Shattering Myths About Human Evolution

[Bowwowmeow]

Fossils Challenge Old Evoluton Theory
http://my.eimg.net/harvest_xml/NEWS/img/20070808/46b93fc0_3ca7_15527200708081636099142.jpg (http://enews.earthlink.net/article/pho?guid=20070808/46b93fc0_3ca7_15527200708081636099142&article_path=/article/top&article_guid=20070808/46b93fc0_3ca6_1552620070808-601254480)

Frederick Kyalo Manthi , Phd, holds the H. erectus complete skull he discovered in 2000 near lake Turkana in Kenya, Wednesday, Aug. KAREL PRINSLOO

By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP Science Writer)
From Associated Press
August 08, 2007 4:57 PM EDT

WASHINGTON - Surprising research based on two African fossils suggests our family tree is more like a wayward bush with stubby branches, challenging what had been common thinking on how early humans evolved.

The discovery by Maeve Leakey, a member of a famous family of paleontologists, shows that two species of early human ancestors lived at the same time in Kenya. That pokes holes in the chief theory of man's early evolution - that one of those species evolved from the other.

And it further discredits that iconic illustration of human evolution that begins with a knuckle-dragging ape and ends with a briefcase-carrying man.


The old theory is that the first and oldest species in our family tree, Homo habilis, evolved into Homo erectus, which then became human, Homo sapiens. But Leakey's find suggests those two earlier species lived side-by-side about 1.5 million years ago in parts of Kenya for at least half a million years. She and her research colleagues report the discovery in a paper published in Thursday's journal Nature.

The paper is based on fossilized bones found in 2000. The complete skull of Homo erectus was found within walking distance of an upper jaw of Homo habilis, and both dated from the same general time period. That makes it unlikely that Homo erectus evolved from Homo habilis, researchers said.

It's the equivalent of finding that your grandmother and great-grandmother were sisters rather than mother-daughter, said study co-author Fred Spoor, a professor of evolutionary anatomy at the University College in London.

The two species lived near each other, but probably didn't interact, each having its own "ecological niche," Spoor said. Homo habilis was likely more vegetarian while Homo erectus ate some meat, he said. Like chimps and apes, "they'd just avoid each other, they don't feel comfortable in each other's company," he said.

There remains some still-undiscovered common ancestor that probably lived 2 million to 3 million years ago, a time that has not left much fossil record, Spoor said.

Overall what it paints for human evolution is a "chaotic kind of looking evolutionary tree rather than this heroic march that you see with the cartoons of an early ancestor evolving into some intermediate and eventually unto us," Spoor said in a phone interview from a field office of the Koobi Fora Research Project in northern Kenya.


That old evolutionary cartoon, while popular with the general public, is just too simple and keeps getting revised, said Bill Kimbel, who praised the latest findings. He is science director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University and wasn't part of the Leakey team.

"The more we know, the more complex the story gets," he said. Scientists used to think Homo sapiens evolved from Neanderthals, he said. But now we know that both species lived during the same time period and that we did not come from Neanderthals.

Now a similar discovery applies further back in time.

Susan Anton, a New York University anthropologist and co-author of the Leakey work, said she expects anti-evolution proponents to seize on the new research, but said it would be a mistake to try to use the new work to show flaws in evolution theory.

"This is not questioning the idea at all of evolution; it is refining some of the specific points," Anton said. "This is a great example of what science does and religion doesn't do. It's a continous self-testing process."

For the past few years there has been growing doubt and debate about whether Homo habilis evolved into Homo erectus. One of the major proponents of the more linear, or ladder-like evolution that this evidence weakens, called Leakey's findings important, but he wasn't ready to concede defeat.

Dr. Bernard Wood, a surgeon-turned-professor of human origins at George Washington University, said in an e-mail Wednesday that "this is only a skirmish in the protracted 'war' between the people who like a bushy interpretation and those who like a more ladder-like interpretation of early human evolution."

Leakey's team spent seven years analyzing the fossils before announcing it was time to redraw the family tree - and rethink other ideas about human evolutionary history. That's especially true of Homo erectus.

Because the Homo erectus skull Leakey recovered was much smaller than others, scientists had to first prove that it was erectus and not another species nor a genetic freak. The jaw, probably from an 18- or 19-year-old female, was adult and showed no signs of malformation or genetic mutations, Spoor said. The scientists also know it isn't Homo habilis from several distinct features on the jaw.

That caused researchers to re-examine the 30 other erectus skulls they have and the dozens of partial fossils. They realized that the females of that species are much smaller than the males - something different from modern man, but similar to other animals, said Anton. Scientists hadn't looked carefully enough before to see that there was a distinct difference in males and females.

Difference in size between males and females seem to be related to monogamy, the researchers said. Primates that have same-sized males and females, such as gibbons, tend to be more monogamous. Species that are not monogamous, such as gorillas and baboons, have much bigger males.
This suggests that Homo erectus reproduced with multiple partners.

The Homo habilis jaw was dated at 1.44 million years ago. That is the youngest ever found from a species that scientists originally figured died off somewhere between 1.7 and 2 million years ago, Spoor said. It enabled scientists to say that Homo erectus and Homo habilis lived at the same time.(Italics and bold face are mine)
Now if only they can find a link between us and habilis instead of erectus.

[Oracl]

That's very interesting. :rubchin: I want to be linked to habilis! :tantrum:

[Gliondrach]

It wouldn't really matter if we are descended from Erectus. As we are healthiest on a vegan diet it is obvious to anyone with even a Habilis brain that we are originally descended from a vegan or veggie beast.

[Phoenix]

:uhuh: Very interesting, BWM. Thanks. :friends:

[Gliondrach]

I saw The Story of India on telly last night. Written and presented by Michael Wood. It's in six parts. Very interesting. Watch it if you have the chance. It's the type of programme that will be sold to other countries.

He said that everyone who is not African is descended from Indians. That after people left Africa they headed east to India. I've always assumed that they just burst out of Africa and spread out all over the place. But it makes sense that they would have gone east. The Ice Age would have made going north not too appealing. They were probably able to walk over parts of the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, as the sea level will have been lower.

He also tried some drink that was mentioned in the Mahabarata. It is made from a dried plant. He said that he could feel a tingling all over his body a few minutes after drinking it. Could this have been the drink of Indira and the other gods?

He went to Turkmenistan, and a Russian archaeologist there told him that some settlements there seemed to have had a religion similar to Zoroastrianism. I'm not sure if he said that these people might have taken the religion to Persia or if they had a connection with that area. These Turkmenistanis were the so-called Aryans.

