The Most Annoying Ways in Which Prehistory is Misrepresented

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No, we are herbivores because we don't need to eat meat at all. Because we can live well on plant-only diet, and we can't live on meat-only diet


What we know of mankind goes contrary to meat-eating. Hypothesis about carnivorism is like believing in flat earth. Once everyone believed it's true, but it's not. Lack of proof is not a proof. Theory can't be contrary to logic.

Lack of evidence is not an evidence. Why are you assuming we've checked every inch of the earth (below the seas also, because >12000 years ago sea level was much lower than we have today)? Of course >x years ago grains were growing naturally, are you implying we couldn't eat them because of that? Are you claiming that man started farming grains out of the blue, thinking "in some few thousand years it'll become good for eating"? No, we've started farming them, because we've been already dependent on them, so it was worth the effort to learn how to grow them by ourselves. And the fact they just browsed doesn't mean they couldn't store it for later.


No, the old varieties became very small, probably by climate changes and our evolutionary pressure (we ate the biggest of them, so the remaining became smaller and smaller, just like it happens now with fishes) that's why at some point we faced extinction, and that's why we've started to eat meat. To survive, not because it was better, it was only better than nothing at all, and for that time period we couldn't get enough of grains for the reason you wrote.


Define what do you mean by "man". Genetically we are exactly the same as people from 40000 years ago. It just looks like for 30000 years absolutely nothing had happened, only when we've started farming grains, suddenly our civilization started to grow. So it looks like we needed grains not meat to advance civilization, and that's contrary with arguments for carnivorism.


It doesn't matter, because we used to live and evolved in Africa, near the equator, not? And in the glacial period productivity of Africa was much, much bigger than today, even Sahara was full of plant and animal life. Those of us who lived further from the equator relied on meat, I agree, but we call them neandertals and they died out for that reason.

They were growing naturally, but were basically grasses. We weren't dependent on them, but we became dependent on them when we our ancestors were finally able to settle down and begin farming. Also, during the glaciation, their range was much more limited.



They got smaller? Where do you get that from? They grow to the size they are now because of thousands of years of selective breeding. That didn't come about naturally.

There is evidence of man eating grains (a wild sorghum) early in the last glaciation, but strictly in the more equatorial regions where it would have been warm enough for them to grow. There is no evidence that those grains were domesticated. Most likely, for the much smaller population of the time, collecting wild grains was sufficient.

That said, there is no evidence that grains were the major part of their diet. There is far, far, far more evidence of hunting activity back then than there is of eating grains.



From what I understand, the earliest of what we would identify as being distinctly man appeared about two and a half million years ago, about the time that this ice age began. Our distant ancestors, the chimpanzees, go back much further than that.

What?

The Sahara was greener in the past, but that wasn't during the glacial periods. It was when it was warmer than now about ten thousand or so years ago. During the glaciations, the Sahara was generally larger and drier than now, not wet and green.

Both of you are likely wrong.

We didn't harvest grains, nor did we hunt big game until recent millennia.

Our stomachs are not designed to digest meat. We are not a primate version of leopards or wolves.

Our ancestors were likely omnivorous leaning vegitarians much like modern chimps who ate mostly fruits, roots, veggies, but....supplemented it with occasional animal protein from eating...not glamorous big game...but most likely from eating bugs (grubs and termites). That's most likely where the B12 came from.

My own guess is that, as we ventured out of the forests and on to the Savannahs, we probably advanced from termite fishing (like modern chimps) to "enhanced scavenging" by stealing game killed by other predators. Leopards like to keep a larder of slain game in trees hanging from tree limbs. Our ancestors might have taken to stealing from the larder while the leopard was away (even if the meat was too putrid for our taste we could still break open the bones for the marrow). And we might have observed cheetahs making a kill, and then we would ambush and mob the cheetah to steal its game. That may have set us on the course to liking red meat. And then millions of years later, when we crossed the line from Australopithecus to Homo we might have gradually evolved the executive skills and weapons to launch big game hunts of our own. But even then the evidence for big game hunting is scant and contraversial until late in human prehistory.

