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It's not really surprising that evidence points to ancient humans eating more plants. It'd be ridiculously energy-intensive to have to hunt down every meal.

hinkley 3y ago
It's ridiculously energy-intensive to digest some foods.
salad-tycoon 3y ago
Tell that to lions? Tigers? Bears? Oh my? Maybe you’re not wrong but I don’t think you can make an evolutionary argument here.
- xnx 3y ago
  "Plant foods make up the majority of a bear’s diet – sometimes as much as 90 per cent." - https://www.bearsmart.com/about-bears/food-diet/ https://www.bearsmart.com/about-bears/food-diet/
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    Bears are sure but there are loads of obligate carnivores that don't have appreciable plant based calories in their diets.
  - salad-tycoon 3y ago
    Sorry, fair enough. It was sticky thing to say but entirely correct. My real point beyond wizard of oz is plenty of animals only eat meat.
- ribosometronome 3y ago
  >lions? Tigers? And it's super energy intensive! Those guys spend up to 20 hours a day sleeping.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  The existence of carnivores doesn't advance any argument whatsoever about the relative difficulty of one task vs the other nor about what diet would be desirable. In fact there is no evolutionary argument to be made because what we should eat is a complex question that can't be answered by asking what we did eat.
  - salad-tycoon 3y ago
    > In fact there is no evolutionary argument to be made. Agreed, in a short and pithy way I was trying to make this point. I’ve been taught to be weary of the “beautiful savage” argument too, so I don’t think pointing out to tribes that only eat meat or only eat vegetables is useful. As cool as the Hadza are their hunting and eating practices don’t really give me much additional guidance and I tune out when my influencers of choice start waxing poetical about their amazing life changing visit.
crazygringo 3y ago
If you've ever tried digging tubers out of the ground, or walking around all day trying to forage enough low-calorie berries or mushrooms, you'd know that harvesting wild plants is probably far more energy-intensive per-calorie on the whole. While one person spending a day hunting a medium-sized or large-sized animal can feed 100 people. (And similarly trapping, using nets to fish, etc.) Fortunately we can do both.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  The thing is, the tuber never fights back. The energy expended on a fruit/mushroom/tuber/plant hunt is predictable, manageable, and can be expended by a large group. Only fit, trained hunters can reliably bring down an animal capable of feeding 100 people, and even then some of them are going to be injured or killed at some point. There's a reason that a lot of hunting and trapping involves fairly small animals, rather than megafauna; when you're netting birds for example the worst thing that happens is you miss. Fishing is great, if you live near bodies of water with lots of fish in them. Coastal communities probably did eat a LOT of fish for much of human history, but only so many fish come up to the coast. Fishing gear is also a bitch to build and maintain by hand, in cultures that still do it making new nets and repairing old ones is a full time job for at least one member of each family. Animal protein also requires prompt preservation or eating, whereas a bunch of yams, cassava and so on can be reliably kept for a very long time.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
    We had meat preservation techniques for a long time, just not with the fridge
- rtkwe 3y ago
  That depends heavily on the abundance of edible in your area, which by necessity were usually the places people were, and the techniques available for you to hunt. In the pre paleolithic era hunts were often long and multi person affairs to trap and exhaust an animal. Even after the invention of stone tools you needed large parties to really even get close to ensuring you were just hunting all day for nothing.
WalterBright 3y ago
Watch the series "Alone". It's pretty clear that the contestants cannot survive by foraging for plants alone.
- jebarker 3y ago
  I think that says more about the foraging skills of modern domesticated humans (and the location choices for Alone) than it does about the nutritional viability of a foraged plant based diet.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Have you watched the show? If you have, what could they have eaten that they didn't know about?
    - jebarker 3y ago
      I've watched a few episodes. As someone else pointed out, they choose locations where there's not going to be much available food, e.g. early winter Alaska. So you can't draw any conclusions about the viability of getting nutrition from foraging in such inhospitable environments. I can't comment on what they could have eaten that they didn't know about because I'm not a skilled forager either. I'm certain though that someone who lived their whole life as a forager would fair better even if only because they could more efficiently harvest what little is available.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        It's clear they had some training on what was available. I doubt the show producers hid knowledge of more substantial flora - if they did, viewers would have made a stink about it. I've been told by a survival expert that gathering food is a full time job, and many of the contestants didn't seem to get that. They'd waste calories building elaborate shelters and carving toys. BTW, if I look around the woods in the PNW, I don't see much flora that could be eaten, even though it's rather lush. Although there are berries and mushrooms, those are far from a complete diet.
nonethewiser 3y ago
Hm IDK. Many cultures did and even still revolve atound hunting large game. Thre are tribes in Siberia that follow around Caribou and dont exactly have a lot of vegetation to forage. It might be more intensive to harvest but it has a lot more calories and precious fat.
dathinab 3y ago
worse if you can't cook meat, it's also much more energy consuming and troublesome to digest it in many ways it's also slow to digest, so fruit sugar sources can be a good complement, but are less healthy but then most "fruit sugar sources" also had much less sugar in them before humans messed with them and more of other nutrients and there are stuff like shrooms, roots various plants etc. but also however we look at it, meat was a fundamental component, I mean without supplements or being able to take advantage of a huge variety of plants from all around the world being vegetarians is very likely to lead to some form of malnutrition. But also we have misgrown a lot of plants to be much way less nutrious and have access to a wide variety and access to supplements so it doesn't matter anymore. Additionally even way back you probably could survive on a mostly vegetarian diet without malnutrition, just _mostly_ instead of _purely_ no meat. On the other hand in today's society people consume often way to much meat and often unhealthy meat, too while at the same time not consuming a lot of the plants, roots and mushrooms people likely did eat before civilization started. I guess like so often the answer is balance. But also too-little-nutrious food, both from plants and meat, seems to be becoming increasingly a problem.
tzs 3y ago
For an individual or small group perhaps, but if you have a situation where your group can eat the meat of most of a large animal before it goes bad it might be efficient. An animal can have a lot of calories. To give an idea of how much, when I was a kid my father once accepted as pay for a job a butchered cow. He put it in a freezer and it took our family of 3 around a year to finish it. Ancient people didn't have freezers, so it would not be worth it for a small group to hunt and kill a large animal unless it was very easy, because they would only get a few days food out of it before it spoiled. This is assuming they have other food sources, of course. A larger group, say a village with a hundred or so people, would be able to finish eating a large animal before it spoiled. For them it could easily be worth it to send out a hunting party every few days even if that party has to do a lot of work.

