[www.cnn.com]

Thats not what it said, it said they included cooked vegetables aswell as grains. But as we know and partially says in the article they still had a meat based diet.

that says nothing about them being vegan, only that they did not eat ONLY meat as was previously believed but where in fact omnivorous, kinda pokes a hole in the paleo diet peoples balloon though... thanks for the link, it was an interesting read

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Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Were they human ancestors? I am still not sure if they were, or a side branch. I recently watched a program on PBS about becoming human. The program concluded that cooking made it possible for early humans to meet their calorie needs. Apparently having a large brain requires a lot of calories.

I am not so surprised at the high calorie/nutrient part, but I was a bit surprised that they thought it could only be done with the help of cooking.

well, to be fair, it can be done allot more easily with cooking, in modern society its fairly easy to meet ones caloric needs with raw vegan foods... that wouldnt be as easy to accomplish I dont believe for neanderthals, especially with more plants and fruits being at least mildly toxic without being cooked, especially the original wild versions (like the ancestors of broccoli/cabbages/cauliflower from what Ive heard.) and meats, oh and cant forget grains... without cooking it would be much more difficult, I would think, to get nearly as much calories in anything other than a modern society from a raw vegan diet... in really temperate zones, after the cultivation of plants started, it would be much easier of course... but that didnt happen till rather recently in history from what they say...

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Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Humans were walking upright, had mastered fire, living in social groups, and were making tools before cooking. Which came first... intelligence or cooking? The chicken or the egg?

If I had to guess, as there no apparent proven answer, id say intelligence, I dont believe cooked food increased intelligence or anything BECAUSE it was cooked, but I do believe that cooking food made a wider variety of foods available for consumption, increasing the average caloric intake, improving their chances of survival...etc...etc... im to tired to get involved in much of a discussion about it right now though,lol...

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Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Maybe cooking was not a natural thing but was forced to them because of migration to colder regions and season changes, you had to preserve food and cooking help to do that. They could dry some veggies and meat for later use. Intelligence before cooking. In the beginning was intelligence and intelligence was with ...



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2010 10:39PM by madinah.

yeah, it helped with preservation and making different foods actually safe to eat...

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Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Neanderthals' "mostly meat" diet is one of the reasons they were supplanted by the more advanced Cro Magnon. And I have my theories about what I refer to as NDD[Neanderthal Descendant Disorder]modern humans, but shan't go into them here

funny when i read the title the first time i read netherlanders lol .. im like dang those dutch got it goin on

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

Jodi,

Your way is funner

hahahhahaa

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Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Tamukha,
NDD! LOL!I will have to keep that one in mind, that explains a lot.

Curator,
Do modern fruits and veggies have that much less toxicity? I understand that a lot of vegetables have antinutrients especially. I can see how bred veggies could have less.

Its a puzzle however, cooking takes time itself, not to mention the time it takes to gather fuel. Something doesn't quite make sense to me, how many creatures could afford to wait around a fire for their damper or their steak to get done? Most creatures eat everything as quickly as possible. Except for maybe squirrels that store some of their food.

The show that I saw had the theory that fire was primarily used to keep animals away at night. Cooking was just an added 'benefit' which tiped the caloric balance. The idea was there was this difficult transition between a tree dwelling ape to an upright animal with a developing brain.

Apparently humans became hairless for the most part around this time, to allow pre-humans to gather food during daylight hours when other animals were sleeping. There is also some connection between human long distance running ability, which is actually quite good.

Mislu,

Quote

The show that I saw had the theory that fire was primarily used to keep animals away at night. Cooking was just an added 'benefit' which tiped the caloric balance.

I am picturing this as a parody of the old Reeses commercial:

"Hey! You got your dead animal carcass on my fire!"

"Hey! You got your fire on my dead animal carcass!"

"Hmmmm . . . "

Although that isn't "two great tastes that taste great together"

lol ewwww

Tam, ROFLMAO...

Mislu, yeah, there are allot of modern cultivars that are far less toxic than their original forms, from humans breeding them for that purpose, amongst others, although most of them are ones that where generally edible to begin with, unfortunately this breeding has also reduced some of the nutrient content as well I believe... tubers have allot of anti-nutrients even now, they where an excellent winter food though, they could be found safe under ground even in the winter, they where a good survival food because of this...but had their most benefit cooked because of anti-nutrients that cooking deactivates...

As far as gathering fuel goes, that is not a hard task in most parts of the world, easier I would think in a world that doesn't have clear cut logging... when camping, it sure doesn't take me long to find fuel, and Im cold till Ive got that fire started,lol... Time is one thing, but if the food isn't really edible, potentially even incredibly harmful to you if not cooked? In that case, Id rather cook it... You can cook far more calories worth of meat over a fire faster than you can gather and eat fruit, especially when your most likely traveling with allot of people who need to eat too... meat is far more calorie dense than plants or fruit, so sitting still the half an hour it takes to cook a good chunk of meat over a fire, youl get allot more energy from it than you will from the amount of fruits you could find in that amount of time most of the year, pick huckleberries or blackberries for the time it takes to cook a couple pounds of meat, and see what the caloric value of the amount you where able to pick... Just look at native american diets be4 we showed up... they ate mostly fruits and veggies during times of year it was possible, and meats, and whatever they could preserve, during the rest of the year... Plus, the fats from meat will give you more extended energy, where as the carbs in fruit gives you allot better short term sources of energy...

We aren't really talking here about whats best for our health now, we are talking about what was best for survival, and unfortunately, eating allot of cooked things, even some spoiled food that tasted bad but was perfectly safe after being cooked, was what was best for survival for people who couldnt just walk down to a super market...

