits and berries at various times, and another 10%
from other low-density plant foods, such as edible leaves, buds, shoots,
etc. The other 70% was from animal foods. This would be a far cry from
a "tuber based" or even "plant based" diet, but also far from a diet in
which plant foods, including tubers, play no meaningful part.
Todd Moody
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