Uncovering the Real Paleo Diet: What Our Ancestors Truly Consumed

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Influencers promoting “paleo”, “carnivore”, or “ancestral” diets believe that eating as early humans did can make us fitter, happier and more productive.

These diets promote fresh, whole foods and are meat-heavy.

Grains and dairy are mostly restricted, as it’s assumed Paleolithic societies didn’t process plant or animal products.

In wellness communities, some treatments are heralded as remedies for various ailments, yet solid scientific backing is often scarce.

But a new study, by lecturer in archaeology Anna Florin from the Australian National University and Monica Ramsey from the University of Toronto Mississauga, dispels the myth that early humans ate anything resembling the social-media-driven fads.

“A lot of this is very pop culture,” Florin told SBS News.

The real paleo diet, she said, “is not one diet, and it’s definitely not focused on meat”.

Florin and Ramsey looked at some of the oldest and most significant sites of human occupation around the world to challenge the narrative on how early humans ate.

“Humans evolved as a species with a fondness for plants, utilizing tools to transform nearly anything into a meal,” Ramsey explained in a recent statement.

“The result is a delightful food rich in carbohydrates, which has become a staple in diets,” he added.

The paper, published in the Journal of Archaeological Research, examined palaeolithic sites around the world, including a rock shelter near Kakadu National Park, home to the continent’s oldest known evidence of occupation, dating back at least 65,000 years.

Madjedbebe sits on the traditional lands of the Mirarr people, and the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation are the knowledge holders of the site.

The shelter contains evidence for processing plants, such as the cooking and peeling of tubers. Residents also ate the hearts of palms.

Florin said: “What they do is char the outside of it [the palm] and leave it roasting overnight, remove the outside and then pound up the starchy part.”

Florin noted, “Global research challenges the stereotype of early humans as solely meat-eaters during the Paleolithic era.”

Madjedbebe, along with significant archaeological sites like Niah Caves in Borneo and Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan contain evidence that humans have always been omnivores.

“Considering the vast time span, humans inhabited diverse regions with varying climates, leading to a wide range of dietary habits,” she elaborated.

‘We are not carnivores’

The Paleolithic period started around three million years ago, and ended around 12,000 years ago when it was replaced by the Neolithic era — considered the dawn of farming or the “agricultural revolution”.

“Paleo just means old, and lithic is stone,” Florin explained.

“It’s a really massive time frame, people have lived in different parts of the world, different environments, different climates, you know, diets were very varied across that.”

Part of the stubbornness of the meat-eating myth is because it’s much easier to find evidence of eating animals in the archaeological record, through bones and stone hunting tools, experts say.

Florin says these discoveries were also made in an era of “Western thinking” that idealised “hunting, masculine men”.

Now, advanced technologies can analyse minuscule remains of charred plant remains from cooking, and things like fruit pips.

“There’s actually a lot of direct archaeological evidence for early humans using and processing a range of plants, including things like grinding and cooking grass seeds, things that are seen as only happening much more recently, before what we sometimes call the origins of agriculture.”

“We shouldn’t be so puritanical in saying ‘this was their diet and this is what we should eat now,’” she said.

“We are not carnivores, and at no point in evolution have we been.”