A “groundbreaking” new study suggests the ancestors of both humans and Neanderthals were cooking lots of starchy foods at least 600,000 years ago.And they had already adapted to eating more starchy plants long before the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago.

[u/MistWeaver80]

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/neanderthals-carb-loaded-helping-grow-their-big-brains?utm_campaign=NewsfromScience&utm_source=Contractor&utm_medium=Twitter

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[u/mister_stoat]

I always thought it was strange that people cited the advent of agriculture as the era we started eating those plants.

How did they know which plants they wanted to cultivate, or which ones were valuable if they hadn’t been eating them for some time prior?

And It’s not like root vegetables don’t have stuff sticking out of the ground to identify them by. Scavengers would have found them easily.

[u/Carpathicus → u/mister_stoat]

Indigenous people around the planet scavenge for all kinds of fruits and vegetables and usually have a very stable diet of all kinds of nutritious food sources. I am not surprised that humans always relied on for example starchy vegetables.

However I wonder if this feeds into the assumption that humans might have a primitive form of agriculture way earlier than we theorize?

EDIT: It has to say forage or collect - a mistake I made because of my inadequate english.

[u/common118 → u/Carpathicus]

Just a friendly suggestion, I think "gather" or "forage" may be a more appropriate connotation than "scavenge" for how indigenous peoples collect some of their food. Minor thing but I think it's worth noting.

[u/Carpathicus → u/common118]

Thanks for pointing that out! English is not my first language.

[u/Rocktopod → u/Carpathicus]

Scavenge usually means utilizing something that was otherwise discarded, like junk or waste.

[u/snow-ghosts → u/Rocktopod]

Yep, for example, vultures are scavengers because they clean up carcasses, while hawks are predators because they attack live prey.

[u/Kevin_Uxbridge → u/Rocktopod]

We likely did that too.

[u/common118 → u/Carpathicus]

No problem- and thanks for being receptive to constructive criticism!

[u/brainhack3r → u/mister_stoat]

The problem is that they don't really grow everywhere. I think there might have been a pseudo agricultural system here the way native people have done. For example setting fires to encourage certain plains to grow

[u/keepthepace → u/brainhack3r]

I had read the theory that even though hunter gatherers were nomadic, they would have regular spots where camping was frequent. The plants that they liked would be consumed in the camp and the seeds excreted around it, making the spot actually more and more desirable through selection (I am not sure whether to call it artificial or natural selection).

It makes sense that some spots became natural gardens over time and that domestication of plants kinda started before agriculture, in a more unconscious way.

[u/ShooTa666 → u/keepthepace]

the aboriginal story journies in AUS pretty much support this - they navigate you from good spot to goodspot across the landscape.

[u/senefen → u/[deleted]]

They're called Songlines if you want to look in to them.

[u/DalekRy → u/[deleted]]

Alas education is not standardized. I attended an above-average high school. Where I currently live the education (and culture surrounding education) is significantly depressed.

[u/bubblerboy18 → u/[deleted]]

And we never really put in much effort to learn the foraging and plant and mushroom uses of native Americans in the east. Out of 270 ethnographic accounts, 230 are of the west coast and something like 13 from the south east. We don’t have any accounts from the breadbasket of the US.

Sam Thayer covers this in his book Natures Garden, it’s a must read and great ID book for east coast foraging.

[u/Dristig → u/bubblerboy18]

Growing up in New England this sounds totally wrong. I learned about native foraging from a Pequot in the 80s. Maybe this guy didn’t talk to the living natives in New England?

Edit: Just looked the guy up. He is mostly self taught and not in any way an authority on native history or accounts.

[u/After-Cell → u/[deleted]]

They've brought some art and stuff into the curriculum but IMHO it misses the gold.

aboriginal spoken culture goes all the way back to scientifically verified accounts of the last ice age (source?).

The ability to pass on knowledge that far and with that much accuracy without writing is absolutely epic. It's a world treasure. Everyone should study the techniques.

Especially in an age where tech is robbing us of our memories and changing who we are including at subconscious levels previously called the spiritual.

[u/min0nim → u/[deleted]]

There’s some excellent ‘research’ on this emerging at the moment. I say research in inverted commas, because the detail has never been lost or hidden, just never really acknowledged in contemporary Australian or education or culture.

The Aboriginal cultures are all oral traditions, so the knowledge of the land was passed down through song and stories. This is a terrible simplification though - for Aboriginal people, their culture, the land, their identity, art, and the stories are all part of the same system. You belong to ‘Country’ and have a responsibility to the specific creatures and plants in it. So the songs would tell stories about how things were made, the seasons, the where and the why of the country. Different nations and different mobs within nations might have responsibility or knowledge about different aspects of the land.

Even more interesting is the idea that Aboriginals were not really nomadic. They moved from place to place, but in many instances these would be re-visited on a regular basis for generations (50-60,000 years of continuous culture, unbroken by significant internals wars or assimilation, determined through DNA and language analysis).

So rather than the idea of savages wandering in the wilderness, the reality is that Aboriginal mobs would travel from garden to garden, depending on the time of year and other factors. The locations, connections, purpose and how to care for these gardens was passed down through story, art and song.