[Oracl]

That is interesting. :rubchin:

[Gliondrach]

Starch 'fuel of human evolution'

Man's ability to digest starchy foods like the potato may explain our success on the planet, genetic work suggests.
Compared with primates, humans have many more copies of a gene essential for breaking down calorie-rich starches, Nature Genetics reports.

And these extra calories may have been crucial for feeding the larger brains of humans, speculate the University of California Santa Cruz authors.

Previously, experts had wondered if meat in the diet was the answer.

Brain food

However, Dr Nathaniel Dominy and colleagues argue this is improbable. "Even when you look at modern human hunter-gatherers, meat is a relatively small fraction of their diet.

"To think that, two to four million years ago, a small-brained, awkwardly bipedal animal could efficiently acquire meat, even by scavenging, just doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

They discovered humans carry extra copies of a gene, called AMY1, which is essential for making the salivary enzyme amylase that digests starch.

Survival benefit

Next the team studied groups of humans with differing diets and found those with high-starch diets tended to have more copies of AMY1 than individuals from populations with low-starch diets.

For example, the Yakut of the Arctic, whose traditional diet centres around fish, had fewer copies than the related Japanese, whose diet includes starchy foods like rice.

The researchers believe our earliest human ancestors began searching for new food sources other than the ripe fruits that primates eat.

These were starches, stored by plants in the form of underground tubers and bulbs - wild versions of modern-day foods like carrots, potatoes, and onions.

In work earlier this year, the team found that animals eating tubers and bulbs produce body tissues with a chemical signature that matches what has been measured in early fossilised humans.

Dr Dominy said that when early humans mastered fire, cooking starchy vegetables would have made them even easier to eat.

At the same time it would have made extra amylase gene copies an even more valuable trait.

"We roast tubers, and we eat French fries and baked potatoes. When you cook, you can afford to eat less overall, because the food is easier to digest." And marginal food resources can become part of the staple diet.
"Now you can have population growth and expand into new territories."

Speculation

Professor John Dupré, a professor of philosophy of science at Exeter University in the UK, urged caution when interpreting the findings.

He said it was impossible to conclude that the introduction of starchy foods into the diet lay behind the emergence of larger brains in humans.

"Lots of things differ between ourselves and our closest relatives and apart from the difficulty of establishing the relative places in the evolutionary sequence of any of these, the assumption that there is any one fundamental to such change is dubious.

"The results on amylase genes are quite interesting, and a good indication of something we are beginning to appreciate more widely - the functional plasticity of the genome."

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6983330.stm

[Gliondrach]

HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Cooking up quite a story:
Ape, human theory causes evolutionary indigestion
By William J. Cromie
Gazette Staff

Think about this the next time you're waiting for your burgers to cook on the grill: How was cooking "invented"? Today, all societies depend on cooked food, but when and how did cooking begin?

It's an important question. Cooking played a major role in the development of smaller jaws and teeth, bigger brains, smaller guts, shorter arms, and longer legs, according to Richard Wrangham, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University. He also believes that cooking is associated with females getting heavier and more fertile. That, in turn, changed mating and social behaviors. Instead of large males beating each other with clubs for the relatively rare privilege of mating, smaller guys mated more regularly and began to dine with the family more often.

There's a lot of agreement among anthropologists that human ancestors were cooking their food as long ago as 250,000 to 500,000 years, but Wrangham and a few of his colleagues see evidence that cooks spoiled the broth as long ago as 2 million years. That's about the time when our ancestors became less like apes and more like humans.

There's more agreement on how cooking started than when. Most anthropologists think bush fires, started by lightning, baked or singed exposed tubers and other roots. Human ancestors tried the fired food and the rest, as they say, is history.

One of the big unknowns in this scenario is when our ancestors started to build their own fires. Many clues point to the conclusion that pre-people lit their own fires about 300,000 years ago, but much less positive evidence hints that they controlled fire a million and a half years earlier. Either way, use of fire for warmth, or to keep away large animals with sharp teeth, would have hastened the origin of roast roots and meat.

The joy of cooking
Whenever its origin, cooking had an enormous impact. Heating food makes it safer, more digestible, and better tasting. Even Charles Darwin thought about this. Cooking, he wrote, provides a means "by which hard and stringy roots can be rendered digestible, and poisonous roots or herbs innocuous." Cooking allows a diner to extract many more calories from a root or thigh than eating it raw.

Wrangham was staring at a fire one evening in his backyard when thoughts about the difficulty of eating raw food ignited the embers of his theory. "I've studied chimps for many years in East Africa," he notes. "To get insight into how they live, I have eaten the same food they do. Chewing raw food requires a lot of work."

Wrangham first reported his theory of fire control in a 1999 scientific paper co-authored with several colleagues, including David Pilbeam, Curator of Paleoanthropology in Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. They and a few others have continued to expand on the idea of cooking as a much more ancient art than generally believed. They have gathered evidence both from ancient ape-people and modern humans.

Studies of modern food faddists who eat only raw food indicate that it's not a very healthy diet. About a third of such people have chronic energy deficits, according to one study. Half of the women stop menstruating. "And this is under the best possible conditions," Wrangham notes, "when the food is abundant and of good quality."

Less chewing and gnawing would gradually lead to less massive jaws and smaller, rounder teeth. It can also account for reduction of gut and rib-cage size. "You don't need large body chambers to break down stringy carbohydrates," Wrangham says. "And more readily digested food can account for the increased energy needed for fueling a larger brain."

When researchers look for such body and brain changes, they find them in skulls and bones as old as 1.9 million years. This is the time when ape-persons were evolving into Homo erectus, an immediate ancestor of modern humans. As the name implies, H. erectus walked upright. His and her arms were no longer adapted for hanging in trees and their legs were longer. The size of their brain cases almost doubled that of apes.

A most curious and dramatic change also developed in the relative size of males and females. Females became a full 60 percent heavier, drastically reducing the size difference between them and males. "Ape males are 50 to 100 percent larger than ape females," Wrangham points out. But the size difference in Homo erectus was essentially the same as that of modern humans, or about 15-20 percent."

Critics who say the early-cooking theory is half-baked attribute such changes to eating more raw meat. Those who preceded H. erectus, referred to as australopithecines, learned to make better stone weapons and to hunt bigger game. That living style, they insist, could have changed brain and body size.

