We seem to be trying to make domestic cats omnivores these days.

Dogs are apparently classed as omnivores and cats as carnivores.

BTW, I disagree that "true" Paleolithic people ate only meat. They were opportunists, and ate whatever came easily to hand, including berries, fruits and nuts. And for those that had fire, roasted tubers (not potatoes necessarily) , many kinds of tree leaves, and flowers.

It's funny how people often seem to respond to that certitude, by asserting their own. None of us were there, we can speculate until the cows come home (ummmm cows), but at least the person who made the assertion in my sig was basing it on science, not opinion. I think it shows quite a bit of naivite to assume you can just wander through the forest eating roots, leaves and berries at will, it's a good way to die and offers little by way of nutrition. Meat from birds, animals and fish is easily acquired by skilled predators, guaranteed not to kill you, and very nourishing. Yes, of course they would have slowly discovered some plants that wouldn't kill them, but I think that food would have been a last resort. I have many books on edible wild foods in north america, and pretty much every page is chock full of warnings. Even walking through the woods, in the north country here, I could kill more grouse than I could eat in a day, ditto fish, not to mention the constant availability of larger game... why would I want to dig up tubers. Have you ever eaten cat tails? I have, they suck! If anything, I think their opportunism and foraging would have had them seeking out insects and larvae, long before they'd resort to eating leaves. Watch Survivorman or Bear Grylls and you'll see the same, it's pretty rare they'll concern themselves with plants. Here's a good example:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=kiggvMw8Vgw

Obviously, towards the end of the upper paleolithic, some peoples had learned to utilize some plants, but it was the seeds of agriculture and the beginning of the end for our health.

I guess it depends on the source; the wikipedia entry has:

Canines, such the Gray Wolf, Red Wolf, Red Fox and coyote. Domestic dogs are broadly considered carnivorous. The Smithsonian Institution has listed them as carnivores, because of their dental makeup and digestive tract.


'course I have a hard time quoting the entry as gospel, given it fails to list humans as carnivores; and I'm sure if I google around a bit more I'll find dogs listed as omnivores as well.

Yeah, it is sad, I actually know someone with a diabetic cat , it's just not right. Oh well, it's still far less awfull than people doing it to themselves and their children.

If you look at recent-day hunter-gatherer diets as recorded in the Ethnographic Atlas, the plant/animal-food ratio is roughly 35:65. This would be a good indication of the Paleolithic food breakup. I'm sure that Paleolithic man grew up with parents that showed them what to eat. Just as hunting skills would have been passed on, so to would the knowledge of how to identify a wide range of edible plants.

...but aside from that, as it is not definitive enough.

Teeth are probably the best way to tell the diet of an animal. Other indicators are body structure, eye placement, brain size, organs, limb formation and weaponry, etc.

Cats and dogs are carnivores. They have no flat molars to grind fibrous plant material. The molars rise into sharp prominences for dividing and separating flesh. They also have strong and sharp canine teeth or considerable length, adapted for seizing and tearing flesh.

Cows are herbivores. They have flat, vertically opposed molars that are ridged with enamel to provide a roughened grinding surface. The jaw also has the freedom of movement to allow the teeth to be moved sideways against each other, to allow the grinding of plant material.

Humans are omnivores. We have a mixture of meat cutting/holding teeth and flat molars, meaning that we are designed to eat flesh and plant material.

There are a huge number of reasons why humans are designed as omnivores and I find it quite strange that someone could say we are carnivores when presented with so much information that says otherwise

ie.

Since you discount the written experiences of explorers for the past few centuries, intermingling with the hunter-gatherers which they encountered, I'm sure you'll understand why I ignore modern man's attempts at surviving. Insects and larvae certainly have their place in a well-rounded hunter-gatherer society, but ALL of them w/o exception made use of whatever food came to hand that wasn't forbidden by taboos. Mankind still takes the easy path, and picking a handful of ripe berries is eminently possible with paleo man. Certain leaves are both refreshing and stomach-filling. Native peoples, including Chinese, have a very long and honourable history of eating non-toxic trees and shoots. Hunger leads to such traditions when the protein sources dry up temporarily.
BTW, cat tail pollen makes nice additions to muffins, although cat tail tuber flour is kind of yukky. But whoever claimed Paleo man only ate tasty foods? Wichety grubs, anyone?


I think you'll find both types of societies lived simultaneously then as they have done into historic times.

And yet I've seen dogs eat any and everything, I even had a dog that would steal raw potatoes from the sack and eat them. I find it surprising, that in the face of such everyday evidence.... etc.

P.S.: I don't believe we were designed; I'm currently reading Richard Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker, if you're interested - it's a great book about exactly that topic.