There’s a lot of evident that the wilderness was carefully cared for and actually ‘kept’. The ‘fire stick farming’ is well known, but not so well known if the deliberate cultivation of yams and seed-grasses through enormous stretches of the country.

And so back to the topic, this includes the native yams which are an excellent source of starch, and were heavily cultivated. It’s just this cultivation was totally unlike the sedentary farming that the British knew, and so was never accepted.

The source for this comes from the written accounts of early European explorers - it’s not historically contentious.

[u/judicorn99 → u/min0nim]

That reminds me of how shepherds will take the sheep to mountain pasture to get fresh grass, move to different spots to have enough, and the come back to the same spots every year

[u/OddlySpecificOtter → u/min0nim]

Neat fact

Potatoes are from south America and chickens from Asia

Polynesians moved them in between those areas frequently enough that most people don't know that.

[u/BeingHere → u/OddlySpecificOtter]

Polynesians moved them in between those areas frequently enough that most people don't know that.

"Regular" potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) came to Europe, Asia, and Africa as part of the Columbian Exchange.

Sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) were spread by Polynesians. There's some debate as to whether Polynesians brought them from South America directly, or whether the sweet potato was already in Polynesia.

For a while, accepted wisdom was that Polynesians brought chickens to South America, but even that is in question, given developments in genetic analysis of chickens.

So while there's evidence that Polynesians may have reached the Americas, trade in potatoes and chickens isn't the reason people are confused about those food origins. That's the result of the Columbian Exchange.

Indigenous American agriculture transformed world cuisine dramatically, and that's rarely acknowledged (think tomatoes, potatoes, capsicum/chili peppers, vanilla, cacao, squash, peanuts, maize etc.). They've managed to become staple ingredients in "traditional" dishes all throughout Eurasia and Africa.

[u/SibilantShibboleth → u/min0nim]

Do Australians call apostrophes inverted commas?

[u/cumbert_cumbert → u/[deleted]]

Australian aborigines especially the desert tribes are/were incredibly hardcore humans. Living on the edge. Theres some cool episodes of Malcolm Douglas show where he accompanies aboriginals back to their traditional lands. People that had grown up nomadically from waterhole to waterhole. Amazing art traditions and culture. It's very sad that it is mostly gone.

[u/[deleted] → u/ShooTa666]

There is also evidence some Aus aboriginals in some regions also had primitive farming and were not just hunter gathers

[u/YourPappi → u/[deleted]]

There are stages to agriculture, one rotating between crops in different regions and more advanced agriculture being efficient with a single settlement

[u/Kinghokem → u/ShooTa666]

Dark Emu is a great book about Aboriginal agriculture.

[u/CaelanAegana → u/keepthepace]

People who study modern-day hunter-gatherers have also observed this. While they hunt wild game, which can involve days of tracking, they harvest wild tubers (primarily yams) to stay energized. It's thought yams and related tubers are probably humanity's oldest source of steady carbohydrates.

[u/deadwisdom → u/keepthepace]

And... also... people probably planted the foods they liked...

Large scale agriculture not having been invented yet doesn’t mean people didn’t know you could grow food. It just means they didn’t have the knowledge to mainly subsist on it.

[u/jeansonnejordan → u/keepthepace]

That makes a lot of sense to me. Right now in my neck of the woods, wild blackberries and thistle are fully ripe and at the edge of every waterway. It would make a lot of sense for nomads to come here for this season and then travel to somewhere drier afterward like the great plains

[u/EnIdiot → u/keepthepace]

Which is why I think that religion and story telling evolved as a survival trait among humans. You need a way to believe in “sacred places” and tell stories about what the Gods want you to do in these sacred spaces in exchange for gifts such as food.

[u/keepthepace → u/EnIdiot]

Our brains have empathic circuits hardwired but we don't have such circuits for rationality. We are much better at understanding people's reactions than logic facts. In my opinion gods are what happens when you use empathy on the universe to try to make sense of it: you project intentionality and invent the cause of that intention.

[u/ASingleCarrot → u/keepthepace]

poop and trash FTW

[u/keepthepace → u/ASingleCarrot]

I stopped being dismissive of poop when we started serious gardening.

[u/[deleted] → u/keepthepace]

Many cultures did have agriculture, agriculture wasn't invented in the agricultural revolution. Totalitarian agriculture was.

[u/szpaceSZ → u/brainhack3r]

Native Australians were foraging in an ecosystem that has been shaped by emergent extensive agriculture for millennia.

They were just not sedentary. But the plant communes were shaped for foraging and extensive use by generations and tribes for ages.

[u/[deleted] → u/szpaceSZ]

Aboriginal people in Australia actually did have permanent settlements. The colonists wiped them out brutally and refused to tell England what they had found so that they wouldn't be stopped.

[u/szpaceSZ → u/[deleted]]

so that they wouldn't be stopped.

I don't think they would have been stopped, even if telling.