Personally, my theory is that fire was most likely originally used for its warmth, which feels amazing, keeping predators away, and then eventually cooking, as I can imagine that if I knew nothing of fire, except the occasional forest fire or prairie fire, the first thing i would notice about it is that it is warm... on the long cold nights, that would seem pretty amazing... and once one knew how to make a fire, a whole lot easier than hunting a bunch of large furry creatures to make a stinking blanket out of be4 we had tanning... I miss wood fire...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

I read once that most hunter-gatherer societies diets are roughly 3-8% meat... the rest is gathered plant foods.

hmmm,that is interesting, well, at least with the tribes I grew up with, I know that wasnt true for them... a huge part of their traditional diet was salmon and elk and deer with the occasional bear thrown in, or so they told me.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Tamukha,
LOL! I hope that story goes into the next documentary about early humans and their experience with fire!

Curator,
Thank you for the clarification about Native Americans. Customs, available foods, language etc really, really varies. Many years ago there was a program called 500 nations, which was actually pretty disappointing. (as I am native american) The only part I really appreciated was the title, as it emphasized that there were a lot of various groups, tribes or 'nations'.

I attended the public wake of Alan Ginsberg. In it someone told us to join hands and sing a "native american mourning song". "Ah way, ah way, ah way...etc" I had to keep from laughing, because he was just so serious. It sounded so made up. I don't know where he got the idea of a generic native american song. Perhaps there are some that are made up now to provide a sort of cultural unity that never existed before. One of the elders made up a song for children. "Mickey Mouse, mickey mouse, donald too..." He did that so the children would have fun, and be more comfortable with traditional singing, dancing and drumming.

Getting back to food, fried bread seems to be a staple at pow wows, in addition to more traditional foods, sometimes they mix shortening with berries and sugar. I never got the point of either, as they aren't traditional. I am glad that pow wow planners often print up reminder signs that its a non-alcoholic event.

But, most often native americans who live in big cities often consume a lot of junk like everyone else with a similiar level of education and income level. Usually its only those around 40 or older who are familiar with traditional foods.

Shawnee here. Somewhere way back mixed in with those horny goat French folk I call family .

Cherokee and choctah here, raised around a ton of Yurok and tolowa... I have far more experience with their cultures than with the cultures of any other tribes, even the ones that i share blood with, but every tribe I have ever read about have used whatever meat they can catch as food, and whatever they can forage as well... Ive never heard of a single tribe to ignore a source of food, especially meat, there are traditional festivals in my hometown with the tribes there, that they have had every year since be4 white people ever even showed up, in which they have a giant salmon feast, even till this day its free to everyone who comes...

I am not trying to start an argument, I am just telling you what I have been told from some of the tribes that out of every nation have a much larger amount of their history and culture intact than most, as they had very few negative interactions with whites compared to other tribes, so less loss... I also have told you what I have had actual personal experience with, I have lived off the land, I have foraged and yes, even hunted for my food in the past with a home made bow and arrows I made, hunting was far easier and took far less time than foraging, but I foraged and ate what i found as i was looking for something bigger and more calorie dense food sources, wilderness survival training is tough.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

The thing is, we now have science and it can tell us so much about what is actually good for our bodies and what, even though we may have consumed it for generations, is not. I'm pretty sure we're all here on this raw vegan site because we agree that a combination of the two is the best option for truly spectacular health and sustainable lifestyles for this planet.

exactly! I never said that stuff was healthy for us, I Believe i said the opposite, just that back then, without the ability to easily get whatever type of food we want, people had to get what they could, and what was the most calorie dense, what helped them survive in the short term, not the long term...

Now days, of course a good healthy primarily raw vegan diet is healthiest, I think if somebody can afford the variety and bulk, a 100% raw diet would be even healthier, we know this now, and many have the ability to pursue it... its a special luxury that im sure all who have it are hopefully grateful for it...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Coco & Curator,
Wow, well what do you think of modern foods, and current habits? One of the elders told me something strange. She went to a boarding school and got a spoonful of skippy peanut butter every day. This was because of some BIA study that said Native Americans were low in protein consumption. The weird part was that she was eating mostly shelfish, and other marine animals. She didn't quite understand how that recommendation applied to her. She figured it was based on some dietary habits from other places.

Thank you for sharing.

It's not a great advert is it? Eat up all your greens and you too can look like a Neanderthal. LOL.

You know, the people living in this climate were very often nomadic due to necessity. They worked hard all through the season growing, harvesting and foraging foods, hunting and preserving meat, tanning hides for clothes, shelter, blankets etc. They used literally every single part of an animal, every natural thing that could be used. Their lives were about food and defending food access in their territory and yet, by the end of the winter many of those people died of malnutrition and starvation.

We live a VERY luxurious life these days, even our poor are better off than the middle class in some other places in the world. I for one am incredibly grateful. I look at my strong healthy babies and I thank the universe every day for our many blessings. That doesn't mean I don't strive to make things better for us in whatever way possible though. I just think it's important to take the time to be appreciate what we have, which is a lot.

Mislu, it goes without saying that I think modern food practices and modern habits are atrocious. That's why we are all here I think, rubbed the wrong way by society and searching for something different.

I would have to agree with coco on the modern food practices/habits... in both tribal and non-tribal life... its seriously unfortunate... At least for the many yurok and Tolowa I know, they all seem to be on the S.A.D... In a few cases like with my bro brady, well, he used to eat even worse... