Currently there is a prominent current that is committed to eating healthy . It is divided into many ramifications and ideas, but it seems that today we take more care of ourselves than a few years ago or, at least, we try to alleviate the poorer quality of our food by paying more attention to what we eat. Many options of this current are taken as lifestyles, which combine healthy diets and ideologies. Movements such as real food , vegetarianism or veganism are followed by more and more people.
Eat like in prehistory
Among the hundreds of diets and ways of eating, there is one that has caught our attention: the Paleolithic diet . It consists of following the diet of humans before the appearance of agriculture, about 10,000 years ago. Following this diet requires stopping eating legumes, cereals and dairy products, to feed only on the products that the hunters and gatherers of the Paleolithic could obtain : lean meats, fish, vegetables, fruit, seeds and nuts. The goal is to avoid diseases such as obesity or diabetes, problems that come from our way of eating today and sedentary life.
We are not going to go into debates about healthy lifestyles here, but the Paleolithic diet has aroused our curiosity (and appetite). Did we really eat what the diet recommends in the Paleolithic? Did we eat better 800,000 years ago?
Prehistoric food is largely based (like so many things in the past) on assumptions . We talked about what we were able to eat according to the environment that paleoanthropologists reconstruct and the product options that hunters and gatherers had access to. Therefore, it is obvious that there is a differential component: geography. The flora and fauna of Western Europe almost a million years ago was not the same as that of central Africa.
Tests to know what was eaten so long ago
But in the Iberian Peninsula we have evidence that represents the most direct evidence to know the menu of the first Europeans. At the Atapuerca site we have remains of animals that were the dish of the day for those inhabitants of the past. Rummaging through prehistoric garbage also gives us a wealth of information about food waste. And we even found jaws with tartar that, together with the analysis of microscopic striae on the teeth, help to elaborate the menu of prehistoric dishes.
The menu
Based on this, the humans who lived around Atapuerca had a diet based on deer, horse and bison meat . Rhinos, turtles and birds were sporadic prey, but in the end, survival leads you to eat anything when you have no choice. Vegetables, acorns, nuts, roots, and mushrooms are more difficult to track, but are considered foods that would complement meat intake. To a lesser extent, butchery remains have been found on the bones of beavers, monkeys and large bears.
In addition, in Atapuerca there are human remains with the same marks from cuts and bites that animal bones have. They are, without a doubt, evidence of cannibalism . The researchers defend that they are not isolated acts, but that for hundreds of years cannibalism was part of everyday life. In Atapuerca, the oldest case of cannibalism in humanity, 900,000 years old, has been detected. Although today we are terrified and disgusted, it seems that humans were one more product in the prehistoric menu. Let’s hope it doesn’t creep into the current paleo diet.
Was it expensive for us to change our diet?
After the Paleolithic came the so-called agricultural revolution . Between 9,500 and 3,500 BC we domesticated a handful of species that today account for 90 percent of the calories that feed all of humanity: wheat, rice, corn, potatoes, and barley. This revolution is, in the words of Yuval Noah Harari, “the biggest fraud in history” .
For many years it has been argued that the invention of agriculture and livestock was a leap forward for humanity, the greatest progress of our species. But now there are voices that question that statement. Yes, farming increased the amount of food available, but it didn’t mean a better diet or more free time. On the contrary: we had to spend much more time and work harder to grow wheat and it only translated into a demographic explosion and social elites more differentiated from the rest.
Here is the key element of agriculture: the population explosion . We have reproduced more than ever since the agricultural revolution and the success of a species is measured by its ability to reproduce. One of our best weapons to dominate the world today above the rest of the species.
References:
Harari, YN Sapiens. 2018. From animals to gods. Brief history of mankind . Debate
Pérez-Pérez, A. 2017. The diet of the first Europeans from Atapuerca. Scientific reports 7, 43319 . DOI: 10.1038/srep43319.