Ah, but what about the teeth and jaws? Eating raw meat, even when sliced up by a keen stone knife, would result in sharp, spiky dentures, not smaller rounded teeth sculpted by eating softer food.

Then there's the big time gap. Australopithecines scavenged or hunted big game 2.5 million years ago, a half million years or more before H. erectus came on the scene. What happened during the gap? After the dramatic changes of 1.9 million years B.C., no remarkable body shifts took place until roughly 100,000 years ago. If cooking didn't begin until 500,000-250,000 years ago, why are there no prominent changes in face and shape like those that occurred 1.9 million years ago?

Hearth times
All of that is just circumstantial evidence, Wrangham admits. There is no "smoking skewer" to prove H. erectus families gathered around hearths so far back in time.

Evidence most anthropologists feel comfortable with shows that our ancestors in Europe dug oven pits 300,000 years ago. In Africa, small patches of reddened, heavily oxidized soil date from 1.5 million years. Even Wrangham agrees that these spots could be caused by natural changes. However, he notes that "Africans don't use cooking pits today. They cook over campfires, traces of which soon disappear."

Studies now under way may resolve the controversy. Microbits of wood and plant material around the reddened areas could show if these particles came from one kind of bush or tree, which would indicate in-place burning by lightning. If the particles come from diverse sources, that would support the idea of wood being brought from different places to build a campfire. Close examination of "microwear" on fossil teeth might also reveal when our ancestors switched to food softened by cooking.

"The evidence in favor of our theory will get stronger," Wrangham believes.

Cooking heats up mating
Reduction in size difference between early H. erectus males and females resulted in profound differences in mating and social behavior that helped to distinguish humans from their more ape-like predecessors, Wrangham maintains. Among apes, the largest males win battles to impregnate females. That doesn't lead to very frequent mating. Gorillas, for example, have fewer than 20 copulations per birth.

When size is more equal, smaller males get to mate more frequently. For chimpanzees and humans, the mating rate rises to 100 or more copulations per birth. This leads Wrangham to postulate that an important turn toward the current human system of mating took place with the evolution of H. erectus some 2 million years ago, the only known time during evolution when the relative body size of males dropped so markedly.

Cooking meant that food would be brought "home," instead of being eaten on the spot. That must have created the problem of large, lazy males raiding the larders attended only by females. They, in turn, would have reacted by trying to form closer relationships with males who would protect their food stores. One way to do this was to increase their sexual attractiveness, which would have increased the number of matings per pregnancy, reduced competition between males, and led to more pair bonding.

If all this is true, then cooking had a major impact on humanization. As Wrangham puts it: "If the foraging and mating systems of humans were indeed shaped powerfully by cooking, the ancient Greek myth that attributes humanity to the gift of fire may be close to the truth."

[Bowwowmeow]

I get so sick and tired of seeing people use human canines as evidence of our either carnivorous or omnivorous tendencies. As if diet was the only factor that drove human evolution.

Considering how many times people of both genders think about sex every hour, you'd think it would occur to some of these geniuses that secondary sexual characteristics have a lot more to do with what traits get passed down from one generation to the next than what people eat. Gorillas, for example, who are largely fruitarian, have much larger canines than we do. This is for scaring away the male competition, and impressing the females, not for tearing into wildebeests like the lions do. :rolleyes:

Most of the visible physical features modern people display were selected for by sexual partners, not the environment or the available food. This would include the teeth, especially because with human animals in particular, the face is one of the most important social and sexual aspects of a person, and the teeth and smile are a huge factor in how attractive the person is perceived to be.

Though our teeth are more similar to herbivores, or maybe even omnivores, there is no concrete evidence showing that their shape was selected for by diet alone. In fact, I surmise that even if our canines were larger and sharper than those of gorillas, it would probably be because our Cro Magnon sisters were under the impression that men with big impressive canines were also well-endowed in other departments, and not because they were better at tearing into the wildebeests than the lions were.

You can never assume that a particular feature's form always determines its function, especially when the species sporting that feature engages in sexual reproduction.

So there. Its only a hypothesis, but its mine, and I'm gonna run with it. :whistle:;)

[my3labs]

It's a good hypothesis, BWM. I run into the "canine teeth" comment sometimes and this is a good response. Human canine teeth/cuspids are really nothing compared to a true carnivore.

[Gliondrach]

Indeed. It's unfortunate that canines are so called. If they'd been called gorrilanine we wouldn't have to explain that they are not there to tear into meat.

[Gliondrach]

I was going to start a new thread about unnatural foods but this fits here.



This says that gorillas in captivity, when fed unnatural diets, suffer from high cholesterol and high premature cardiovascular disease.

The Journal of Nutrition Vol. 127 No. 10 October 1997, pp. 2000-2005

The Western Lowland Gorilla Diet Has Implications for the Health of Humans and Other Hominoids

Low fat diets, high in fiber, vegetable protein and plant sterols are all associated with reduced serum cholesterol levels in humans (Carroll 1983, Howard and Kritchevsky 1997, Jenkins et al. 1993, Kritchevsky 1979, Miettinen et al. 1995). Captive gorillas have high serum cholesterol levels, 281-311 mg/dL, (7.27-8.04 mmol/L) (McGuire et al. 1989) and suffer premature cardiovascular disease when they consume low fiber diets that often contain meat and eggs (Cousins 1979). It has been suggested that ulcerative colitis in humans is due to a lack of energy normally provided by SCFA for colonic mucosal repair (Roediger 1982). The fiber-derived SCFA, butyrate, is a preferred energy substrate for colonic mucosal cells and may have antineoplastic properties (Roediger 1982, Weaver et al. 1988). It is relevant that ulcerative colitis figures prominently among the intestinal disorders of great apes in captivity consuming relatively low fiber diets (Scott and Kemer 1975). High fiber diets may also improve colonic health by increasing fecal bulk and water-holding capacity, shortening transit time and decreasing concentrations of toxic substances including bile acids (McKeigue et al. 1989) and free ammonia (Visek 1978). Leafy vegetables are also rich sources of antioxidants including -carotene, vitamin C, lignans and flavonoids, some of which have been associated with reduced rates of cardiovascular disease in humans (Hertog et al. 1993). High folate intakes, derived from leafy vegetation by the great apes, may have implications in the prevention of cardiovascular disease (Selhub et al. 1995), colon cancer (Kim and Mason 1995) and spina bifida (Wald et al. 1991) in humans. Natural gorilla feeding patterns of "foraging" throughout the day may also have health benefits because increased feeding frequency, "nibbling," has been shown in human studies to reduce LDL cholesterol and the postprandial insulin response (Jenkins et al. 1989).