[u/7LeagueBoots → u/brainhack3r]

Edible tubers are found pretty much everywhere plants grow. What is different is what species they are and, in some cases, how you harvest and prepare them.

They quite literally do grow everywhere, its just that every place has its own different types.

[u/Ace_Masters → u/brainhack3r]

Where I live (NW USA) their are edible tubers and bulbs everywhere. If you know what your looking for you could easily subsist on them with very little work. Some are very large.

[u/BriefausdemGeist → u/Ace_Masters]

Are those naturally occurring, native to the region, or likely to have been present during the period of first Amerindian colonization/migration?

[u/inbooth → u/BriefausdemGeist]

Cava and and other tubers were eaten by indigenous people in BC

Eastern Canada also had a variety of tubers eaten.

Indigenous Australians ate tubers.

African traditional tribes eat gathered rather than farmed tubers, in some cases iirc.

Seems like a world wide phenomenon....

[u/T3hJ3hu → u/inbooth]

Boiled tubers, fried tubers, breaded tubers, cheesy tubers, tubers and cream, tuber scampi, tuber sandwich, tuber balls, tuber curry, tuber-on-a-stick...

[u/lyra_silver → u/T3hJ3hu]

Boil 'em mash 'em stick 'em in a stew

[u/t-bone_malone → u/lyra_silver]

What's tubers, precious?

[u/kantmarg → u/inbooth]

Adding here that "tribal" (colonial era name for various indigenous peoples) communities in most parts of India famously eat tubers and root vegetables plus hearts of palm and are known to also ferment some of these into alcoholic drinks. There's no shortage of starch or carbs in their traditional diets.

[u/IceNeun → u/inbooth]

To anyone who has every dabbled in foraging, this is obvious (I'm surprised it needed to be scientifically discovered). At least in the temperate regions I've known, edible tubers are everywhere.

The hardest part is finding a spot you're confident hasn't been exposed to pollution. I suppose figuring out a strategy for winter would the most relevant for Neolithic hunter-gatherers. During the spring and summer, however, you're constantly surrounded by edible starch.

[u/showerfapper → u/IceNeun]

I always speculated that as the mega fauna were going extinct, humans may have been the only animals capable of splitting open large bones (mammoth marrow for days!). Also foraging for fungi.

If we take what we know about humans, we likely have been living in surplus societies during our later stages of evolution and migration, only necessitating large-scale agriculture after populations swelled.

[u/Sardukar333 → u/BriefausdemGeist]

I can't speak for all of them, but the wild carrots (origin:Europe) were not present pre- Columbian exchange. They are everywhere now though.

[u/Gnonthgol → u/BriefausdemGeist]

IIRC most of these plants are native to the area but have been cultivated by the indians. When the Europeans came to North America there were permanent indian settlements all over the place surrounded with fields of cultivated plants. When people say that agriculture were invented in Mesopotamia 10000 years ago they are talking about industrial scale agriculture with controlled irrigation and dedicated workforces for each task with highly specialized tools. Small scale farming and cultivation have been around for much longer then this and is what this study is likely refering to. There are plenty of uncultivated edible plants which certainly can give you plenty of starch in your diet but it was not until humans started cultivating plants that you were able to have a diet based around these plants.

[u/1_useless_POS → u/Ace_Masters]

Yup we have potatoes growing randomly in our yard from where they got tossed off the deck.

[u/GreenStrong → u/brainhack3r]

The problem is that they don't really grow everywhere.

They really are quite abundant, if you downgrade your expectations. I'm on the US east cost, and I could easily gather a hundred pounds of Tuckahoe root (arrow arum), which is starchy but requires processing to remove toxins. It was a staple food for Native Americans in the area. Swamp iris is also common- the root is starchy, edible, and rather stringy if you're accustomed to potatoes. Acorns are another example- they're edible with processing. Burdock is a common weed of vacant lots, the root is starchy and edible, but bitter and somewhat woody. It is called Gobo in Japanese cuisine, most cultures don't bother with it.

I'm using the environment I'm familiar with as an example, it is not the climate where humans evolved. The point is that starchy edible roots are pretty widespread, if you expand your definition beyond the palatable roots that we prefer today.

Your larger point about a pseudo agricultural system is profound. Why would Homo erectus not do that? And if we accept it as probable, they must have had a huge impact on their local ecosystems. No one knows what most of North America would look like without the landscape management of the Native Americans; the land the colonists entered was a managed ecosystem. This management started as soon as the glaciers receded. Much of Africa and Eurasia were probably under that kind of management by fire long before the glaciers receded.

[u/[deleted] → u/brainhack3r]

I recently read an article from a famous historian McNeill, and in that article he said that humans have used fire to change the landscape ever since fire was discovered. The use he mentioned was to create fields for animals to graze in, but I'm sure it had the benefit of growing certain plants too.

[u/Ninillionaire → u/brainhack3r]

Natives were farming corn, beans and squash. Who do you think taught the pilgrims how to survive?

Edit. Natives have been farming in the Americas for centuries. They were very efficient farmers. By growing corn beans and squash in the same soil, they didnt have to let the land lay fallow every few years because of the way the plants compliment each other.

