On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, Wolf Logan wrote:

> but one thing has been confusing me. why do folks insist that people ate
> primarily raw meat 10,000 years ago? we most certainly had fire (at least,
> my ancestors seemed to). we weren't stupid, or uncreative. raw meat can be
> hard to eat, and doesn't keep long. some kind of preparation, be it cooking,
> smoking, or drying, was virtually a necessity. so why raw?

I think the premise is that prehistoric people didn't do much
preparing or storing of foods, but ate what they killed or found
pretty much on the spot.  But you are correct.  The evidence
indicates that people have had fire for 700,000 to 800,000 years.
Whether they did much cooking and what they cooked is not known
with any certainty, but tools for preparing foods also date back
that far and farther, so a case can be made that food preparation
(as opposed to eating things as you find them) has been around
for a long time.

> in a similar vein, why is it hard to believe that folks couldn't (or didn't)
> dig up a tuber or two once in a while? we're sharp cookies, we can see pigs
> and other "rooting" animals dig 'em up and enjoy 'em. it's hard to believe
> we didn't take the clue (or otherwise figure it out) from waaaaaay
> back...around the time we decided walking upright might be a pretty good
> idea.

I think part of the premise is that wild potatoes were more toxic
than their modern descendants.  This doesn't rule out the
possibility of roasting them on a stick, however.  But I think
potatoes were originally a New World food in any case, so they
would have entered the human diet only recently.

> is it possible that the basis of the neanderthin diet has less to do with
> "early man" and more to do with "primate physiology in general"? that would
> seem to give it a firmer foundation, if the whole point is eating according
> to our evolutionary roots. still, we *have* been evolving (somewhat slowly,
> and not much lately) over time, and much of that evolution was in the
> presence of fire, among other technological adaptations.

The problem here is that humans have been subjected to severe
evolutionary pressures unlike what most other primates have been
subjected to.  You'll find that the authors of Neanderthin
sometimes emphasize the similarity of human physiology to that of
other primates, but at other times emphasize its similarity to
that of wolves.  The truth is probably that we are more like
wolves than any other primates are, and more like other primates
than any wolf is.

> one other thing: i'm still not sure i understand why the pesticides used on
> some potatoes makes potatoes in general a bad idea. if i've got potatoes in
> my back yard, with no pesticides on 'em, are they "off limits" anyway?

If the argument that prehistoric people didn't eat them is
correct, then the answer is yes.  It is undoubtedly a good idea
to avoid eating pesticides, but obviously there are a good many
paleo-correct foods that are also heavily treated with them.
Strawberries are a prime example.

Todd Moody
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