In conclusion, we believe that the diets of the great apes in the wild may provide insights into the nature of the foods that hominoids evolved to eat and that have shaped human nutrient requirements for health and the function of the hominoid gut.


Lots of interesting things about gorillas and humans. Read it all. I have a copy in case it ever disappears from the netty.

You might need to put ht tp:// in front.
jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/127/10/2000

[Bowwowmeow]

Good lord, feeding gorillas meat and eggs. :shakehead: :rolleyes: :shakehead: :dunce:

That article was interesting, Gliondrach, thanks. I've always thought that since humans can produce all the cholesterol they need themselves, this is good biological evidence for not needing to consume animal products at all. Also, we, unlike all other animals except guinea pigs, do not produce any vitamin C, which indicates the need for humans to emphasize the same kinds of foods as gorillas apparently need. Filling the tummy with eggs, corpses, and animal milk doesn't leave much room for the fruits and vegetables we need for our vitamin C. Unlike abstaining from animal products, abstaining from fruits and vegetables will kill anyone pretty quickly, by causing scurvy. That's why Atkins had to give in and tell his dieters to add a little broccoli to their steak, bacon, cheese, and egg. :loser:

[Gliondrach]

I'm trying to find evidence on the health of Eskimos and Masai. It would have be from those who lead a traditional life. There are a couple of studies but I haven't found them yet. I believe both these peoples have a short life span. Too much animal products. We can live without animal products but no one can live without plant products.

[Bowwowmeow]

Human Ancestor Fossil Found in Europe

By DANIEL WOOLLS (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
March 26, 2008 5:21 PM EDT

MADRID, Spain - A small piece of jawbone unearthed in a cave in Spain is the oldest known fossil of a human ancestor in Europe and suggests that people lived on the continent much earlier than previously believed, scientists say.

The researchers said the fossil found last year at Atapuerca in northern Spain, along with stone tools and animal bones, is up to 1.3 million years old. That would be 500,000 years older than remains from a 1997 find that prompted the naming of a new species: Homo antecessor, or Pioneer Man, possibly a common ancestor to Neanderthals and modern humans.

The new find appears to be from the same species, researchers said.
A team co-led by Eudald Carbonell, director of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleo-Ecology and Social Evolution, reported their find in Thursday's issue of the scientific journal Nature.

The timing of the earliest occupation of Europe by humans that emerged from Africa has been controversial for many years.

Some archeologists believe the process was a stop-and-go one in which species of hominins - a group that includes the extinct relatives of modern humans - emerged and died out quickly only to be replaced by others, making for a very slow spread across the continent, Carbonell said in an interview.

Until now the oldest hominin fossils found in Europe were the Homo antecessor ones, also found at Atapuerca, but at a separate digging site, and a skull from Ceprano in Italy.

Carbonell's team has tentatively classified the new fossil as representing an earlier example of Homo antecessor. And, critically, the team says the new one also bears similarities to much-older fossils dug up since 1983 in the Caucasus at a place called Dmanisi, in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. These were dated as being up to 1.8 million years old.

"This leads us to a very important, very interesting conclusion," Carbonell said. It is this: that hominins which emerged from Africa and settled in the Caucasus eventually evolved into Homo antecessor, and that the latter populated Europe not 800,000 years ago, but at least 1.3 million years ago.

"This discovery of a 1.3 million-year-old fossil shows the process was accelerated and continuous; that the occupation of Europe happened very early and much faster than we had thought," Carbonell said.

Chris Stringer, a leading researcher in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London and not involved in the project, said Carbonell's team had done solid dating work to estimate the antiquity of the new Atapuerca fossil by employing three separate techniques - some researchers only use one or two - including a relatively new one that measures radioactive decay of sediments.

"This is a well-dated site, as much as any site that age can be," Stringer said.

But he also expressed some caution about Carbonell's conclusions.
First of all, the newly found jawbone fragment, which measures about two inches long and has teeth attached to it, preserves a section not seen in the equivalent pieces found at Atapuerca in 1997. So assigning both to the same species must be provisional, Stringer said.

And on the broader issue of tracing the new fossil back to the species unearthed at Dmanisi - Carbonell's big leap arguing continuity - Stringer said this too must be tentative because it is based on just a piece of a front of a jawbone and the time lapse is half a million years.

"That is a long period of time to talk about continuity," Stringer said.
Still, there are similarities between the two and this along with other archaeological evidence, suggests southern Europe did in fact begin to be colonized from western Asia not long after humans emerged from Africa - "something which many of us would have doubted even five years ago," Stringer said.

Carbonell says that with the finding of human fossils 1.3 million years old in Europe, researchers can now expect to find older ones, even up to 1.8 million years old, in other parts of the continent.

"This has to be the next discovery," he said. "This is the scientific hypothesis."

[Bowwowmeow]

And from an unexpected source, yet another view on human evolution:
FoNmNmXExZ8

[Gliondrach]

There's still a lot to be discovered about human origins.

[Tails4wagging]

You tube clip is no longer available.

Interesting, perhaps humans did mix with dinosaurs after all.

BTW I met a few neandatals in Lincoln..:)

[Gliondrach]

Horizon on BBC2 yesterday was interesting. Quite apart from the naked women. It suggested humans lost their fur because they stood upright, sweat profusely and moved about a lot. Fur protects other animals from the heat of the sun, especially when they are not exerting themselves. Bare skin allows sweat to evaporate more easily. We retained hair on top of our heads to protect us from the sun when we stood up. It also had a louse expert who thinks we started wearing clothes about 650,000 years ago. That is because clothes lice, which are only found on humans couldn't have survived without clothes. They will have developed from some other form of lice, just as head lice developed from a common ancestor that will have been on the common ancestor of apes and humans.

[Gliondrach]

You could probably see it on BBC iPlayer.

[Gliondrach]

4.4-million-year-old fossil could reshape human origins

By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY

10/1/2009 1:32 PM

The nearly complete fossil of a 4.4-million-year-old human ancestor, a female dubbed "Ardi," is rewriting the story of human origins, paleontologists reported Thursday.
The analysis of Ardipithecus ramidus (it means "root of the ground ape"), reported in the journal Science, changes the notion that humans and chimps, our closest genetic cousins, both trace their lineage to a creature that was more like today's chimp. Rather, the research suggests that their common ancestor was a walking forest forager more cooperative in nature than the competitive, aggressive chimp and that chimps were an evolutionary offshoot of this creature.