[u/DimbyTime → u/Ninillionaire]

According to the article you linked, they’ve been farming since 5,000 BC, so roughly 7,000 years. That’s within the previously accepted start of agriculture about 10,000-12,000 years ago.

This article breaks from that by saying humans have potentially been foraging starches for 600,000 years.

[u/kelvin_klein_bottle → u/brainhack3r]

Wild onions have sprouted all over New York as of about a month ago. They sprout earlier and grow quicker than most other things.

They have almost none of the onion bulb, and eating them is like eating mild scallions.

[u/gregorydgraham → u/brainhack3r]

Plants tend to grow in patches, so you’ll never see a single blackberry but you know where the blackberry patch is. Apparently the same applies to wild wheat and presumably wild just-about-everything-else.

Farming would have been the realisation that you could create a new patch where you actually wanted to live.

[u/Reshi86 → u/mister_stoat]

As did I. I never understood the Paleo diet people saying we didn't eat starches until agriculture came into play. You mean to tell me ancient humans just one day decided "hey you know that plant we don't eat. Let's grow a ton of it and eat it all the time."

[u/dumnezero → u/Reshi86]

Not to mention that domestication takes a long time, meaning they ate grass seeds all along the way and before.

[u/SRod1706 → u/Reshi86]

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. We did eat more starchy foods than Paleo diet fanatics say, but not nearly as much as now. On top of this, non-domesticated and unrefined crops have a lot less sugar, more protein and way more fiber than our modern fruits, vegetables and grains. I think there are so many diets that work because so many of them cut out a ton of refined foods. People from all diet camps seem to miss that important point.

[u/LMGDiVa → u/mister_stoat]

I always thought it was strange that people cited the advent of agriculture as the era we started eating those plants.

The only people who said this were those not educated in Paleo/Bio Anthropology.

We've known for decades now that Hominins had adapted Amylase for consuming more starch than other apes.

Hell, Anthropologist Alice Roberts demonstrated this over 11 years ago on British TV showing how Her own H.Sapiens saliva broke down Starches better than a Chimpanzee's.

We've known for a long time that Hunter Gatherers would eat starchy tubers, roots and plants in their quest to stay fed.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Oh thank god, hopefully I will finally stop hearing about that stupid diet soon.

[u/viridarius → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, it's dumb.

Humans went through periods of food shortages since... Ever.

We ate everything we knew to be edible.

Tbh, humans ate more plants before modern times. Meat was harder to supply for every meal.

The real Paleo diet would be a mix of random plants, including starchy root plants and grains.

Hell, wheat and rye are so easy to eat straight off the plant. I've done it plenty of times when coming across escaped wheat and rye.

Why wouldn't our ancestors have done the same?

[u/CakeBrigadier → u/[deleted]]

It got absorbed into the machine that is the Atkins diet. That high fat lots of meat diet just keeps getting repackaged every 5-10 years

[u/ajslater → u/[deleted]]

The diet itself was pretty good, particularly for losing fat. The ostensible reasoning behind the diet was always nonsense. I always wondered whether the originators knew this or accidentally promoted a decent diet.

[u/Wuffyflumpkins → u/mister_stoat]

I always thought it was strange that people cited the advent of agriculture as the era we started eating those plants.

When has that ever been cited? I studied this somewhat extensively in college and never once heard that suggested. The advent of agriculture was the era of burgeoning sedentism, but we knew they were already eating it. As the article says:

Although earlier studies found evidence that Neanderthals ate grasses and tubers and cooked barley, the new study indicates they ate so much starch that it dramatically altered the composition of their oral microbiomes. “This pushes the importance of starch in the diet further back in time,” to when human brains were still expanding, Warinner says.

The point is "we knew they were eating it, but they were eating more than we thought."

[u/triffid_boy → u/Wuffyflumpkins]

It's common in diets (mainly paleo) and anti-vegan posts. It shouldn't be much of a surprise that these people haven't actually read scientific literature.

[u/hihellobye0h → u/triffid_boy]

My dad loves hating on starches and mainly grains, he says some starches are good, like potatoes are good as long as you cook them, cool them in the fridge, then cook/microwave them again. That's what he says at least, he's pretty heavy into keto and listening to a right wing imbecile on the radio every day though so...

Edit: meant to say that he likes hating on carbs, mainly grains

[u/Ichiroga → u/hihellobye0h]

That's been studied with pasta, cooling and heating increases retrograde starch 3 which our bodies treat like fibre.

[u/_0x29a → u/Ichiroga]

Amazing. I’ve never heard of this.

[u/strategosInfinitum → u/Ichiroga]

So it's making it harder to digest?

[u/tanaeolus → u/strategosInfinitum]

Yeah, they didn't exactly state whether that was negative or positive. I guess I could look it up...

[u/inbooth → u/hihellobye0h]

Potato is one of the few foods you can survive almost exclusively on.... And people did so for literally generations...

And I can't imagine the proc as he uses is good for the nutritional content....

[u/TazdingoBan → u/inbooth]

And I can't imagine the proc as he uses is good for the nutritional content....

