So contrary to common belief, palaeolithic man was not a raging carnivore. He was an omnivore who loved his greens. He would have gathered seeds to eat, used plants and herbs for flavouring and preserving fish and meat, and collected wild berries.
At first glance, the Paleo diet does have a lot of things in common with what the actual Paleolithic man would have eaten. The diet is comprised mainly of meats and fish that could have been hunted by prehistoric man, and plant matter that would have been gathered, including nuts, seeds, vegetables and fruits.
Hunter-gatherer culture was the way of life for early humans until around 11,000 to 12,000 years ago. The lifestyle of hunter-gatherers was based on hunting animals and foraging for food.
Plants - These included tubers, seeds, nuts, wild-grown barley that was pounded into flour, legumes, and flowers. Since they had discovered fire and stone tools, it is believed that they were able to process and cook these foods.
The diet of the earliest hominins was probably somewhat similar to the diet of modern chimpanzees: omnivorous, including large quantities of fruit, leaves, flowers, bark, insects and meat (e.g., Andrews & Martin 1991; Milton 1999; Watts 2008).
New research into deposits found on seven different metal cauldrons dating as far back as 3700 BCE has shown that early populations of the Caucasian steppe during the Mykop period (3700-2900 BCE) consumed a meat-rich diet of primarily cows, sheep, deer, and goats as reported by ScienceDaily at the end of last week.
In ancient times, people usually ate one daily meal that was considered unique and abundant to any other time for eating. For example, the ancient Romans consumed only one meal around midday, considering it a healthy choice and the only one able to guarantee good digestion.
People have been eating eggs for a very long time— about six million years! The first people to eat eggs took them from nests in the wild and ate the eggs raw. There is no way to know who ate the first egg. What researchers do know is people living in Egypt and China were the first to keep hens.
Given the ethnohistorical evidence, hominids living 3 million years ago or more could have scavenged meat from decomposing carcasses, even without stone tools for hunting or butchery, and eaten their raw haul safely long before fire was used for cooking, Speth contends.
By the time modern humans emerged roughly 50,000 years ago, our ancestors had adopted an omnivorous diet of cooked starches, meats (including organs), nuts, fruit and other plant foods.
So contrary to common belief, palaeolithic man was not a raging carnivore. He was an omnivore who loved his greens. He would have gathered seeds to eat, used plants and herbs for flavouring and preserving fish and meat, and collected wild berries.
More recent analyses based on Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas (3) have, in contrast, suggested that most (73%) of hunter-gatherer societies derived >50% of their calories from meat (including wild game and fished foods), while only 14% of societies derived >50% of their calories from plants (4).
The Stone Age people died - in respect to present - very early. Poor hygiene, illnesses, bad nourishment and burden of labour lead to an average life expectancy of 20-25 years. Many children already died in their first 4 years. In the Bronze and Iron Age, the adults already got a bit older: 30-45 years old.
Well, we can safely assume dinosaurs never fell prey to humans – mainly because the two never even met (despite what the Jurassic Park films suggest). Dinosaurs had already been extinct for about 62 million years by the time modern humans started roaming the planet!
Eggs are much older than chickens. Dinosaurs laid eggs, the fish that first crawled out of the sea laid eggs, and the weird articulated monsters that swam in the warm shallow seas of the Cambrian Period 500 million years ago also laid eggs.
Eggs are a dietary staple in many areas of the world, but just because they are part of many popular dishes doesn't mean they are healthy to eat. While eggs are often viewed as a cheap and ready source of protein, consuming eggs often comes at a high cost to animal welfare, the environment, and public health worldwide.
Back to our original question: with amniotic eggs showing up roughly 340 million or so years ago, and the first chickens evolving at around 58 thousand years ago at the earliest, it's a safe bet to say the egg came first. Eggs were around way before chickens even existed.
Choosing mostly seasonal fruits and vegetable, and a variety of beans, nuts, seeds and grains is the cornerstone of their dietary pattern. The long-lived people in the Blue Zones don't avoid dairy foods or gluten. They don't calculate the glycaemic index of their meals.
"The Romans believed it was healthier to eat only one meal a day," food historian Caroline Yeldham told BBC News Magazine in 2012. "They were obsessed with digestion and eating more than one meal was considered a form of gluttony. This thinking impacted on the way people ate for a very long time."
In ancient Rome, the custom was to eat one large meal, plus two small, light meals. In the US, our eating habits are now typically organized around our workdays or school days. But cultural norms aside, there's no scientific reason for you to eat exactly three meals every day.
During the Ice Age, hunting and fishing would have been the main source of food for humans, as there wouldn't have been many fruits, seeds, or other plant parts available due to the cold climate. Humans hunted large animals, like the woolly mammoth and mastodon.
Some of the earliest evidence she found of eating tubers and cereals dates back 40,000 years, to the Paleolithic era. Neanderthal remains discovered in caves in Iraq and Belgium show that our cousins likely ate water lily tubers, and grains from relatives of wheat and barley grasses.
