On Wed, 14 May 2008 11:36 Todd Moody wrote:

>The question is, rather, Did paleolithic people normally 
>eat tubers, not as desperation famine food,
>but as part of their diverse foraged food supply?  I see 
>no reason to think that the answer to this question was no.

I agree. I find it helpful to think of the original
diet of Homo sapiens and our immediate ancestors
as "opportunistic". There were many factors to be 
considered when weighing up the "opportunities"
and coming to a dietary choice, and we can 
assume that by 40,000 or so years ago they had
worked out what was edible/not edible, their
preferred food preparation methods etc. And if
times were tough they'd do what we hear about
the North Koreans and Ethiopians doing today: resorting
to emergency rations (grass, bark etc. - even tubers).
And remember, it's these evolutionary bottlenecks
that shaped us, not the good times.

Keith