How Stone Age humans unlocked the glucose in plants

April 9, 2020

While the evidence around meat eating is clear, the role of plant foods is less understood.

‘Plants were the staples. They were the foods that formed the basis of our calories in most environments,’ said Dr Amanda Henry, a paleobiologist and associate professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

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.

‘(We’ve found) evidence of heating food in the presence of water which suggests they were boiling them,’ said Dr Henry. ‘Changes in the starch granules – which suggests this type of cooking – were found on the dental calculus (tartar).’

Other researchers have found earlier evidence of cooked tubers from South Africa in a fireplace dating back more than 100,000 years.

The earliest evidence of flour dates back 30,000 years and was found in Russia, the Czech Republic and Italy.

Diversity was integral to people’s diets, as was their ability to move to new regions. ‘Plant foods vary a lot between environments. So, every time a human went to a new place, they had to learn what was edible, what was going to kill them and what was medicine,’ she said. ‘There is no one size fits all diet. Anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something.’

Source and full article: https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2020/03/30/how_stone_age_humans_unlocked_the_glucose_in_plants_111337.html