If they were just grasses, then how come we felt the need to farm them? Predicted they'll become something useful for us? If we were successful meat-eaters then why we needed them so much to advance our civilization? Do you know any advanced civilization that doesn't farm them, and relies on meat only? According to you we eat them less than 10000 years, it's definitely too short to have any impact on our biology, then can you show me any meat-only culture? It's obvious that during the last glaciation they've become more limited, but how does it support claim that we evolved as meat eaters?

I've explained that already, you don't read what I'm writing. You talk about thousands of years, I'm talking about millions of years. Thousands of years ago they were bigger than in the last glaciation period, Our evolutionary pressure resulted in them getting smaller, to reverse that we've started to farm them. I'm not saying they were huge before, they were smaller than now, but it was enough, we were smaller, and were willing to spend more time gathering them.


Once again, you talk about the last glaciation, I've explained it already. And hunting activity doesn't mean eating activity.


Chimpanzees are not our distant ancestors, they are our closest cousins. Have you ever wondered why they didn't turned out as smart as we? The only difference in our diet are grains.


Not quite, Sahara goes through 41000 year cycle of being wet and dry, it has nothing to do with glaciation, but it gives evolutionary pressure for grains to evolve. Grass is unable to survive longer drier periods. In periods when climate was becoming drier, only grasses that developed grains were able to survive. Africa started to dry around 2.5 million years, and it's the most logical time of first grains.

Following this, why WE survived, not neandertals? Why WE are smart, not chimps? As you say we ate the same things... Neandertals definitely ate more meat than us, and they had larger brains... Maybe because it's not meat that's making a difference? And to work better brain needs fuel, and that only grains could provide?

you're like a confused Brit who thinks that the "Queen Elizabeth" who defeated the Spanish Armada was the same "Queen Elizabeth" who knighted the Beatles. you're lumping together two different periods of prehistory.

I was talking about the period starting around 8 million years ago (we haven't found fossils yet for that) when humans and chimps branched off from each other (according to DNA evidence), up until the first hominid fossils appear around four million years ago - which were the various "southern apes of Africa" (australopithicines) like Lucy, who were still not human but were clearly on the human lineage.

Lucy was only slightly smarter than a chimp, and probably followed an open country version of the Chimp lifestyle that involved more scavenging for meat than chimps do today, but still not big game hunting.

If you're talking about Neanderthals (fully human, but not quite anatomically modern humans like us) The "us" I was talking about includes all members of the Genus Homo(extinct or extant) including Neanderthals. The australopithecines gave rise to the first archaic humans maybe two millon years ago (homo hablis/homo erectus) in Africa. That was LONG before either anatomical moderns or Neanderthals appeared. So Neanderthals are part of that "us".

So the question of why one later subgroup of homo was left standing when the others are not is a different question.


Homo Erectus (Peking Man, Java Man) spread out of Africa and all over Europe and Asia, and probably did finally get the knack for bringing down big game: through group strategy, the use of fire to scare animals, and the use heavy spears to lance game. So both Neanderthals and Anatomical moderns inherited the talent from that common ancestor. Both improved upon it. Anatomical moderns used light weight spears launched from throwing sticks (basically a lever that extends the length of your arm that you launch the spear from). Not as good as the later invention of archery, but gives you far better range than just using your arm. The Neanderthals relied on big heavy spears. So there were differences between the two groups which may, or may not ,have had to do with why one group prevailed over the other.

I'm also starting to hate "stock dinosaurs".

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StockDinosaurs

It annoys me because the true diversity of the dinosauria clade isn't being represented. Why should Tyrannosaurus rex be used to represent all giant theropods? Why should Velociraptor represent all small theropods? Why should Stegosaurus represent all stegosaurs? Why should Triceratops represent the entire Ceratopsia clade?

If we stick to stock dinosaurs, the evolution of dinosaurs is lost. Most of the well-known dinosaurs clearly evolved from earlier dinosaurs. I'll use the Ceratopsia clade as an example. Early ceratopsians, such as Chaoyangsaurus, were small bipeds. They had no horns, and they only had the beginning of what would one day be a magnificent neck frill.