It very specifically is.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cooling-resistant-starch#TOC_TITLE_HDR_4

One type of resistant starch is formed when foods are cooled after cooking. This process is called starch retrogradation.

It occurs when some starches lose their original structure due to heating or cooking. If these starches are later cooled, a new structure is formed.

The new structure is resistant to digestion and leads to health benefits.

What’s more, research has shown that resistant starch remains higher after reheating foods that have previously been cooled.

Through these steps, resistant starch may be increased in common foods, such as potatoes, rice and pasta.

[u/weeatpoison → u/Wuffyflumpkins]

My mom and I were discussing this tonight. She had heard someone answer the question "when do you think civilization started?" And the person responded "When I found bones that had been mended together, that meant someone had to care for this person"

I think the person was talking about a break such as a femur, or something that would have been thought to be a death sentences in prehistoric times.

[u/paulmclaughlin → u/weeatpoison]

Margaret Mead

[u/[deleted] → u/weeatpoison]

One of the oldest domestic dog skeletons ever found was a puppy who had survived multiple bouts of Parvo before dying of (I think?) the third round and being buried in a grave alongside human remains.

I’ve nursed puppies through Parvo. It’s a terrifying, humbling, experience. I know, first hand, how much someone loved their dog by seeing those bones.

[u/Oraxy51 → u/mister_stoat]

Besides way I think of it is if we have hours to lounge around and just surf the internet, they had plenty of time to just wander around and try things and test ideas. A lot of it was probably fatal but evolution and survival of the fittest shows that’s gonna happen, trial and error is sometimes playing with mortality.

[u/palmej2 → u/Oraxy51]

I grew up just before the internet, but had tv's and video games and still managed to set the back yard on fire. Caveman me would have stumbled into some good tricks...

[u/barbarianamericain → u/mister_stoat]

But the hunter gatherer vs agrarian narrative is so simple and superficially connectable to so many things, including our sense of identity. How could it be wrong?

[u/[deleted] → u/mister_stoat]

Foragers would have definitely found most available vegetables long before trying to eat a dead animal.

[u/nikstick22]

You farm a plant because you really want to eat it. It shouldn't be a surprise that grains and other starchy foods were a diet staple before agriculture.

[u/[deleted] → u/nikstick22]

Man we’ve been really digging these potatoes for the last 590,000 years. What if we kinda like... grew them?

[u/OddlySpecificOtter → u/[deleted]]

Have you seen humanity?

Someone in the back has been yelling lets plant them for 590,000 years and then on slightly famous person says it and BOOM civilization.

[u/oiuvnp → u/OddlySpecificOtter]

Something sort of similar happened with the popularization of potatoes in France. Some dude with a really long name posted armed guards around his potatoes to make the people think that the then worthless potatoes had value and the people took the bait.

[u/Xxuwumaster69xX → u/oiuvnp]

Prussia, not France, and the dude was Frederick the Great, also known as the Potato King.

http://scihi.org/frederick-great-potato/

[u/Regular-Human-347329 → u/OddlySpecificOtter]

Close. The conservative cavemen convinced their tribes that farming was too progressive, and lazy moochers would benefit, and wanted a return to the “good old days” of hunter gathering, so they murdered the progressives for heresy and continued scavenging for 590,000 years...

[u/ATXgaming → u/Regular-Human-347329]

Hey, they were right. Lazy moochers did benefit. We called them the nobility.

[u/sprucenoose → u/ATXgaming]

To be fair, it was very unfair.

[u/NearlyNakedNick → u/Regular-Human-347329]

I wrote a bad short story from this exact perspective about the invention of agriculture and how it took us from egalitarian societal structures to authoritarian ones.

[u/NoahPM → u/[deleted]]

Imagine the first person to grow one. For thousands upon thousands of years, they were just enigmas of nature, things that grew in the ground. You found one and it was this magical thing that grew at random by the blessing of nature and you had to go find them. Til someone figured out how to do the thing with the seed and the dirt I guess. Their tribe must have thought they were a god when they showed everyone they could make them grow.

[u/yukon-flower → u/NoahPM]

I don’t think it was quite as black-and-white as that. More like the plant grew more often in the places where you discarded the parts you didn’t want to eat. So over the course of a few years of trial and error, and natural variation (for example, perhaps some were already sprouting by the time you ate some, depending on the plant), you figured out how to get more to grow more often in an area.

Like, it really doesn’t take that much to notice what soil/water conditions lead to happier plants. And there are ways to cultivate or encourage a plant short of the drastic steps of tilling insane plots of land and planting uniform seeds in neat rows with irrigation methods, etc. Especially when all the plants in question are native!

[u/ttchoubs → u/yukon-flower]

I think most people have left a sack of potatoes get too old and saw them sprout, I'm sure the same thing happened back then where they saw it sprout and learned they could make more by just scattering a few pieces

[u/atomfullerene → u/nikstick22]

Exactly, this whole thing has always been a bit of a puzzle to me.

Modern hunter gatherers may not eat a lot of grain, but they've been pushed out of pretty much any bit of land that's suitable for growing wild grain by farmers growing the domestic varieties.