So that could mean that while humans didn't diverge much from their evolutionary ancestors, "chimps and gorillas look like really special evolutionary outcomes," says Science study author Owen Lovejoy of Ohio's Kent State University.

The species was first discovered in fragments in 1992. The new analysis suggests our predecessors lacked tusk-like canines to brawl with, or hand-like feet to swing from trees, dashing the popular image of a chimp-like start for homo sapiens.

"We're going to have to rewrite the textbooks on human origins," Lovejoy says. The 47-member team published 11 reports of this fossil and on parts of at least 36 related ones found in Ethiopia's Afar Rift over 17 years of investigation.

"The find itself is extraordinary, as were the enormous labors that went into the reconstruction of a skeleton shattered almost beyond repair, and particularly the skull," says paleontologist David Pilbeam of Harvard, who was not on the study team. Ardi looks like a precursor to "Lucy," of the prehuman species Australopithecus afarensis, from 3.2 million years ago, he says.

A female, Ardi weighed about 110 pounds and walked upright on flat feet with a grasping big toe in a broken woodland setting. Mostly a plant eater, she was a "careful climber" of trees, says study leader Tim White of the University of California-Berkeley, with flexible hands and a brain about a quarter the size of a human's. "We can't say this species was a direct ancestor of modern humans, so we have to be careful. But it suggests that the direction of early hominids was away from the chimp."

Lovejoy says the fossil's lack of sharp canines suggests male ramiduses cooperated in foraging rather than competing for females relentlessly as chimps do today. Instead, he argues, these early human ancestors probably foraged for food with each other, with males and females of roughly the same size (rather than the large dominant males seen in gorilla and chimps) forming pairs.

"It is often assumed that we humans are selfish, competitive and warlike by nature, because our relatives the chimpanzees are," says primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta, author of The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society. "Competition is obviously never absent, but ancestral models need to move away from the excessive emphasis on aggression and war."

Pilbeam, however, calls the evidence for cooperative foraging and paired couples "unpersuasive," based simply on the fossils.

"With Ardipithecus, we have to bear in mind this was a species that lived 4.4 million years ago, and a lot has happened since then in human evolution, when it comes to behavior," White says.

Still, he says, the finds point to humans originating from a primitive ape, one that moved to broken woodlands, rather than the jungle today ruled by chimps and gorillas, and then evolved to a walking hominid that favored open terrain, eventually spreading throughout Africa and today, worldwide.

usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2009-10-01-human-chimp-fossil_N.htm

[Gliondrach]

Neanderthal genome yields insights into human evolution and evidence of interbreeding

Thursday, May 6, 2010

May 6, 2010

By Tim Stephens

After extracting ancient DNA from the 40,000-year-old bones of Neanderthals, scientists have obtained a draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome, yielding important new insights into the evolution of modern humans.

Among the findings, published in the May 7 issue of Science, is evidence that shortly after early modern humans migrated out of Africa, some of them interbred with Neanderthals, leaving bits of Neanderthal DNA sequences scattered through the genomes of present-day non-Africans.

"We can now say that, in all probability, there was gene flow from Neanderthals to modern humans," said the paper's first author, Richard E. (Ed) Green of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Green, now an assistant professor of biomolecular engineering in the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz, began working on the Neanderthal genome as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Svante Pääbo, director of the institute's genetics department, leads the Neanderthal Genome Project, which involves an international consortium of researchers. David Reich, a population geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, also played a leading role in the new study and the ongoing investigation of the Neanderthal genome.

"The Neanderthal genome sequence allows us to begin to define all those features in our genome where we differ from all other organisms on the planet, including our closest evolutionary relative, the Neanderthals," Pääbo said.

The researchers identified a catalog of genetic features unique to modern humans by comparing the Neanderthal, human, and chimpanzee genomes. Genes involved in cognitive development, skull structure, energy metabolism, and skin morphology and physiology are among those highlighted in the study as likely to have undergone important changes in recent human evolution.

"With this paper, we are just scratching the surface," Green said. "The Neanderthal genome is a goldmine of information about recent human evolution, and it will be put to use for years to come."

Neanderthals lived in much of Europe and western Asia before dying out 30,000 years ago. They coexisted with humans in Europe for thousands of years, and fossil evidence led some scientists to speculate that interbreeding may have occurred there. But the Neanderthal DNA signal shows up not only in the genomes of Europeans, but also in people from East Asia and Papua New Guinea, where Neanderthals never lived.

"The scenario is not what most people had envisioned," Green said. "We found the genetic signal of Neanderthals in all the non-African genomes, meaning that the admixture occurred early on, probably in the Middle East, and is shared with all descendants of the early humans who migrated out of Africa."

The study did not address the functional significance of the finding that between 1 and 4 percent of the genomes of non-Africans is derived from Neanderthals. But Green said there is no evidence that anything genetically important came over from Neanderthals. "The signal is sparsely distributed across the genome, just a 'bread crumbs' clue of what happened in the past," he said. "If there was something that conferred a fitness advantage, we probably would have found it already by comparing human genomes."

The draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome is composed of more than 3 billion nucleotides--the "letters" of the genetic code (A, C, T, and G) that are strung together in DNA. The sequence was derived from DNA extracted from three Neanderthal bones found in the Vindiga Cave in Croatia; smaller amounts of sequence data were also obtained from three bones from other sites. Two of the Vindiga bones could be dated by carbon-dating of collagen and were found to be about 38,000 and 44,000 years old.

Deriving a genome sequence--representing the genetic code on all of an organism's chromosomes--from such ancient DNA is a remarkable technological feat. The Neanderthal bones were not well preserved, and more than 95 percent of the DNA extracted from them came from bacteria and other organisms that had colonized the bone. The DNA itself was degraded into small fragments and had been chemically modified in many places.

The researchers had to develop special methods to extract the Neanderthal DNA and ensure that it was not contaminated with human DNA. They used new sequencing technology to obtain sequence data directly from the extracted DNA without amplifying it first. Although genome scientists like to sequence a genome at least four or five times to ensure accuracy, most of the Neanderthal genome has been covered only one to two times so far.

The draft Neanderthal sequence is probably riddled with errors, Green said, but having the human and chimpanzee genomes for comparison makes it extremely useful despite its limitations. Places where humans differ from chimps, while Neanderthals still have the ancestral chimp sequence, may represent uniquely human genetic traits. Such comparisons enabled the researchers to catalog the genetic changes that have become fixed or have risen to high frequency in modern humans during the past few hundred thousand years.