These archaic ceratopsians, over millions of years, gave rise to more advanced ceratopsians such as Archaeoceratops, Graciliceratops, Protoceratops, Zuniceratops, Anchiceratops, and Triceratops. See? The evolutionary line of descent is clear. This evolutionary science is lost on those who only focus on the most advanced members of each clade.

I also hate how prehistoric amphibian diversity is downplayed in educational shows about evolution. Too many educational shows portray amphibians as merely being a bridge between fish and reptiles.

In reality, prehistoric amphibians were diverse and fabulous in their own right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiderpeton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploceraspis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelospondylus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koolasuchus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beelzebufo

I hate it when TV shows about the Devonian focus only on the evolution of stem-tetrapods and nothing else ... as though that was the only thing that happened during this highly eventful time period.

Other Things That Happened During The Devonian

- Land plants rapidly evolved from bush-sized plants to tree-sized plants.
- Placoderms become immensely successful ... and then they went extinct near the end of the period.
- The first ammonites evolved.
- All trilobites went extinct except for the order Proetida. They would later go extinct at the end of the Permian.
- There were lots of cool prehistoric sharks, such as Cladoselache.
- Coelacanths first evolved.
- Some of the lobe-finned fish that lived during this time period were massive predators.
- Ratfish first evolved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimaera
- Terrestrial arthropods diversified. Some of these arthropod groups no longer exist today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigonotarbida
- There were giant fungi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites
- The last anomalocarids become extinct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schinderhannes_bartelsi

I also hate the phrase "The dinosaurs lived in Pangaea."

Pangea started to break apart not long after the dinosaurs first evolved. Most dinosaurs lived after the breakup of Pangaea.

The last non-bird dinosaurs lived during the late Cretaceous. During the late Cretaceous, the world was even more broken up than it is now. Central America was not connected to South America. The Arabian Peninsula was not connected to the rest of Asia.

We like to think that there are seven continents, but that's just wrong. The Americas are connected. Therefore, the Americas are just one continent. Also, Asia is connected to Europe and Africa. This brings the total number of continents down to four. In the late Cretaceous, there were five continents: North-Central America, South America, Africa-Arabia, Eurasia, and Antarctica-Australia.

Plants contain very little. We do not technically NEED to eat meat (neither does a cat, for that matter), but we are biologically designed to eat that nevertheless.



We have the exact same field of vision as a predator, and an excellent vision compared to other animals. That's typically true for predators. Prey animals tend to have eyes further to the side, and are often very near-sighted. Color-vision conflicts with the ability to detect pheromones, which does still are dependent on.



A jaw system like that of a chimpanzee would be in the way of a more developed brain.



Our teeth are still perfectly capable of eating meat, just not killing the prey. Using a tool to do that instead is objectively-speaking more efficient.



A lot of animals who eat and digest meat have taeniae coli (although not in the order carnivora, which cats and dogs belong to). Some strictly vegetarian animals (eg. sirenians) also lack taeniae coli. Actually, one of the reasons why our jaw system can generate more force than that of an ape is that our ancestors ate bone marrow.

Dogs and other domesticated animals cannot digest raw chicken that's been in the fridge for a couple of days either.



Or bone marrow. Nobody ate grains before 30,000-40,000 years ago.



Yes, I have. If the meat is tender, it's entirely possible if you do not take very big bites. Eating raw, lean fish is very easy. Have you ever tried eating raw grains that aren't ground or used in bread, porridge or anything similar? Farming began around 10,000 years ago -- most likely due to food shortages.



Why is a cat more intelligent than a rabbit, or a dog more intelligent than a cow? Grass doesn't run away, and doesn't fight back; prey animals do and a predator also needs to be able to outsmart it if it is big.



A man with a gun can easily kill both the lion and the zebra.



Pound-for-pound only 50% stronger, according to recent tests. Roughly as strong as an amish farmer or a massai hunter, pound-for-pound.

An eagle has almost no muscle mass apart from in it's feet. The ability to dive down and suprise it's prey proved to be superior for a flying animal. A cheetah doesn't have much muscle mass either, instead it relies on speed.