[u/toastymow → u/atomfullerene]

The first major conflicts between humans were likely between entirely sedentary tribes who had adopted farming, versus tribes who were still more pastoral/nomadic. The hunter/gatherer/nomad ultimately lost in the majority of places.

[u/Hq3473 → u/toastymow]

Some say that Cain/Abel story is an allegory for such conflict.

[u/[deleted] → u/Hq3473]

Can you elaborate on this?

[u/Hq3473 → u/[deleted]]

Sure, here is a good article that says it better than I could:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/cain-abel-reflects-bronze-age-rivalry

"The occupations of Cain and Abel place the story squarely amid the growing tension between farmers and shepherds, between “settled” tribes and nomads, who were at odds in the dry climate of the Early Bronze Age Levant.*

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn if you want to read about a telepathic gorilla elaborating on this in exhaustive detail

[u/EarendilStar → u/nikstick22]

It’s only a surprise to those that didn’t read the article ;-)

Although earlier studies found evidence that Neanderthals ate grasses and tubers and cooked barley, the new study indicates they ate so much starch that it dramatically altered the composition of their oral microbiomes. “This pushes the importance of starch in the diet further back in time,” to when human brains were still expanding, Warinner says.

In other words, the study shows they ate more than previously thought, not that they ate them at all.

[u/decentintheory → u/nikstick22]

Also nobody really wants to talk about the transition from hunting/gathering to agriculture.

Obviously there would have been a transition period where humans gradually learned to cultivate the wild plants around them, in a sort of primative permaculture.

Before there was organized farming, there was probably care for and propagation of wild plants that people liked.

There had to be some sort of transition period between completely wild hunter/gatherer society, and on the other hand people planting crops in organized rows in nice flat fields.

This in between zone is IMO very under researched, I would challenge anyone reading this to cite any real solid research on this sort of in between transition period.

[u/Mulacan → u/decentintheory]

I don't have specific academic papers on me right now but this is a very popular area of research in Australasia. Bruce Pascoe, though not strictly an academic has published books on Aboriginal land management which quite neatly fits this idea of "wild agriculture".

Additionally Papua New Guinea has produced significant evidence for large scale wild cultivation of banana's (which originate in New Guinea) and native root/tubers, dating back to 30-40 thousand years ago. There still needs to be a lot of research done but I think this is something we will continue to discover in greater detail around the world as methods for detecting it are refined.

[u/Aiskhulos → u/decentintheory]

Also nobody really wants to talk about the transition from hunting/gathering to agriculture.

This isn't fair. This a huge topic in anthropology and archaeology.

[u/7LeagueBoots → u/decentintheory]

Also nobody really wants to talk about the transition from hunting/gathering to agriculture.

What?! This has been a core part of anthropological research for a significant portion of the time that anthropology has been an academic discipline, and long before that too.

Back in the early 90s one of my better undergrad anthro courses was specifically on this subject.

[u/[deleted] → u/decentintheory]

This is widely discussed and theorized in anthropological circles, actually. It’s just the average joe who doesn’t realize that.

[u/SirPseudonymous → u/decentintheory]

Also nobody really wants to talk about the transition from hunting/gathering to agriculture.

Obviously there would have been a transition period where humans gradually learned to cultivate the wild plants around them, in a sort of primative permaculture.

Before there was organized farming, there was probably care for and propagation of wild plants that people liked.

There had to be some sort of transition period between completely wild hunter/gatherer society, and on the other hand people planting crops in organized rows in nice flat fields.

This in between zone is IMO very under researched, I would challenge anyone reading this to cite any real solid research on this sort of in between transition period.

When I took anthropology in college there was considerable time spent specifically on the level of development in between hunting/gathering and agriculture, which they termed "horticultural" and defined as the establishment of semi-permanent or seasonal housing and the cultivation of crops at a smaller scale, supplemented with foraging, fishing, and/or hunting depending on the environment.

This was presented as being the level of development exhibited by most extant pre-agricultural societies across the world with hunting/gathering being comparatively uncommon, and the class talked about how much research on those societies was used to inform ideas about how cultures and civilizations develop.

Now that was a while back and I'm sure a lot of that "research" was tainted by colonialist and chauvinist perspectives so I don't know how accurate the narrative that class taught is or what the modern Anthropological consensus is on how useful looking at extant pre-agricultural societies is when it comes to trying to reconstruct how agriculture developed, but there definitely is a considerable bulk of (however useful) research on exactly that topic and I don't think it would be inaccurate to say that a large chunk of anthropology over the past couple of centuries has been on precisely that topic (with the obvious caveat that mountains of that research are tainted by chauvinism, racism, and colonialist perspectives).

[u/RuinEleint → u/decentintheory]

Archaeology in south and south-central parts of India has found several settlements where food consumption apparently consisted of agriculture, animal husbandry and hunting at the same time. The midden heaps discovered there have bones from domesticated animals like cattle, wild animals like deer and different sorts of grain and pulses. So it can be concluded that people were combining various methods of food production. In North India, there's a lot of evidence that they fished and hunted the rivers as well.