"It sheds light on a critical time in human evolution since we diverged from Neanderthals," Green said. "What adaptive changes occurred in the past 300,000 years as we were becoming fully modern humans? That's what I find most exciting. Right now we are still in the realm of identifying candidates for further study."

The ancestral lineages of humans and chimpanzees are thought to have diverged about 5 or 6 million years ago. By analyzing the Neanderthal genome and genomes of present-day humans, Green and his colleagues estimated that the ancestral populations of Neanderthals and modern humans separated between 270,000 and 440,000 years ago.

The evidence for more recent gene flow between Neanderthals and humans came from an analysis showing that Neanderthals are more closely related to some present-day humans than to others. The researchers looked at places where the DNA sequence is known to vary among individuals by a single "letter." Comparing different individuals with Neanderthals, they asked how frequently the Neanderthal sequence matches that of different humans.

The frequency of Neanderthal matches would be the same for all human populations if gene flow between Neanderthals and humans stopped before human populations began to develop genetic differences. But that's not what the study found. Looking at a diverse set of modern humans--including individuals from Southern Africa, West Africa, Papua New Guinea, China, and Western Europe--the researchers found that the frequency of Neanderthal matches is higher for non-Africans than for Africans.

According to Green, even a very small number of instances of interbreeding could account for these results. The researchers estimated that the gene flow from Neanderthals to humans occurred between 50,000 and 80,000 years ago. The best explanation is that the admixture occurred when early humans left Africa and encountered Neanderthals for the first time.

"How these peoples would have interacted culturally is not something we can speculate on in any meaningful way. But knowing there was gene flow is important, and it is fascinating to think about how that may have happened," Green said.

The researchers were not able to rule out one possible alternative explanation for their findings. In that scenario, the signal they detected could represent an ancient genetic substructure that existed within Africa, such that the ancestral population of present-day non-Africans was more closely related to Neanderthals than was the ancestral population of present-day Africans. "We think that's not the case, but we can't rule it out," Green said.

The researchers expect many new findings to emerge from ongoing investigations of the Neanderthal genome and other ancient genetic sequences. Pääbo's group recently found evidence of a previously unknown type of hominid after analyzing DNA extracted from what they had thought was a Neanderthal finger bone found in Siberia. Green is also taking part in that continuing investigation.

The Neanderthal genome sequence has been posted on the UCSC Genome Browser (genome.ucsc.edu), which contains a large collection of genomes and provides a convenient framework for genome comparisons and tools for genome analysis.

The Science paper on the Neanderthal genome involved 56 coauthors from 22 different institutions. An accompanying paper by the same team, with Hernán Burbano of the Max Planck Institute as first author, describes a particular method used to investigate the genome. Support for the project includes funding from the Max Planck Society of Germany, the Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) of Spain, and the National Human Genome Research Institute of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

h-ttp://w-ww.soe.ucsc.edu/news/article?ID=1828

[Bowwowmeow]

Bread was around 30,000 years ago -study

LONDON (Reuters Life!) – Starch grains found on 30,000-year-old grinding stones suggest that prehistoric man may have dined on an early form of flat bread, contrary to his popular image as primarily a meat-eater.


The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal on Monday, indicate that Palaeolithic Europeans ground down plant roots similar to potatoes to make flour, which was later whisked into dough.

"It's like a flat bread, like a pancake with just water and flour," said Laura Longo, a researcher on the team from the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Early History.


"You make a kind of pita and cook it on the hot stone," she said, describing how the team replicated the cooking process. The end product was "crispy like a cracker but not very tasty," she added.


The grinding stones, each of which fit comfortably into an adult's palm, were discovered at archaeological sites in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic.


The researchers said their findings throw mankind's first known use of flour back some 10,000 years, the previously oldest evidence having been found in Israel on 20,000 year-old grinding stones.


The findings may also upset fans of the Paleolithic diet, which follows earlier research that assumes early humans ate a meat-centered diet.


Also known as the caveman diet, the regime frowns on carbohydrate-laden foods like bread and cereal, and modern-day adherents eat only lean meat, vegetables and fruit.


It was first popularized by the gastroenterologist Walter L. Voegtlin, whose 1975 book lauded the benefits of the hunter-gatherer diet.


(Reporting by Brenda Goh, Editing by Steve Addison)Take that all you Paleolithic meatheads! :agree:

[Gliondrach]

The remains of grass seeds on stone tools used about 100,000 years ago were found in a Mozambique cave. This could be evidence that they were grinding them to make flour. Mainly sorghum. There are many more grain fragments on the tools than in the rest of the cave - which shows the grains didn't just blow in.

Mercader J. Mozambican grass seed consumption during the middle stone age. Science. (2009) 326(5960):1680-3.

[nagev]

That's interesting.

[Gliondrach]

Neanderthals cooked and ate vegetables

By Pallab Ghosh

27 December 2010

Neanderthals cooked and ate plants and vegetables, a new study of Neanderthal remains reveals.

Researchers in the US have found grains of cooked plant material in their teeth.

The study is the first to confirm that the Neanderthal diet was not confined to meat and was more sophisticated than previously thought.

The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The popular image of Neanderthals as great meat eaters is one that has up until now been backed by some circumstantial evidence. Chemical analysis of their bones suggested they ate little or no vegetables.

This perceived reliance on meat had been put forward by some as one of the reasons these humans become extinct as large animals such as mammoths declined.

But a new analysis of Neanderthal remains from across the world has found direct evidence that contradicts the chemical studies. Researchers found fossilised grains of vegetable material in their teeth and some of it was cooked.

Although pollen grains have been found before on Neanderthal sites and some in hearths, it is only now there is clear evidence that plant food was actually eaten by these people.


Professor Alison Brooks, from George Washington University, told BBC News: "We have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know whether they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what.

"But here we have a case where a little bit of the plant is in the mouth so we know that the Neanderthals were consuming the food."

More like us

One question raised by the study is why the chemical studies on Neanderthal bones have been wide of the mark. According to Professor Brooks, the tests were measuring proteins levels, which the researchers assumed came from meat.

"We've tended to assume that if you have a very high value for protein in the diet that must come from meat. But... it's possible that some of the protein in their diet was coming from plants," she said.