No.



There's fiber in pretty much anything not animalic, and the 1990s trend with high-fiber diets did more harm than good (too much fiber is one of the things people mistake for gluten intolerance). Surplus proteins are also converted to energy. Surplus carbohydrates are converted to fat.



It's an indication that modern lifestyle is too sedentary and modern food contains less proteins than we need.

Then why you write we stole the game killed by other predators if we couldn't digest it?


There's no problem with B12 in natural environment. And if we ate the same food, then why they are not as smart as we are?

If the meat was too putrid then bone marrow was also. By crushing the bones we would introduce the killer bacteria inside the bone marrow, not?



How to ambush a cheetah on open savannah using only few stones carried with you?


The most crucial question is how we could get to that? Using only stones at first? It's impossible.


I'm not, it was just a shortcut, posting problems as fast as possible


But it doesn't really matter for "our" evolution. The revolution started around 2.5 million years ago, and the question is why? One cannot explain it by carnivorism, it creates too many contradictions with how evolution works.

We still don't really know how our lineage really looks like, we can only make some guesses and try to paint a bigger picture.

I was talking about biological features, and why they evolved, that's why I used neandertals in discussion. If we talk about chronological order, at first we started to eat grains (pseudo-grains), and we were evolving as plant eaters, when we conquered the fire some of us started to eat meat, those became neandertals, those who stayed with plant only diet became modern humans. We faced extinction due to grains shortages we caused. Some of us were able to eat meat (probably due to some neandertal genes), but because we also ate the same food as neandertal's prey we caused their extinction. It's very late, I can't explain it better for now. I'll probably start a new thread about it when I'll have time to gather everything together.

It's not, it's the crucial question. And you can't truly answer it when you assume that we all evolved as meat-eaters.


It doesn't explain anything. If we were hunting the same prey, we should disappear also. The only explanation is: we had to rely on different food. It couldn't be meat, because neandertals were better hunters than we. So what was it? If we consider our reliance on grains, and our biological features (after supposedly 2 million years of our evolution meat doesn't smell nice to us, it doesn't smell at all for most of the time, what would be crucial if we were eating it, on the other hand raw ripe grains have very nice strong smell after 10000 years of evolution only, and we supposedly never ate them raw? It's contrary to how evolution works), we must assume we ate grains back then. Only grains could provide enough glucose for growing brain.

Plants contain enough for us. If we were biologically designed to eat meat, we would NEED to eat it. We're not designed, even one wrong bacteria found in raw meat can kill us, you should expect more from over 2 million years of evolution?


Our vision evolved when we were still monkeys living on trees, and it later became useful for precise picking objects. It presents major flaw when used for hunting: we must rely entirely on it, since we can't smell nor hear very well, so it creates a problem how to avoid predators and hunt at the same time.
I don't understand that thing about pheromones, I don't see any required connection between eyes and nose.


Evolution doesn't work like that. It doesn't have a vision/purpose: "let's grow them bigger brains, but for that we must make their jaw smaller". it's rather: "Their foods no longer contain enough proteins, so their jaw must became smaller, and it gives a room for growing bigger brains, is bigger brain better? Do we have enough energy to sustain it? Then do it!". If we ate more meat, our jaw would became larger, our muscles would grow, consuming the energy needed for bigger brain.


Have you seen any predator with teeth like that? Our teeth are perfectly capable of crushing the glass, does it mean we evolved as glass eaters? Long fangs are BETTER for eating meat, so there's no evolutionary reason for loosing them, even if we had tools for killing the prey, because longer fangs mean less strength needed for eating meat (bigger brains). And loosing jaw muscles would require to grow arm muscles needed for handling those tools, but it didn't happened, quite the contrary.


I wrote it to show that taeniae coli is not a valid argument for meat-eating. Our jaw system cannot deal with breaking the bones, one needs long fangs for that. And bone marrow is unhealthy for us, you would expect that after 2.5 million years of evolution we would be more capable for that?