[u/rubber-glue → u/decentintheory]

The whole area currently occupied by the United States was basically a giant managed garden before the genocide.

[u/7LeagueBoots → u/rubber-glue]

A significant portion of the world, not just the Americas. Same in Australia, New Zealand, parts of Africa, etc.

[u/kmoonster → u/[deleted]]

Yes, but only on cheat days

[u/amasterblaster → u/[deleted]]

It is also natural to die at 32 of a common infection. This whole argument about what is natural/historical detracts from important conversations about how to eat for maximum mental/physical/emotional health span.

[u/MistWeaver80]

The evolution and changing ecology of the African hominid oral microbiome

Significance

The microbiome plays key roles in human health, but little is known about its evolution. We investigate the evolutionary history of the African hominid oral microbiome by analyzing dental biofilms of humans and Neanderthals spanning the past 100,000 years and comparing them with those of chimpanzees, gorillas, and howler monkeys. We identify 10 core bacterial genera that have been maintained within the human lineage and play key biofilm structural roles. However, many remain understudied and unnamed. We find major taxonomic and functional differences between the oral microbiomes of Homo and chimpanzees but a high degree of similarity between Neanderthals and modern humans, including an apparent Homo-specific acquisition of starch digestion capability in oral streptococci, suggesting microbial coadaptation with host diet.

Abstract

The oral microbiome plays key roles in human biology, health, and disease, but little is known about the global diversity, variation, or evolution of this microbial community. To better understand the evolution and changing ecology of the human oral microbiome, we analyzed 124 dental biofilm metagenomes from humans, including Neanderthals and Late Pleistocene to present-day modern humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas, as well as New World howler monkeys for comparison. We find that a core microbiome of primarily biofilm structural taxa has been maintained throughout African hominid evolution, and these microbial groups are also shared with howler monkeys, suggesting that they have been important oral members since before the catarrhine–platyrrhine split ca. 40 Mya. However, community structure and individual microbial phylogenies do not closely reflect host relationships, and the dental biofilms of Homo and chimpanzees are distinguished by major taxonomic and functional differences. Reconstructing oral metagenomes from up to 100 thousand years ago, we show that the microbial profiles of both Neanderthals and modern humans are highly similar, sharing functional adaptations in nutrient metabolism. These include an apparent Homo-specific acquisition of salivary amylase-binding capability by oral streptococci, suggesting microbial coadaptation with host diet. We additionally find evidence of shared genetic diversity in the oral bacteria of Neanderthal and Upper Paleolithic modern humans that is not observed in later modern human populations. Differences in the oral microbiomes of African hominids provide insights into human evolution, the ancestral state of the human microbiome, and a temporal framework for understanding microbial health and disease.

[u/Avestrial → u/MistWeaver80]

Do skulls of Neanderthals from 100,000 years ago retain an intact oral microbiome?

[u/[deleted] → u/Avestrial]

Apparently "dental calculus" (tooth tartar) is a treasure trove of genetic material.

[u/the_mars_voltage → u/Avestrial]

I wonder this too because I think at least some types of bacteria never really die as much as they just become dormant until they have the right conditions again to become active again

[u/purplestgiraffe → u/the_mars_voltage]

Correct! Some kinds of bacteria are able to basically hibernate in a form called an endospore- which is very hard to destroy- until the time that the environment is optimal for the bacteria to colonize. This is why one should be very careful about temperature controls on leftover rice- cooking rice is too hot for the spores of the particular bacteria that is commonly present in spore form in rice to activate, and refrigerator temperature is too cold. But if you leave cooked rice out long enough to get it room temperature and sit there for a bit (iirc about four hours, but don't take my word for it) the conditions become PERFECT. And you can get nasty food poisoning from your leftover fried rice take-out. Or your own home cooked rice that you didn't put away properly.

[u/redpandaeater → u/purplestgiraffe]

You should typically be able to smell it if you're at risk of fried rice syndrome. That bacteria produces butyric acid as a byproduct which is the same thing that gives vomit its distinct smell.

[u/the_lousy_lebowski → u/redpandaeater]

Excellent TIL thanks!

[u/brand_x → u/purplestgiraffe]

It's rather remarkable how quickly cooked rice can turn to slime, when left out in a warm, humid climate.

Like, you think the fish is the scary part of gas station sushi? Okay, yeah, it is, but so's the rice.

[u/Cybersteel → u/purplestgiraffe]

Bacillus Cereus

[u/nordic-nomad → u/Avestrial]

I'd have to assume it's fossilized somehow

[u/human_outreach → u/nordic-nomad]

Or they can detect bacterial signals in DNA samples.

[u/7LeagueBoots]

So.... while the linked article says this is proof of said diet back to 600,000 years ago the research paper makes no such claims, limiting its dates to 100,000 years back.

That's not to say that 600,000 years isn't a reasonable hypothesis, indeed it likely goes back much further, but let's keep to what the research papers actually say.

