Paleo

I'm doing keto/bulletproof...add me if you like!

You might want to join the Paleo/primal group here. The general forums will lead to whole lot of paleo-bashing and people telling you're stupid. Add me if you'd like.

Primal, mostly. Also new and looking for friends, feel free to add me.

QUOTE
Welcome to The Primitive Nutrition Series! Created by someone who was nearly seduced by the Paleo Diet idea before going vegan, these videos provide a wide-ranging response to the evolution-inspired rationale for meat eating which so many have uncritically accepted.

Do please enlighten me as to what out of all the reams of archaeological evidence for meat eating being critical to the evolution of the genus Homo does this person not accept?

Don't tell me to watch the videos, I don't have time for that. Just give me the cliff notes.

nobody can do the hard work for you... you will have to do the research yourself...

that's the most BS cop-out answer I've ever heard in my life

I've studied human evolution at degree level (and also beyond that level, for fun). I want to know what YOU think. You seemed to be claiming that the idea that humans evolved eating meat is a myth. That flies in the face of all the current theories, so I want to know what YOU believe, and gauge your current knowledge of human evolution and palaeoanthropology, and know exactly which of the evidences for meat eating in early humans and late australopithecines YOU think is incorrect, and why, and what evidence you have for your alternative theory.

I can't research YOUR beliefs without asking YOU to explain them. If you're going to make claims that fly in the face of accepted science, then you need to back them up. And no I'm not going to watch hundreds of videos which are almost certainly pure pseudoscience and vegan propaganda. All peer reviewed journal articles have an abstract giving a brief summary of the findings, so other researchers can get the gyst of the study without wading through the whole thing. I'd doubt the ability and the motives of anyone claiming to be a scientist who can't write an abstract for their research.


ETA: of course, if you can't do that then I'm just going to carry on believing that the current scientific theories, i.e. that meat eating was essential for the evolution of the genus Homo. If you want people to consider the validity of your alternative theories, you have to be able to explain them and provide evidence for them. That's what scientific research papers are for.

the ideas are cogently stated and fully referenced in the link provided... there is no need to rewrite them here... i would recommend you use that utilize your time and your degree level studies effectively by looking at the links rather than looking to intimidate people in MFP... There are more scientific research presented and analyzed to keep you well busy fact checking for quite some time.

lol intimidating.... sorry that you find me intimidating. I'll tell my avatar to put down the spear she's holding. You don't have to be afraid of her, she doesn't like human flesh that much anyway. She much prefers woolly rhino.

You haven't given me a good reason to read those articles, so I won't. I don't believe that current theories about meat eating in early humans are incorrect. However you seem to be on this forum to promote a particular way of eating and if it happens that what you're promoting is based on pseudoscience, then people have a right to challenge it.

ETA: scientific evidence for meat eating in early humans to follow.

You might want to join the Paleo/primal group here. The general forums will lead to whole lot of paleo-bashing and people telling you're stupid. Add me if you'd like.

^^THIS^^

The main boards are generally only welcoming to the S.A.D. and embrace the notion of "If it fits your macros".

Threads about alternatives to the S.A.D typically get derailed.

Some evidence for early humans (and late australopithecines) eating meat:

- the earliest stone tools were made for the purpose of butchering animal carcasses, in particular for smashing up bones to obtain brains and bone marrow, which were excellent sources of fat and protein. the evidence for this is the remains of these early humans being found with stone tools and smashed up bones. the way that the bones are smashed up show that it was done with the kinds of tools found.

- this behaviour predates the origin of the genus Homo, i.e. australopithecines that slightly predate the origin of humans, yet are also the most morphologically similar to humans have similar stone tools, they are the earliest stone tool makers. Not long after, the genus Homo emerges. This strongly suggests that being able to extract brains and marrow from animal carcasses gave these proto-humans the protein, fat and calories needed to maintain a larger brain... the earliest humans were very similar to these australopithecines but had larger brains.