hinkley 3y ago

It's ridiculously energy-intensive to digest some foods.

salad-tycoon 3y ago

Tell that to lions? Tigers? Bears? Oh my? Maybe you’re not wrong but I don’t think you can make an evolutionary argument here.

xnx 3y ago
"Plant foods make up the majority of a bear’s diet – sometimes as much as 90 per cent." - https://www.bearsmart.com/about-bears/food-diet/ https://www.bearsmart.com/about-bears/food-diet/
- rtkwe 3y ago
  Bears are sure but there are loads of obligate carnivores that don't have appreciable plant based calories in their diets.
- salad-tycoon 3y ago
  Sorry, fair enough. It was sticky thing to say but entirely correct. My real point beyond wizard of oz is plenty of animals only eat meat.
ribosometronome 3y ago
>lions? Tigers? And it's super energy intensive! Those guys spend up to 20 hours a day sleeping.
michaelmrose 3y ago
The existence of carnivores doesn't advance any argument whatsoever about the relative difficulty of one task vs the other nor about what diet would be desirable. In fact there is no evolutionary argument to be made because what we should eat is a complex question that can't be answered by asking what we did eat.
- salad-tycoon 3y ago
  > In fact there is no evolutionary argument to be made. Agreed, in a short and pithy way I was trying to make this point. I’ve been taught to be weary of the “beautiful savage” argument too, so I don’t think pointing out to tribes that only eat meat or only eat vegetables is useful. As cool as the Hadza are their hunting and eating practices don’t really give me much additional guidance and I tune out when my influencers of choice start waxing poetical about their amazing life changing visit.

crazygringo 3y ago

If you've ever tried digging tubers out of the ground, or walking around all day trying to forage enough low-calorie berries or mushrooms, you'd know that harvesting wild plants is probably far more energy-intensive per-calorie on the whole. While one person spending a day hunting a medium-sized or large-sized animal can feed 100 people. (And similarly trapping, using nets to fish, etc.) Fortunately we can do both.

