Can anyone describe the diet of humans in paleolithic times?

Question

Can anyone describe the diet of humans in paleolithic times?

Answer 1

If you think simply about this then you realize that they had to stay close to water, for drinking and the animals they hunted would be gathered around water. It would natural for them to be big into fishing.  Basket weaving and net making are based on the same concept and would have been early inventions. (I tried a little experiment with my 2 year old son and gave him a basket.  It was his favorite toy and his father was amazed that I knew he would like it.)  So, they could catch large amounts of fish with nets.  Also, our teeth are smaller and soft foods are favored so soups and stews would have been important.  There is even a thought that people with teeth chewed the food for people without teeth. Nice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic...

Answer 2

What ever you can kill grow or get your hands on

its a hard knocks life

Answer 3

There is increasing evidence to indicate that the type of diet recommended in the USDA's food pyramid is discordant with the type of diet humans evolved with over eons of evolutionary experience.



http://www.mercola.com/article/carbohydr...

Answer 4

Actually, it would be a broad generalization to categorize the diet of all paleolithic peoples as being the same.

Regional differences would make a considerable difference between different groups of paleolithic people - even if the vast majority of them were hunter-gatherers.

Some groups may have had seasonably abundant fruits, wild nuts, rich shellfish, fish, and crustaceans from nearby tidal pools, and abundant game of all sizes (springhares, gazelle, kudu, etc) nearby.  This rich, varied diet would provide excellent dietary quality to the people there, and sustain a high standard of living with minimal effort.  Many of the areas where this kind of abundance was available supported hunter gatherer bands even into the modern age - some still do.

Other areas might have presented very limited options - perhaps some rose hips and saskatoon berries in summer, but otherwise only relatively dangerous big game such as mammoth, bison and horse in sufficient abundance to feed the tribe.  These groups would have had a much harder time feeding their band, especially in winter, and would not have had such a varied diet.  In particular, grains and fruits would have been hard to come by.  The abundance of meat, protein and fat when they made kills may have offset those problems to some extent - but the regions they lived in may have been largely abandoned for large periods of time as the people migrated or followed the herds they depended on for survival.

Other areas may have seen the people taking advantage of seasonal resources - such as crops of land snails in North Africa - to the virtual exclusion of every thing else for weeks or even months, depending on the season.  Such a diet may not have been healthy, but with limited options they made the best they could until the seasons brought back more variety.

The so-called 'paleo diet' may have been an ideal, but it's highly unlikely than many bands ever actually were able to eat like that, and even then probably not year round.

Answer 5

anything they could hunt and gather = seeds, fruit, insects, small animals, grains, shellfish and fish

Answer 6

We were hunter gatherers in those days.

We would eat anything we could get off the trees and shrubs and also we would catch animals to eat.

SO

Not much different to what we eat today really except we buy it at the store nowadays.

Answer 7

with out McDonalds i guess I guess I would've had a rough time

Answer 8

Whatever they could get and mostly not enough of it.

-- Well, I thought it was mildly funny.  

Anyway:  The men would have hunted animals like deer and buffalo -- maybe even mammoth elephants -- which would have provided most of the high-quality protein, as well as skins for clothing and bone for tools.  The women gathered fruit, berries and nuts in season; dug up roots; and collected leaves and bark for medicine.  Even the children would have helped, by catching or trapping small animals, killing birds with slingshots, stealing eggs from nests and using nets to catch fish.

They would have had to work constantly just to keep body and soul together.  It had to be a hard life.  We owe them an uncountable debt.

Answer 9

I have heard a number of arguments that modern humans evolved as a coastal or riparian, semi-amphibious species. This seems to be supported by our modern population habits, though that could be due to other factors, such as sea trade.

For example, the fact that babies instinctively hold their breath when under water. The fact that humans have a layer of subcutaneous fat that no other primates have (this could also be a cold weather adaptation....) Long legs and unique bipedal walking may have allowed us to wade into water more effectively. Lack of body hair may be evidence of this, but there are many explanations for that, sexual selection, perhaps.  

On the other hand, coastal areas erode rapidly, so there is little dated archaeological evidence either way. The best preserved, oldest archaeological remains are, of course, the ones in extremely dry areas.

In any case, as others have pointed out, diets vary widely depending on local available foods. The only generalities, are that humans specialize in soft, nutrient rich, high-value foods. Starchy roots, soft young herbs and forbs, new shoots, inner bark, seeds, legumes, and nuts, fresh fruits, as well as any seafood, meat, or insects we can get our hands on. Such a diet obviously requires a high amount of intelligence and learning capacity in order to seek out and extract such foods, but conversely, a nutrient rich diet allows the energy expenditure of having a big brain, in the first place.....

Control of fire by hominoids probably paralleled our preference for easily digestible foods. Another unique human adaptation: digesting our foods *before* we eat them......

In most described gatherer cultures, men tended to do almost all of the hunting and fishing, while women tended to be more interested in less nutritious but more reliable plant foods;(men weren't above harvesting plants when they came across them.) There would have been a system of share and share alike of most foods, sharing food was and always has been a useful way of influencing others, and developing social bonding.

~WOMBAT

Answer 10

I tend to leave humans out of my diet... except babies.  I doubt they did.

Answer 11

The diets of the sapien varied considerably, but f***s analyzation of paleolithic Europeans indicates a diet of 10 to 20% animal & some 80% plant material.  The neandertal f***s, living at that time, tested at 80 to 90% animal material... thus making them almost a pure carnivoir.  

Many think the Nendertal's dependency on meat led to their extinction, where the sapien could subsist for long periods on either plant or animals during times of scarce game animals.

Answer 12

Lots and lots of meat...whatever they could catch / kill.  Some fruits and veggies, but not like today.  The fruits and veggies they would have eaten would have had been indigenous to the region and time that they were occupying.