Cave Man Survival & Diet Theories

[Guest guest]

Was: Organic Eggs - Natures Perfect Food

Bob Mckee wrote:

<Overconsumption is what kills us, and possibly the mixing a high carb diet,

with a high protein/fat diet. I try to keep my sugar/flour (empty carb)

consumption very low, and try to have carb meals separately from meat and

vegetable meals.

My logic here is from pondering human evolution; how we probably ate meat in

the winter, and seasonal vegetables and fruit (for millions of years that

affects evolution... not just a few thousand years that doesn't). Of

course, leaving offspring may or may not depend on longevity, but it follows

that a natural diet might just be the ticket to a longer life as well.

*** I am not at all convinced by the theories and beliefs about how primitive

humans emerged and survived, because the evidence that is presented offers

only one of several different possible ways of survival.

Nobody knows what a " natural diet " is. Some folk write with great conviction

about " cave man " diets, " evolutionary " diets and so on, but the fact is that

humans are very opportunistic eaters and will survive on whatever is locally

available. Nobody knows if mankind hunted or foraged first.

Hunting can be a notoriously unreliable and costly way to survive, so that

early humans may equally well have been like gorillas, who rely on gathering

their food, unlike the predators which rely on hunting. If large herbivores

who require large amounts of foraged foods to survive, like the elephants,

giraffes, eland, rhino, large vegetarian apes and so on, managed to emerge in

their millions on foraged food, then there is no reason that mankind could

not also done the same.

After all, skeletal remains indicate that the earliest humans emerged from

savannah country in Africa, where there has always been an abundance of

foraging food, as well as game. Remember, too, that the digestic system and

tooth structure of humans is suited to either meat or vegetarian diets, so

that structurally and physiologically, humans were very adapted to opportunis

tic and highly varied living, unlike many other creatures. Thus, " cave man "

and " natural " diets are a figment of the imagination and have a long way to

go before they can be scientifically accepted.

Certainly, scientists may have discovered the remains of scratched or scored

bones of animals alongside the remains of humans in or near caves, but that

does not prove that the primary or fundamental diet of humans was meat or

that most humans lived in caves. The meat may have been a very occasional

delicacy or the leftovers from some animal hunt, because humans, like jackals

and vultures, equally well could have been scavengers rather than supposedly

more noble hunters. Fruit, unlike berries, nuts, roots, vegetables and so

forth, may also have been a rarity because the savannahs of Africa are not

extensively covered with fruit trees, even in summer. The situation with

Java man and Peking man may have been somewhat different, but, in general, it

is a lot easier and safer to survive by foraging and scavenging than hunting,

which requires a great deal of time and the expenditure of valuable food

energy, even when hunters are in large hunting packs.

Regarding survival in caves, if you visit the African areas in which the

" cave man " caves exist, you will notice that they are not in sufficient

abundance to house many thousands of emerging and rapidly breeding humans -

nor have any caves been found that yield hundreds or thousands of human

skeletons. Sure, some or many bony remains may have returned to dust, but

many more should also have survived. The fact is that humans, especially in

those more unphilosophical, less altruistic bygone days were far less likely

to have lived in underground " cities " in close cooperative harmony, especially

if they were irascible, perpetually hungry hunters.

Large group living situations, such as villages and cities, only became a

much later characteristic of human survival and socialisation, so that the

cave dweller theory would have necessitated the existence of many separate

caves, which simply have not been found in the areas being studied today.

Thus, we have to consider the possibility than humans may well have

constructed rudimentary tree homes (like the great apes) or even lived in the

open, on hills, in large dug-outs, on islands in rivers or in primitive

shelters constructed from wood and stones. Some more fortunate early humans

may have lived in 'luxury' cave homes, as do some dwellers in Bishopscourt,

Manhattan and Beverley Hills today, but it would be incorrect to assume that

the vast majority of humans lived like that.

It is more scientifically acceptable to propound hypotheses that humans

always have been opportunistic survivors who used whatever was locally

available to exist and even flourish, which would mean gathering, foraging,

scavenging, maybe even cannibalism and living in trees, in dugouts, crude

huts or caves. So far, we have not yet proved that emerging mankind was

predominantly cave dwelling and meat eating. Many other alternatives were

open to humans on those early temperate savannahs and they surely used their

advancing brains to choose the optimal methods of survival. It is no less

scientific to refer to early humans as " tree men " and foragers than it is to

refer to them as " cave men " and hunters. Will we ever know the truth? Who

knows? Every scientist will have a specific personal, institutional,

religious and educational bias, so the riddle may never

be adequately solved.

Even if it is one day proved that humans once upon a millenia were lion or

mammoth eaters, such a finding will not prove that our bodies are best suited

to that sort of diet. It will just mean that some humans adapted to and

relied on that sort of diet for a given space of time. Other equally

creative humans may well have been very successful foragers whose digestive

systems adapted very well, thank you very much, to less meaty morsels. The

digestive systems of humans can cope equally well with vastly different diets

and it has never been proved that any one diet is superior to or more

fundamental than another. Don't let any persuasive theorisers mislead you!

Dr Mel C Siff

Denver, USA

Supertraining/