Oh really, the writings of a motley crew of imperialist theologians, racist despots and mercenary pillagers describing their less advanced victims from the modern era; why should that should supersede the archaeological record and modern science. I don't even see how it relates to the lower-middle paleolithic, modern hunter gatherers are as evolved from that time as we are, they just chose different specializations. I still have yet to see anyone show any evidence from the lower to middle paleolithic, of human ancestors, that had any indicators they ate plants at all; but I would love to see it.

P.S.: Though, even if someone manages to find it, I'll just feel sorry for the poor creatures, having to adapt to eat such a pathetic replacement for food.

just like fish. if you look at a fish's mouth, you can tell whether it eats vegetable matter or protein.

the lion fish has a large mouth in order to eat another fish whole.
the tang has a tiny little mouth to eat vegetable matter off corals and rocks.

Everyone just seems to want to cram everything into whatever pigeon hole fits their arguments. There are many evolutionary vestiges left over from our ancient ancestors, it doesn't mean they developed or mattered during paleolithic times. Obviously we have some useless ancient herbivorous vestiges left, take the appendix for example. Anyway, if you believe the teeth tell the tale, why do Pandas have such big canines?

They do? I've never peered into the pie hole of a panda.

We have starch-splitting enzymes in our spit (salivary amylase).

We have the ability to taste sweet (obligate carnivores do not have this). http://www.npr.org/templates/story/...storyId=4766556

We see in color. Evolutionary biologists have theorized that this is useful for gathering activities rather than hunting activities (such as the ability to distinguish ripe fruit from unripe fruit). Other carnivores, like cats, don't have this ability. I think cats see only two colors and they are very weak colors. http://anthro.palomar.edu/primate/color.htm

Our stomach acid is weaker than that of carnivores. I think carnivores have a pH of 1 and we have a pH of 3.

Our dentition is different than that of carnivores. Also, dental remains can show distinct wear patterns that typify either meat-eating or plant-eating, so regardless of the dentition you can tell what the creature actually ate by its wear patterns. Humans show wear patterns that indicate the ingestion of at least some plant material. This paper discusses tooth wear patterns as well as isotope composition (a point I make a little further down - the remains are fairly young, but they show the point I am making which is that you can use teeth as a diagnostic tool): http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/full/13/3/559 and this paper discusses Neanderthals and says their wear pattern was different from that of the Inuit: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00...STOR-reducePage

We have bacteria in our digestive tracts who thrive on plant matter, whereas carnivore digestive tracts are mostly sterile (the colon has a little bacterial activity in carnivores, but the vast majority get destroyed by the low pH of the stomach acid).

Our gut size and bowel length are longer than that of carnivores', our stomachs empty slower, and our food has a longer transit time than that of carnivores (in order to extract more nutrition of out hard to digest plant foods).

Whenever ancient camp sites are found in the fossil record, along with all the remains of butchered bones, there is ample evidence for the use of plant food as well. Cast off nut and seed shells, concentrated pollen just to name two. Sometimes digging sticks are also found, which were used to help dig up tubers.

On the rare occasion that we find fossilized human excrement, plant matter is present. http://www.scirpus.ca/dung/human.htm and http://www.archaeologyexpert.co.uk/...teAnalysts.html

Fossilized human remains can be chemically analyzed for their carbon and nitrogen isotope content which determines whether the owner's diet was meat or plant based. Usually, the bones show evidence of varying levels of dietary plant matter. http://www.nature.com/nature/journa...s/319321a0.html and http://luna.cas.usf.edu/~rtykot/Bone.html

Everyone who has come in contact with a living hunter-gatherer group and has reported on their diet mentions at least some kind of plant food (inuit and far northern american indians being exceptions due to their extreme environments).

Plant food is very easy to gather and provides an easy source of calories when the game is scarce. Some people who have been on this board in the past advocating pure carnivorism seem to think that the game was so thick you could throw a rock and a bird would fall out of the sky. On the contrary, there are lots of remains that show evidence of starvation in the growth patterns of the bones. It seemed like a regrettably common thing, and I can't see humans passing up plant matter when they are starving. A true carnivore on the other hand, like a cat, would pass up vegetation. Frankly, you also mentioned that plants may be poisonous whereas animals are not. That's not entirely true, there have been remains found of hominids who perished from hypervitaminosis A which could only have happened if the unlucky individual had ingested a carnivore's liver. Also, humans had lots of parasites which I imagine did not contribute to their overall health, and probably came from eating meat.

Now, I don't think anyone here disagrees that we need meat/fat as a large staple part of our diet for good health. In fact, our brain:gut ratio absolutely requires it (see my favorite paper ever, the expensive tissue hypothesis, here: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid...pt=sci_arttext). But to completely discount every other piece of evidence that shows we are also adapted to a certain percentage of plant food is, to me, disingenuous at best.

(I was going to provide a link for each point, but then I realized I had been working on this post wayyyyyy too long and I gave up).

Wow! What a great post, Kallyn! I am going to go digging through those links, should be a lot of good reading there.