This study is the latest to suggest that, far from being brutish savages, Neanderthals were more like us than we previously thought.

ht--tp://w--ww.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12071424

'We've tended to assume that if you have a very high value for protein in the diet that must come from meat.' :disbelief:

[Blueshark]

Yes I read this on the BBC website. Did you know that orginally in the Bible - the first diet for Humans was a plant based one? It is in black and white.

[Gliondrach]

Perhaps this is how our ancestors started doing it.

Gorilla Walks Like Human Upright On Two Legs

qD-erppkCjY

[gabbles]

Amazing.

[Gliondrach]

No Nuts for ‘Nutcracker Man’

Early Human Relative Apparently Chewed Grass Instead

Embargoed by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for release at 1 p.m. MDT, Monday May 2, 2011

May 2, 2011 – For decades, a 2.3 million- to 1.2 million-year-old human relative named Paranthropus boisei has been nicknamed Nutcracker Man because of his big, flat molar teeth and thick, powerful jaw. But a definitive new University of Utah study shows that Nutcracker Man didn’t eat nuts, but instead chewed grasses and possibly sedges – a discovery that upsets conventional wisdom about early humanity’s diet.

“It most likely was eating grass, and most definitely was not cracking nuts,” says geochemist Thure Cerling, lead author of the study published in the May 2 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Study co-author Kevin Uno, a University of Utah Ph.D. student in geology, adds: “This study provides evidence that Paranthropus boisei was not cracking nuts, but was instead eating mainly tropical grasses or sedges. It was not competing for food with most other primates, who ate fruits, leaves and nuts; but with grazers – zebras’ ancestors, suids [ancestors of pigs and warthogs] and hippos.”

Cerling and colleagues determined the extinct, upright-walking Paranthropus boisei‘s diet by analyzing carbon isotope ratios in the tooth enamel of 24 teeth from 22 individuals who lived between 1.4 million and 1.9 million years ago and were closely related to and once thought part of the genus of human ancestors named Australopithecus. Both extinct Paranthropus **and the human genus Homo arose from Australopithecus.

University of Utah researchers Cerling and Uno conducted the study with three scientists from the National Museums of Kenya – anthropologist Emma Mbua and paleontologists Francis Kirera and Fredrick Manthi – and with Frederick Grine of Stony Brook University, anthropologist Matt Sponheimer of the University of Colorado at Boulder and famed anthropologist Meave Leakey, who is affiliated with the National Museums, Stony Brook and the Turkana Basin Institute in Nairobi.

Drilling for Evidence of Prehistoric Dinners

Cerling used a drill to pulverize some tooth enamel into powder, but only 2 milligrams per tooth and only from the broken surface of broken teeth, leaving the original surfaces intact for future study. Still, there was anticipation among officials at the National Museums of Kenya, where the teeth are housed.

“The sound of the drill may make a lot of paleontologists and museum staff cringe, but as the results of this study show, it provides new information that we can’t get at any other way,” Uno says. “And we’ve gotten very good at drilling.”

Carbon isotope ratios in tooth enamel can reveal whether ancient animals ate plants that used what is called C3 photosynthesis – trees (and the leaves, nuts and fruits they produce), shrubs, cool-season grasses, herbs and forbs – or plants such as warm-season or tropical grasses and sedges that use what is known as C4 photosynthesis. (Sedges vaguely resemble grasses, but their stems’ cross-sections usually are triangular, which means “sedges have edges” when rotated between thumb and finger.)

The study found that not only did the Nutcracker Man Paranthropus boisei not eat nuts or other C3 plant products, but dined more heavily on C4 plants like grasses than any other early human, human ancestor or human relative studied to date. Only an extinct species of grass-eating baboon had a diet so dominated by C4 plants.

Carbon isotopes showed the 22 individuals had diets averaging 77 percent C4 plants such as grasses, ranging from a low of 61 percent to a high of 91 percent.

That’s statistically indistinguishable from grass diets of grazing animals that lived at the same time: the ancestors of zebras, pigs and warthogs, and hippos, Cerling says.

“They were competing with them,” he adds. “They were eating at the same table.”

The researchers also analyzed oxygen isotope composition in the fossil teeth, which indicated Paranthropus boisei lived in semi-arid savannah with woodlands along rivers or lakes.

Research in 2008 on two teeth from Nutcracker Man in Tanzania also indicated the creatures ate a diet of grasses and perhaps sedges. But with teeth from 22 individuals, the new study shows the species was eating grass and other C4 plants over a much longer time period (from 1.4 million to 1.9 million years ago) and bigger geographic area (a 500-mile-wide swath of East Africa) than was known before.

“Wherever we find this creature, it is predominantly eating tropical grasses or perhaps sedges, which include papyrus,” Cerling says.

Rethinking the Diets of Early Human Ancestors and Relatives

The new study of Nutcracker Man may provoke a major change in how we view the diets of other early humans and human relatives.

“Much of the previous work has been on the size and shape of the teeth, along with microwear analysis,” Cerling says. “Our results [on Paranthropus boisei] are completely different than the conclusions based on 50-plus years of research along those lines. It stands to reason that other conclusions about other species also will require revision. P. boisei greatly extends the range of potential diets for early human lineages.”

Specifically, scientists have believed human ancestors in the genus Australopithecus – which gave rise to now-extinct Paranthropus and to Homo or early humans – also had head and tooth features suggesting they ate hard objects like nuts.

Cerling says carbon isotope ratios in australopiths’ teeth now should be studied, since the Paranthropus findings bring in to question interpretations that are made without isotopic information on diets.

“The high proportion of C4 vegetation in the diet of Paranthropus boisei makes it different from any other hominin to date, even its closest relative, Paranthropus robustus from southern Africa,” Uno says. “The results make an excellent case for isotope analysis of teeth from other members of our family tree, especially from East Africa.”

A Brief Biography of ‘Nutcracker Man’

The cranium of the extinct early human relative now known as Paranthropus boisei was discovered by Meave Leakey’s in-laws, Mary and Louis Leakey, in 1959 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, and helped put the Leakeys on the world stage.

Dated at 1.75 million years old, it initially was known as Zinjanthropus boisei (zinj for an African religion named Zanj, anthropus for ape-human and boisei after expedition benefactor Charles Boise) and later as Australopithecus boisei, before scientists decided it deserved a separate genus, making it Paranthropus boisei.

