Claims that we must subscribe to a low-carb, high-protein ‘paleo food plan‘ are sometimes primarily based on assertions our ancestors prevented difficult plant processing in favor of less complicated meals consisting of meats, nuts, fruit, and uncooked greens.
Proof is mounting that this dietary recommendation is predicated on a false impression. A brand new examine has discovered Pleistocene hominins in what’s as we speak Israel had the know-how to derive a good portion of their energy from a surprisingly extensive number of vegetation.
Work carried out by a world crew of researchers on the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov website on the banks of the Jordan River has revealed lots of of various starch granules and different plant matter caught to instruments encased in sediment relationship again some 780,000 years.
Not solely are these the oldest starch granules ever dug up by archaeologists, they’re additionally indicators of a diversified food plan that goes approach past meat: the granules had been linked to oak acorns, wheat and barley grains, legumes, and edible water vegetation equivalent to yellow water lilies and water chestnuts.
The instruments on which these tiny stays had been discovered, particularly hammerstones and anvils, recommend the vegetation had been particularly chosen and processed, implying early hominids had developed complicated strategies to extract vitamins and energy from various sources of vegetation.
“This discovery underscores the importance of plant foods in the evolution of our ancestors,” says archaeologist Hadar Ahituv, from Bar-Ilan College in Israel. “We now understand that early hominids gathered a wide variety of plants year-round, which they processed using tools made from basalt.”
“This discovery opens a new chapter in the study of early human diets and their profound connection to plant-based foods.”
Named after the Paleolithic period (round  3.3 million to  11,700 years in the past), ‘paleo’ diets are likely to advocate prioritizing proteins from animal sources primarily based on the belief that fashionable human physiology developed from ancestors who had been on comparable diets. This meat consuming has been recognized as one of many driving forces behind human evolution.
It has been assumed that almost all plant supplies have been too robust, poisonous, or impalatable to trouble with. These new discoveries recommend even lots of of 1000’s of years in the past cultures had superior methods of getting ready vegetation as an vitality supply, supporting some earlier research that vegetation contribute vastly to the continuing development of the human mind.
“These results further indicate the advanced cognitive abilities of our early ancestors, including their ability to collect plants from varying distances and from a wide range of habitats and to mechanically process them using percussive tools,” write the researchers of their printed paper.
This is not the primary examine to attract these sorts of conclusions. An evaluation of 15,000-year-old bones and tooth present in Morocco, for instance, has beforehand pointed in the direction of “a substantial plant-based component” within the meals of hunter-gatherers.
With the bony remnants of our kills extra more likely to stick round for tens to lots of of 1000’s of years, it is little marvel researchers have largely centered on the protein parts of historical diets. As expertise improves, scientists are ultimately turning their consideration to the remainder of our paleolithic pantry.
“Our results further confirm the importance of plant foods in our evolutionary history and highlight the development of complex food-related behaviors,” write the researchers.
The analysis has been printed in PNAS.
