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.

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.

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).

Given this confusion re Palaeo terms, it's understandable why Ray Audette and 
many others have come up with a clearer definition of the term.

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. are present in other species too. Crows are well-
known to frequently  use tools:-

http://tinyurl.com/3qhuz

Chimps(and even gorillas to a lesser extent) have also long been known to use 
tools frequently(including stone tools), thus demonstrating that tool-use was 
present long before the Palaeolithic:-

http://www.archaeology.org/0801/topten/chimpanzee.html

Then there are plenty of other examples, such as vultures dropping stones 
onto ostrich eggs to break them open, hooded monkeys using tools to solve 
problems  etc.:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_animals

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.


Geoff


On Wed, 14 May 2008 22:10:43 -0400, [log in to unmask] wrote:

>Geoff wrote:
>
>> Well, there is a good reason why plants would have been less likely to
>> have
>> been eaten, given that there was no agriculture, so there would have been
>> no
>> mass-cultivated fruit-trees etc., plus in many areas of the world,
>> hominids
>> would have been unable to find certain fruits at frequent times(eg:-
>> winter,
>> near the glaciers/deserts etc.), since fruits generally appear seasonally.
>> And
>> since meats are more nutrient-dense than plants, it makes sense for
>> hunter-
>> gatherers to depend mainly on meats, as a result.
>
>To an extent, I agree. In some paleolithic environments, plant foods of
>any sort would have been scarce.  In other environments, they would have
>been more plentiful. I think it's important to stress the diversity of
>actual paleolithic settings, across the millenia and around the globe. 
>And I do not dispute the premise that in all paleolithic environments,
>paleolithic people depended *mainly* on meats. But I also believe that
>they, like their modern hunter-gatherer counterparts, were adept at
>exploiting all the edible plants around them.  And when cooking became
>part of their way of life, a quarter of a million years or so ago, the
>result was a large expansion of the available plant foods.
>
>> The point re tubers was that they were not a nutrient-rich food, as
>> evidenced
>> by the number of African countries suffering from malnutrition who depend
>> on
>> it to a large extent. I certainly don't deny that tubers or roots or
>> whatever
>> would ahve been eaten as emergency-rations or temporary famine-relief 
etc.
>
>The malnutrition is not caused by eating tubers, but by *not* eating
>meats. I'm not suggesting that paleolithic people ever consumed tubers or
>any plant foods to the near exclusion of meats.  But the use of meats as a
>primary food simply doesn't entail that plant foods in general, and tubers
>in particular, were relegated to emergency or famine foods.  It's a false
>dilemma.
>
>> Also, the definition of a Palaeolithic diet is not simply any food that
>> was
>> consumed during  the Palaeolithic. That's obvious - after all the
>> Palaeolithic
>> actually started c.2.5/2.6 million years ago, according to official
>> designation,
>> which was a time  well before hominids went in exclusively for meat when
>> hominids still ate huge amounts of plants. Since no genuine palaeolithic
>> diet
>> I've ever heard of is mainly vegetarian in character(the various
>> definitions
>> always suggest a paleolithic diet of  anywhere between 65% to 100% 
animal-
>> food, one can't obviously say absolutely everything eaten in that era was
>> what we should eat.
>
>That's a good point.  The truth is, the term "paleolithic diet" is
>inherently vague.  The 65-100% animal food range is very wide.  There's
>simply no good reason to believe that every actual diet that falls into
>that range is a diet worth emulating. But once we decide that some are
>worth emulating and some aren't we step outside the strictly paleo
>framework and use some other principles.  I'm okay with that, but it's not
>really paleo anymore.
>
>
>> Re cooking:- The trouble with cooking is that it can lower antinutrients
>> making
>> foods, otherwise inedible edible, but, at the same time, it lowers
>> nutrient-
>> levels of substances such as vitamins, as well as lowering
>> bioavailability re
>> introducing AGEs(advanced glycation endproducts) and similiar toxic
>> substances such as HCAs( Heterocyclic amines) etc. etc., eg:-
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_endproduct
>>
>> However, that's beside the point.The actual  definition of a nature-based
>> Palaeolithic Diet is a diet which doesn't use technology or where foods
>> are only
>> eaten which are edible raw, which is the interpretation that  Ray Audette
>> and
>> many others have  made:-
>
>That may be Ray's definition, but the fact is that cooking is paleolithic,
>so as definitions go, it fails to fit the reality.  And the idea that the
>paleolithic diet doesn't use technology is utter rubbish.  Technology
>begins with stone tools for crushing, grinding, butchering, killing,
>sticks for digging, and so on.  The case can be made that what
>distinguishes humans, and pre-human hominids, from all other species on
>the planet, is the sheer technology-dependence of their food supply, a
>dependence that has steadily increased for 2.5 million years or so.  Tools
>are technology.  Tools distinguish us from other predators.  Without
>tools, we would either be extinct or we would have followed the
>evolutionary path of other predators: hyper-acute senses, great speed,
>fangs, claws, etc.  We took a different path, the technology path. 
>Eventually that included cooking, in the middle of the Paleolithic.  The
>exclusion of cooking as part of the definition of what counts as paleo is
>arbitrary and without any empirical or theoretical justification.
>
>There is no pre-technology paleodiet.  There was a pre-cooking paleodiet,
>as well as a paleodiet that used cooking.  One might prefer one to the
>other, but it's no good to claim that one is paleo and the other isn't. 
>They're both paleolithic, on any reasonable construal of what the term
>means.
>
>> "My definition of nature," he says, "is the absence of technology… I eat
>> only
>> those foods that would be available to me if I were naked of all
>> technology
>> save that of a convenient sharp stick or stone." The trouble  with this
>> term,
>> while very accurate in describing what is commonly accepted as a
>> palaeolithic
>> diet,  is that it logically forbids the use of cooking, as cooking is , of
>> course, a
>> highly technological process.  In other words, once you introduce fire,
>> you are
>> dealing with an unnatural diet which is not free of technology.
>
>No, the trouble with Audette's definition is that it is just wrong.
>Definitions need to conform to the realities denoted by the terms being
>defined.  The term "paleolithic" simply isn't restricted in the way
>Audette says it is.  One can, of course, coin some other term, and many do
>use the term "raw paleo" to make it clear what they mean.
>
>Todd Moody
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