All those knuckle-headed doofuses who said our Paleolithic ancestors predominantly (or even exclusively) ate meat-based diets can blow their steaks and sausages out of their asses. And boy would their impacted colons love to do that if they could. It turns out, according to actual scientific research, plant-based foods were likely a vital part of the diets of early humans.
According to research published in the scientific journal PNAS, an international team of researchers digging through the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov excavation site on the banks of the Jordan River in Israel has found hundreds of starch granules and bits of plant matter stuck to tools. Those tools are themselves stuck in sediment. Some of the tools date back somewhere in the neighborhood of 780,000 years.
These granules are believed to be derived from a variety of plants like oak acorns, wheat, barley, lagoons, and even water plants like water lilies and chestnuts. All of it suggests that early humans didn’t shun plants in favor of an all-meat diet, but rather quite the opposite. They were good at gathering and processing plant matter and had a variety of ways of preparing it for consumption.
Paleolithic Ancestors Actually Ate a Ton of Plants
Even the type of tools found provides some insight into the sophisticated techniques early Paleolithic humans used in their plan preparation. Hammer stones and bills suggest that our ancestors had developed methods of food preparation that extracted nutrients and calories in ways that are not too dissimilar from the ways we do today.
If you’ve ever used a mortar and pestle to make a pesto or a Mexican salsa, you were likely treating vegetables the same way our Paleolithic ancestors did. However, we still have no scientific evidence of our Paleolithic ancestors having invented the dippable tortilla chip that looks like a little cup.
Archaeologist Hadar Ahituv said, “We now understand that early hominids gathered a wide variety of plants year-round, which they processed using tools made from basalt.” By the way, many of the best modern Mexican mortar and pestles, called Molcajetes, are still made of basalt.
And it’s not just this team in Israel. Previous studies that dug up 15,000-year-old bones in Morocco also found evidence of plant consumption and hunter-gatherer diets. So if you’re sticking to your Paleo diet because it’s working for you, great. Keep at it. Just watch her cholesterol, maybe a little bit more fiber to keep your bowels moving and your cholesterol low.
But if you’re doing it because of some dimwitted diet-obsessed influencer who put very little thought and care into the garbage they were spouting, maybe it’s time to step back and reassess and take into account what we know about what the actual Paleo diet was like.
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