EA-3167 3y ago
The thing is, the tuber never fights back. The energy expended on a fruit/mushroom/tuber/plant hunt is predictable, manageable, and can be expended by a large group. Only fit, trained hunters can reliably bring down an animal capable of feeding 100 people, and even then some of them are going to be injured or killed at some point. There's a reason that a lot of hunting and trapping involves fairly small animals, rather than megafauna; when you're netting birds for example the worst thing that happens is you miss. Fishing is great, if you live near bodies of water with lots of fish in them. Coastal communities probably did eat a LOT of fish for much of human history, but only so many fish come up to the coast. Fishing gear is also a bitch to build and maintain by hand, in cultures that still do it making new nets and repairing old ones is a full time job for at least one member of each family. Animal protein also requires prompt preservation or eating, whereas a bunch of yams, cassava and so on can be reliably kept for a very long time.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
  We had meat preservation techniques for a long time, just not with the fridge
rtkwe 3y ago
That depends heavily on the abundance of edible in your area, which by necessity were usually the places people were, and the techniques available for you to hunt. In the pre paleolithic era hunts were often long and multi person affairs to trap and exhaust an animal. Even after the invention of stone tools you needed large parties to really even get close to ensuring you were just hunting all day for nothing.

WalterBright 3y ago

Watch the series "Alone". It's pretty clear that the contestants cannot survive by foraging for plants alone.

jebarker 3y ago
I think that says more about the foraging skills of modern domesticated humans (and the location choices for Alone) than it does about the nutritional viability of a foraged plant based diet.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Have you watched the show? If you have, what could they have eaten that they didn't know about?
  - jebarker 3y ago
    I've watched a few episodes. As someone else pointed out, they choose locations where there's not going to be much available food, e.g. early winter Alaska. So you can't draw any conclusions about the viability of getting nutrition from foraging in such inhospitable environments. I can't comment on what they could have eaten that they didn't know about because I'm not a skilled forager either. I'm certain though that someone who lived their whole life as a forager would fair better even if only because they could more efficiently harvest what little is available.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      It's clear they had some training on what was available. I doubt the show producers hid knowledge of more substantial flora - if they did, viewers would have made a stink about it. I've been told by a survival expert that gathering food is a full time job, and many of the contestants didn't seem to get that. They'd waste calories building elaborate shelters and carving toys. BTW, if I look around the woods in the PNW, I don't see much flora that could be eaten, even though it's rather lush. Although there are berries and mushrooms, those are far from a complete diet.

nonethewiser 3y ago

Hm IDK. Many cultures did and even still revolve atound hunting large game. Thre are tribes in Siberia that follow around Caribou and dont exactly have a lot of vegetation to forage. It might be more intensive to harvest but it has a lot more calories and precious fat.

dathinab 3y ago

worse if you can't cook meat, it's also much more energy consuming and troublesome to digest it in many ways it's also slow to digest, so fruit sugar sources can be a good complement, but are less healthy but then most "fruit sugar sources" also had much less sugar in them before humans messed with them and more of other nutrients and there are stuff like shrooms, roots various plants etc. but also however we look at it, meat was a fundamental component, I mean without supplements or being able to take advantage of a huge variety of plants from all around the world being vegetarians is very likely to lead to some form of malnutrition. But also we have misgrown a lot of plants to be much way less nutrious and have access to a wide variety and access to supplements so it doesn't matter anymore. Additionally even way back you probably could survive on a mostly vegetarian diet without malnutrition, just _mostly_ instead of _purely_ no meat. On the other hand in today's society people consume often way to much meat and often unhealthy meat, too while at the same time not consuming a lot of the plants, roots and mushrooms people likely did eat before civilization started. I guess like so often the answer is balance. But also too-little-nutrious food, both from plants and meat, seems to be becoming increasingly a problem.

tzs 3y ago

For an individual or small group perhaps, but if you have a situation where your group can eat the meat of most of a large animal before it goes bad it might be efficient. An animal can have a lot of calories. To give an idea of how much, when I was a kid my father once accepted as pay for a job a butchered cow. He put it in a freezer and it took our family of 3 around a year to finish it. Ancient people didn't have freezers, so it would not be worth it for a small group to hunt and kill a large animal unless it was very easy, because they would only get a few days food out of it before it spoiled. This is assuming they have other food sources, of course. A larger group, say a village with a hundred or so people, would be able to finish eating a large animal before it spoiled. For them it could easily be worth it to send out a hunting party every few days even if that party has to do a lot of work.