species-specific diet

Most people on this site - meat eaters or not are not the main problem - they are doing something about it and care.

As far as living everywhere - Inuit inhabited areas (very cold with high fat/blubber diets) live 15 years less than the average Canadian (1991-2001 study). In this time, Canada's life expectancy has rose by 3 years, and the inuit's has not. In the three five-year periods studied, from 1989 through 2003, the infant mortality rate was approximately four times higher in the Inuit-inhabited areas, compared with all of Canada.
Only 25% of their population (not counting infant mortality) will live to see their 60th birthday & their cancer risks are through the roof compared to the rest of Canada (both meat and veggie eaters).

Just because you CAN live off certain foods doesn't mean it's the healthiest choice was my point.

Here's a species specific breakdown of the diets of humans over the last 3 million years. (the earliest humans appeared around 3mya) Human is not a species, btw, it's a genus. Homo sapiens is listed below (both Homo sapiens idaltu and Homo sapiens sapiens)



Homo habilis - scavenged lion kill, smashing up the bones to extract the bone marrow, after the lions had finished with it. Also ate whatever plant foods it could find.

Homo erectus/ergaster - seems to have eaten scavenged meat more than hunted meat, probably did not know how to use fire. was believed to hunt by running animals into the ground (a similar technique to the !kung people of the Kalahari, but without the sophisticated weapons they have, just sticks and stones) Also ate whatever plant foods it could find.

Homo heidelbergensis - a recent discovery of a stone tipped spear made by this species suggests that they hunted in a similar way to the neanderthals. they probably had fire. Probably their diet was somewhere between H. erectus/ergaster and H. neanderthalensis, seeing as they're intermediate between the two. i.e. scavenging less and hunting more.

Homo neanderthalensis - co-operatively hunted very large animals with stone tipped spears, they wore clothes made from the skins of the animals they ate. They used fire and ate cooked meat and cooked plant foods. they are not directly ancestral to us, however middle palaeolithic Homo sapiens had a very similar culture and very similar stone tools. They probably also ate a range of raw plant foods as well as cooked plant foods.

Homo sapiens idaltu - they hunted and ate hippos, likely using similar techinques and weapons to neanderthals. they likely had a similar culture to neanderthals i.e. controlled use of fire, cooking meat and probably plant foods too, possibly making clothes (although as they lived in a much hotter climate than the neanderthals they may not have done, but could still have used animal skins for other puroses, e.g. blankets, baby carriers etc)

upper palaeolithic Homo sapiens sapiens - developed much more sophisticated weapons for hunting animals, and also developed the ability to fish (i.e. making fish hooks, bows and arrows, atlatl (spearthrowers), and similar). they ate meat and fish. (neanderthals seem to have only eaten meat and not fish and only had short range hunting weapons like thrusting spears, neanderthals went extinct about 10,000 years after upper palaeolithic H. sapiens sapiens arrived in Europe) Also would have cooked some plant foods, eaten others raw, etc. Diet likely to have been similar to modern hunter-gatherer tribes, e.g. !kung San.

neolithic homo sapiens sapiens - developed the ability to farm plants and animals. Populations where dairy herding/farming was common have evolved the ability to digest lactose after early childhood, and human populations learned to produce high protein plant food in sufficient quantities for humans to have less need of meat. Basically, neolithic populations adapted to the food that they could produce in the areas where they lived, this is only small changes in the digestive system, e.g. lactase enzyme persisting after childhood. neurologically speaking we're still the same as upper palaeolithic homo sapiens sapiens. In early neolithic populations, over-reliance on large quantities of single plant species caused health problems and nutritional deficiencies. These problems became less over time as agricultural techniques developed in complexity and resulted in a wider range of different foods. Only minimal changes in evolution have happened during this time, we are by and large better adapted for an upper palaeolithic diet/lifestyle, although some changes have happened in some populations, e.g. the ability to digest lactose after childhood in populations that traditionally farm/herd dairy.

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If you want to eat your species specific diet, then go palaeo (if you're from a population that has herded or farmed dairy for millennia, then dairy's fine too. Palaeolithic people probably ate grains in small quantities when they were in season, so grains in small quantities is natural in the human diet, despite what some palaeo advocates claim).

If you don't want to go palaeo then don't, I don't personally care either way, and I don't follow the palaeo diet myself (or at least not what gets posted on the internet calling itself palaeo, plus I follow the 90% rule so eat 90% clean 10% whatever) but if you want the most natural, species specific diet, then read the above re Homo sapiens sapiens, which is what I presume you are seeing as you have a vertical forehead and a dome shaped cranium.