- there was a reduction in the size of proto-human teeth and the masseter muscle around this time as well. being able to subsist off softer foods means that it's no longer necessary to have a huge massater muscle. in apes, the large massater constrains brain size. the mutation that made this smaller - individuals with this would only have survived if they can get enough soft food to eat - thus enabled the skull expansion seen in early Homo to happen.

^^^ both these factors show that without eating meat (in particular, brains and bone marrow, not just muscle flesh) was necessary in order to evolve bigger brains. Compare this with the evolution of Australopithecus boisei, an evolutionary side branch in the hominin family tree, where they had a more gorilla-like diet (coarse vegetation and insects) and instead of evolving bigger and bigger brains, they evolved bigger and bigger teeth. Once nicknamed "nutcracker man" on account of the sheer size of their teeth and jaws. Meat eating = bigger brains. Plant eating = bigger jaws.

- throughout the evolution of humans, tools used for hunting and butchering animals have become more and more complex. Cut marks on animal bones prove that they were butchered using stone tools. The stone tools themselves show evidence in how they're used, i.e. microwear on the tool itself and also molecular evidence of what it's been in contact with. Many of them were hunting weapons (spearheads and much later on arrowheads too) or tools used to butcher animals, or prepare hides (e.g. stone scrapers for tanning hides). As mentioned earlier, stone tool use slightly predates the genus Homo and the earliest stone tools were used to butcher carcasses. Later stone tools were much more complex and used for many different purposes, but hunting and butchery were major uses for many tools.

- the robusticity of the human skull and skeleton increased steadily through the lower and middle palaeolithic era - most likely in response to hunting bigger and bigger animals. Neanderthals had injury rates and patterns similar to modern day rodeo riders, which strongly suggests that they regularly engaged in fighting with large herbivores.

- the animal bones found alongside early humans shows not only that they ate meat, but what species they ate. There is some debate in the earliest humans whether they were predominantly hunters or scavengers, but later humans were systematic hunters that regularly ate meat. Species include very large animals too, including mammoth, bison, hippo, rhino, etc.

- evidence taken from the bones, i.e. molecular analysis of them, can show the kinds of foods eaten by early humans, i.e. whether they ate plants or animals. This evidence is really interesting, for example neanderthals didn't eat fish, they got 100% of their protein from animal sources... while molecular evidence from teeth showed they also ate plant foods, which they cooked, i.e. omnovirous diet... protein from animal sources but plant foods for carbohydrate, vitamins, minerals and fibre.

- Homo sapiens ate a lot more seafood... see the remains of very very early Homo sapiens people in South Africa... humans living on the seashore exploiting coastal resources, evidence that they cooked and ate seafood a lot. Also very early H. sapiens remains elsewhere in Africa showed they ate a lot of hippos.

So you see, the suggestion that humans didn't evolve to eat meat flies in the face of a huge amount of evidence to the contrary... the above is just a brief overview.

Even if you look at other primates and go further back in evolution, e.g. ape evolution, all extant species of great ape are omnivores. Gorillas eat insects; chimps and bonobos eat small mammals, including using tools to hunt them in one subspecies of chimp and co-operative hunting of small monkeys. There's a general rule in primate biology, as in the larger brained primates are omnivorous, and the herbivorous primates have smaller brains. There's only one species of carnivorous primate and that's not related to humans, it has a little evolutionary branch of its own. Humans are omnivores, just like all the other great apes (and it's only due to semantics that humans are not generally considered to be a species of great ape, because we're in that clade).

You might want to join the Paleo/primal group here. The general forums will lead to whole lot of paleo-bashing and people telling you're stupid. Add me if you'd like.

^^THIS^^

The main boards are generally only welcoming to the S.A.D. and embrace the notion of "If it fits your macros".

Threads about alternatives to the S.A.D typically get derailed.

it's not paleo people being bashed in this thread right now

Another hijacked Paleo thread.

I wish you guys would hijack threads in moderation, but you seem to be in all of them. lol

Hi I eat Primal - feel free to add me.

if you look a bit more carefully, you'll see that the guy I'm arguing with is claiming that paleo is wrong and that humans didn't evolve to eat meat. He's the one hijacking this thread promoting his way of eating. I haven't argued against a single paleo person on this thread.