What Did Ancient Humans Actually Eat?
For 3 million years, humans ate things that would horrify you today. Raw bone marrow scraped from bones that hyenas couldn't crack.
Brains pulled from cracked skulls.
Insects by the handful. Rotting meat buried for weeks.
And sometimes, each other.
This is the real story of what ancient humans actually ate, from the African savanna three million years ago to the cave in England where archaeologists found human skulls shaped into cups.
Every craving you have today for fat, for sugar, for salt, for the richest thing you can find, was built by what kept your ancestors alive.
Why cheese is controlled rot.
Why your brain is wired for sugar.
Why one mammoth carcass could change the course of human history.
And why a fifty-thousand-year-old human dropped into your kitchen would think they had walked into a god's pantry.
This isn't the paleo diet you think you know.
This is what the archaeological record actually shows. Bone marrow, scavenging, Oldowan tools, Wonderwerk Cave, the Hadza of Tanzania, Gough's Cave cannibalism, and the deep-time survival program still running inside you right now.
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🛑 WATCH - What Did Ancient Humans Do at Night?
• What Did Ancient Humans Do at Night?
🛑 WATCH - What Did Ancient Humans Do All Day?
• What Did Ancient Humans Do All Day?
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SOURCES
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GOUGH'S CAVE (Somerset, UK): skull cups, cannibalism, zig-zag engraving
▸ Bello, Parfitt & Stringer (2011). "Earliest directly-dated human skull-cups." PLOS ONE, 6(2): e17026.
▸ Bello, Saladié, Cáceres, Rodríguez-Hidalgo & Parfitt (2015). "Upper Palaeolithic ritualistic cannibalism at Gough's Cave (Somerset, UK): The human remains from head to toe." Journal of Human Evolution, 82: 170-189.
▸ Bello et al. (2017). "An Upper Palaeolithic engraved human bone associated with ritualistic cannibalism." PLOS ONE, 12(8): e0182127. The zig-zag carved forearm bone.
▸ Natural History Museum London. "The cannibals of Gough's Cave." Featuring Dr. Silvia Bello.
CALORIC VALUE OF THE HUMAN BODY
▸ Cole, J. (2017). "Assessing the calorific significance of episodes of human cannibalism in the Palaeolithic." Scientific Reports, 7: 44707. University of Brighton. The ~125,000-calorie figure. Compares human caloric yield to mammoth, bison, deer.
FIRE AT WONDERWERK CAVE (South Africa): ~1 million years ago
▸ Berna, Goldberg, Horwitz, Brink, Holt, Bamford & Chazan (2012). "Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave." PNAS, 109(20): E1215-E1220.
COOKING, GUT REDUCTION, AND BRAIN EVOLUTION
▸ Aiello & Wheeler (1995). "The Expensive-Tissue Hypothesis: The Brain and the Digestive System in Human and Primate Evolution." Current Anthropology, 36(2): 199-221.
▸ Wrangham, R. (2009). "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human." Basic Books.
HADZA HUNTER-GATHERERS AND WILD HONEY
▸ Marlowe, Berbesque, Wood, Crittenden, Porter & Mabulla (2014). "Honey, Hadza, hunter-gatherers, and human evolution." Journal of Human Evolution, 71: 119-128. The ~15% honey calorie figure.
▸ Pontzer & Wood (2021). "Effects of Evolution, Ecology, and Economy on Human Diet." Annual Review of Nutrition, 41: 363-385. Duke University.
OLDOWAN TOOLS AND EARLY SCAVENGING
▸ Semaw et al. (2003). "2.6-Million-year-old stone tools and associated bones from Gona, Afar, Ethiopia." Journal of Human Evolution.
▸ Blumenschine, R. J. (1986). "Early Hominid Scavenging Opportunities." BAR International Series, 283.
▸ Pobiner, B. L. (2020). "The zooarchaeology and paleoecology of early hominin scavenging." Evolutionary Anthropology, 29(2): 68-82. Smithsonian.
THE "ROTTEN MEAT" HYPOTHESIS
▸ Speth, J. D. (2017). "Putrid Meat and Fish in the Eurasian Middle and Upper Paleolithic." PaleoAnthropology, 2017: 44-72. University of Michigan.
FERMENTATION AND B-VITAMIN PRODUCTION
▸ LeBlanc et al. (2013). "Bacteria as vitamin suppliers to their host: a gut microbiota perspective." Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 24(2): 160-168.
▸ Marco et al. (2017). "Health benefits of fermented foods: microbiota and beyond." Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 44: 94-102.
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