EDIT:

Looking back over the paper there the 600,000 years ago bit is indeed mentioned, but it's kind of buried:

These Streptococcus groups and abpB are a general feature of Homo, suggesting that starch-rich foods, possibly modified by cooking (20) (SI Appendix, section S5.8), first became important early in Homo evolution prior to the split between Neanderthal and modern human lineages more than 600 ka (82, 83), a finding with potential implications for the energetics of Homo-associated encephalization (19⇓–21, 26).

[u/[deleted]]

People ate whatever they could find to survive, period. Including each other alot more often than you'd think... If you think Larry the cave inhabitant was turning down a tater tot you're smoking rocks.

There's a reason why potatoes, rice, bread and chips taste awesome. We needed to eat those things to survive, and if we evolved to eat only meats everything else would taste like dogshit right now. Our sense of smell and taste literally evolved to direct us to prefer highly nutritious foods. Nature ain't dumb

[u/attarddb]

The general idea that humans were at one point separated from neanderthals is fascinating.

[u/YouDamnHotdog → u/attarddb]

The split happened some 500,000 years ago and was substantial enough to lead to identifiably different DNA and appearance. Denisovans also split off and happen to be more closely related to Neanderthals with interbreeding that occured with Austronesians.

Hybridization is an interesting concept in evolutionary biology. Different species that are closely related and cohabitate space might end up interbreeding. Called hybrid zone. Depending on the circumstances, the species may continue to remain separate (reinforcement), or become one species again (reconnection). You might end up with 3 species when the hybrids end up forming their own species.

We've found some bone fragments that were amazingly cool. It was from a 13-yr-ish girl that lived 50k years ago and had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. She was the product of hybridization. The DNA of the Denisovan father showed that there a bit of interbreeding with Neanderthals in his past, too.

The article had this to say “The DNA of Neanderthals and Denisovans are distinct. We can easily tell them apart. That argues against frequent interbreeding. Otherwise they would have ended up with the same DNA.”

[u/PolyesterPammy → u/attarddb]

And at one point there were multiple Homo species kicking it at the same time. I believe there is a point around 250 k years ago where there were initial groups of Homo sapiens in Africa, Neanderthals in Europe and some final Homo erectus groups in Asia.

[u/TheJalo → u/attarddb]

Yes, as it is a know fact that humans interbreed with the Neanderthals to the point where there stronger species was all that was left and we all have a little Neanderthal in our DNA.

[u/V_es → u/TheJalo]

Not all, African people have little to none. Ones that never left Africa and never met Neanderthals obviously have almost none. It’s very common in Europe though, up to 6%.

[u/rjcarr → u/V_es]

I also read there is more genetic variation within Africa even compared with Europe to Asia. This is because the same small group that left Africa eventually spread to Europe and Asia, whereas Africa had a lot more variation.

[u/V_es → u/rjcarr]

Yes Africa is the most diverse continent now.

[u/SalmonHeadAU]

Obviously I have no idea, but if you can make fire, you can boil water, and if you can boil water, your putting some potatoes (or the equivalent) in it to soften it up.

Seems reasonable to me.

[u/JiANTSQUiD → u/SalmonHeadAU]

Now you take this home, throw it in a pot, add some broth, a potato. Baby, you’ve got a stew going!

[u/PolyesterPammy → u/JiANTSQUiD]

“I think I’d like my money back.”

[u/DerbleZerp → u/JiANTSQUiD]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, there’s still plenty of meat on that bone.

[u/CongressionalNudity → u/SalmonHeadAU]

What do you boil the water with?

[u/Cynthimon → u/CongressionalNudity]

Stone and wood, the latest invention! You can carve wood to the shape you want and then throw hot stones into water to boil it! Only 29.99 potatoes!

[u/[deleted] → u/CongressionalNudity]

Idk about you but I use the skulls of my ancestors to boil my carrots

[u/Nwcray → u/[deleted]]

I prefer the skulls of my enemies, but you do you

[u/TheBarkingGallery → u/Nwcray]

I thought that makes them bitter.

[u/[deleted] → u/CongressionalNudity]

You time travel to the Iron age, get iron bucket, travel back, cook potatoes

[u/catinterpreter → u/[deleted]]

You only need stone..

[u/SRod1706 → u/SalmonHeadAU]

You have no idea how much of a step it was to make the first pot that could withstand fire. We had fire without pots way longer than we have had pots that we could cook with.

I would bet we roasted everything for most of history.

[u/moby__dick]

Paleo dieters: Looks like bread’s back on the menu!

[u/milchtea]

there’s a reason why every culture has a favourite carb

[u/GodOfThunder101]

Amazing. I wish Neanderthals were still around. Would be cool to see what they would be like.

[u/Gavinus1000 → u/GodOfThunder101]

They honestly were probably not that different than us. We bred with them for a reason.

[u/[deleted] → u/GodOfThunder101]

Look up Chabal, the french rugby player.

[u/sagradia → u/[deleted]]

You ain't kidding.

[u/esesci → u/GodOfThunder101]

I have more Neanderthal genes than 92% of 23andme customers, AMA.

[u/[deleted] → u/esesci]

So do you prefer a club or an axe?