Domesticated, that's the culprit. But it won't kill them like us. We are very susceptible to meat bacteria. Why, if evolution had 2.5 million years to kill those of us who couldn't deal with them properly? Are you suggesting evolution doesn't work?


To eat bone marrow you don't need strong teeth. And problem is, how do you get that bone marrow? How do you know that nobody ate them? Proof? Other than lack of evidence?


Exactly, only if meat is tender, it means we can eat it by accident, like many other things, but we didn't evolve as meat-eaters. Eating raw fish is easy, catching it is not.


Who tells you to eat ungrounded grains? Birds have stones in their stomach to ground them. We always had stones for that too, but not inside, only outside. Even primitive monkeys are capable of grounding things, it was definitely possible for us even 2.5 million years ago.
The most probably farming began even earlier, due to grains shortages. Before that it was more accidental, in form of religious sacrifice. That's why humanity is so religious, only those who were capable of sacrificing some of their grains had something to eat the next year, and not die from hunger instead, and so we have their genes. At the beginning a lot of grains fell to the ground on their own, so it wasn't so important. But at some point we became too efficient, and faced first shortages. It required the leap of faith to sacrifice so precious food, but it proved beneficial. But because it was accidental, and we still ate the b(igg)est ones, it didn't solve the problem of grains getting smaller and smaller. It required a leap of understanding to see that you need to sacrifice the best ones to gain better crops the next year, and it was beginning of farming.


Cats know how to use tools? For example grain-eating birds can. Rabbits don't eat grains, cows are stupid because we've made them that way, stupid cows were easier to domesticate than smart ones. When you're a prey you need prediction/imagination abilities to know that you must be careful, to know when it's safe and where it's safe, you must have the notion of future to have bigger chances of avoiding the danger. When you're predator you can rely entirely on your senses and don't need much intelligence, only to keep as low as possible while hunting.

Have you seen the lion outsmarting zebra? But it's crucial for prey to outsmart the predator, because constant running away requires too much food and energy.

But we're talking of about 2.5 million years ago. Are you suggesting our ancestors had guns back then? If not, tell me how to kill a prey by throwing stones at it, how to kill a predator who is attacking us? What is faster, finding enough stones or being killed by a lion?


So is it 50% stronger, or equal?


If I understand correctly, you're claiming that incarnation of strength and huge protein intake is a nerd/geek? And eating a lot of proteins won't grow your muscles, you will just have bigger chances of finishing the university instead? I thought it's the contrary, but maybe I don't eat enough meat to understand that

No? Can you die from eating few days old grains?

What harm? Fiber is crucial if you want to eat meat and not get sick afterwards, because of our too long intestines, it means we had to eat grains before we've started to eat meat, not the other way round. Fiber is neutral in itself. And those symptoms prove our mutual/symbiotic evolution.


Why do you ignore animal fat from meat? It's very unhealthy, it just blocks your veins?
So surplus carbohydrates are also source of energy, because YOUR fat is basically stored energy needed when you face food shortages. That was always a norm, not huge protein intake, even few hundreds years ago meat eating was accidental.


We were never stonger/bigger. Big muscles require a lot of energy, brain needs a lot of energy, and you can't combine both by eating proteins. And we now eat the biggest amounts of proteins in (pre)history. It's not healthy, you can consult your doctor if you don't believe me

"The dinosaurs were killed by the Ice Age."

No they were not. They were killed by the giant impact.

Also, there have been several ice ages throughout the history of the earth. Which one are you referring to?

Have you seen any other predator with tools?

Using tools.

Tools can also be used to crack open an animals skull so you can eat the the brain. The reason early humans were such excellent scavengers is because they could get at food that other animals couldn't. After other animals had picked the carcass clean, only humans could eat the brain.

I thought you said evolution doesn't have a vision/purpose. Do you think they started walking on their hind legs because they wanted their distant descendants to grind grain?

The truth is we already had the ability to walk on two legs before we became human. Other apes can do it. We can do it better because we relied on it more. On the savannah standing up straight means you can see further. You can spot predators from a greater distance.

Sure they could have walked around with two handfuls of grain but they could have just as easily walked around with tools. They probably did both.