From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Apr 12 2003 - 21:04:44 MDT
Barbara Lamar wrote:
> From the archaeological evidence I've seen,
> humans didn't become successful enough hunters to rely on
> meat for a large % of their calories until relatively recently.
Then you haven't seen the evidence.
There is evidence that hominids were eating large game meat as far back as
*2 million* years ago, though at the time we were scavengers rather than
hunters. Sites were discovered that suggest early hominids were crushing the
bones and eating the marrow of beasts killed by other predators.
I don't recall offhand the estimated date of the earliest evidence of
wide-spread hunting but I know it was hardly "recent" in evolutionary terms.
It is thought that Paleolithic humans in Europe actually hunted many species
into extinction, which may itself have helped to give rise to the
agricultural revolution out of sheer necessity.
If you'll forgive me for saying so, your argument that Paleolithic diets
were not largely animal-based (which I define as 30% to 50% of calories) is
outdated. It's the last bastion of vegetarians and their kin who still cling
to the old argument that we were living in trees and eating oranges and
bananas until about 50,000 years ago.
-gts
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