3 ms·
"Humans and proto-humans have been eating large herbivores as the majority of our diet since ~2M years ago" I'm pretty skeptical that this specific type of mea
by tdb7893 2y ago
"Humans and proto-humans have been eating large herbivores as the majority of our diet since ~2M years ago"
I'm pretty skeptical that this specific type of meat was a majority of the diet by itself and I can't find anything to actually back that up. I struggle to find anything to back up most of what you said but the start was what jumped out at me the most.
- sigmoid10 2y agoThis metastudy seems to confirm everything the other commenter said: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.24247 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.24247 It seems early hominids gradually went from omnivores to almost exclusive carnivores with a strong preference for megafauna - up until their prey's decline and their subsequent return to other primary nutrient sources. While exact diets are hard to reconstruct and subject of debate, there seems to be little doubt that humans hunted said megafauna to extinction, which also had a significant effect on human evolution in many ways. The development of our larger brain needed lots of energy for example and hunting provided 10x more energy per hour of effort than gathering plant based nutrients. Larger brains generally seem to trend with consumption of more energy dense foods. Our ability to store much more fat and fast for longer times than other primates also seems to have developed from the need to hunt primarily large animals dispersed over wide areas.
- AndrewKemendo 2y agoThank you. I have some other references in my papers but this was a good reference.