The discovery of other P. boisei fossils revealed the species lived in East Africa (including Kenya and Ethiopia) from 2.3 million years ago to 1.2 million years ago. The short creatures had big, flat premolars and molars; thick tooth enamel; muscle-attachment surfaces for large chewing muscles; and powerful jaws. Those characteristics earned Paranthropus boisei the nickname Nutcracker Man – a name that has been attributed to South African paleoanthropologist Phillip Tobias, a colleague of the Leakeys.

According to Dale Peterson’s biography of anthropologist Jane Goodall, the Leakeys took privately to calling the Zinj skull “Dear Boy,” and that it was Tobias who convinced them to switch the genus to Australopithecus and who also suggested that the thick molars made the skull look like a children’s wooden toy named Nutcracker Man.

“So while the rather obscure and academic debates about naming and grouping the skull kept all the specialists entertained, for the public at large, this same fossil became simply Nutcracker Man,” Peterson wrote.

“Nutcracker Man never has been used in the scientific literature, but that’s the common name,” Cerling says.

ht--tp://unews.utah.edu/news_releases/no-nuts-for-nutcracker-man

[Blueshark]

Perhaps this is how our ancestors started doing it.

Gorilla Walks Like Human Upright On Two Legs



That is awesome.

I think like people can be born with talents, so can animals.

[Gliondrach]

I mentioned the Masai in post 14 of this thread.

A lot of meat fanatics point to the Masai as being healthy and to the 'fact' that the diet of the warriors is entirely made up of meat, milk and blood. The men become warriors, or moran, when they are aged 14 until they are aged about 40. During this time they are said to exist on that strange diet. I don't believe it. I think they just claim to eat only those things. Perhaps it's not considered macho to eat fruit and vegetables. The women and other males eat fruit and veg. Perhaps like some hunters from gatherer-hunter societies or like anglers, they exaggerate.

I have recently read that the warriors put certain herbs in their milk drinks and with their meat meals.

Anthropologists and medical doctors who have studied the East African Masai tribe have shown that although 66 percent of their daily caloric intake comes from animal fat—meat, milk and yogurt—their serum cholesterol levels are low and cardiovascular disease is virtually nonexistent. Timothy Johns, Ph.D., of McGill University, Quebec, learned that the Masai's minor but judicious use of wild plant foods keeps their systems balanced. [ 16 ] They seem to add enough wild plants to milk- and meat-based soups to make them bitter and also drink herbal teas with meals, regularly chew tree barks and gums, use medicinal plants, and add herbs to their home-brewed honey beer. Johns found that 9 of 12 common Masai plant-derived food additives contain cholesterol-lowering phytosterols, saponins and/or phenolics.

16. Johns T. Phytochemicals as evolutionary mediators of human nutritional physiology. Int J Pharmacog 1996;34:327-34.
h--ttp://w--ww.chiro.org/nutrition/FULL/Phytochemicals_The_Ties_That_Bind.shtml

I AM READING ANOTHER STUDY NOW WHICH SAYS THAT, AMONGST THE SMALL NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS - 20 WOMEN AND 6 MEN - 56% OF THEIR CALORIES COME FROM CARBOHYDRATES AND ONLY 30% FROM FAT. HOWEVER, IT DOESN'T SEEM TO SAY IF IT IS ALL OF THEM OR JUST THE WOMEN THESE FIGURES REFER TO. BUT, I DON'T BELIEVE THAT MEN WOULD REFRAIN FROM EATING PLANT FOODS IF THEY WERE AVAILABLE. AND THEY ARE AVAILABLE.

[Ayashi Foxtail]

Re. the first article- it doesn't surprise me. I mean, it stands to reason that not all members of a species are going to evolve. I mean, the theory says we evolved from apes and apes still exist. Just because something evolved into something else doesn't mean the original form automatically becomes extinct.

[gabbles]

it stands to reason that not all members of a species are going to evolve.

Some humans haven't evolved compassion.

[Gliondrach]

This is about human adaptation to grains and legumes. It mentions that Tibetans adapted to high altitude living in just 3,000 years. So, we could have adapted to cereals and legumes in 10,000 or 50,000 years. Which we have.

0GD_9UXHg_k

As he says in the video, if grains were so poisonous to our ancestors - and we still eat them - only those who could have adapted to eating them would have survived to pass on their genes to us. If we have not adapted to eating grains, that means they weren't bad for us.

And he says that these strange pale-o diet advocates often stress that humans became shorter with the introduction of agriculture. But, as he says, this could have been because the early farmers didn't have the improved crops that came later and had to rely on crops with poor nutrients.

He has 71 videos. I am looking forward to looking at more. You need to pause the videos from time to time to read the charts and figures.

Video 29 is about the Masai. Very interesting. I didn't know that living at high altitude - like the Masai - helps to keep cholesterol levels low. So does having parasitic infections.

[Gliondrach]

There's some excellent info on those videos. I'm currently watching the ones about Ancel Keys, who is the favourite target of the (imagined) paleo diet and Weston-Pryce misinformed-types.

[Gliondrach]

He says something interesting in the last of the Ancel Key videos about the one or two studies which found that vegans had higher percentages of deaths in some diseases. I'd never thought of it before but he said that many vegans are ethical vegans and might not have good diets as it is not their main concern. And more than half were found to be B12 deficient in another study. The poor diets and nutritional deficiencies of some vegans could explain the surprisingly high death rate in some studies.

[Gliondrach]

In one of the videos he refers to a study which showed that Neanderthals were eating nuts 50 or 60 thousand years ago. Post 26 of this thread also points to Neanderthals not being fully meat eaters.

The text in the abstract refers to humans but these are not modern humans. They are Neanderthals, as shown by the authors' keywords: Author Keywords: middle Paleolithic; Mousterian; Levant; plant remains; seasonality; Neanderthal

Journal of Archaeological Science. Volume: 32 Issue: 3 Pages: 475-484

Mousterian vegetal food in Kebara Cave, Mt. Carmel

Lev, E. Kislev, ME. Bar-Yosef, O.

Abstract: This paper reconstructs the vegetal diet of the Middle Paleolithic humans in Kebara cave (Mt. Carmel, Israel) on the basis of a large collection of charred seeds and other vegetal food remains uncovered during the excavations. The human choices of mainly legumes reflects the gathering activities during springtime when often the common hunted species (gazelle and fallow deer) were fat depleted. Minor fall activities are indicated by the collection of acorns and pistachio nuts. This vegetal dietary information adds another aspect to the range of subsistence activities of the late Mousterian occupants of Kebara cave, and sheds further light on the semi-sedentary use of the cave as revealed from analysis of animal bones.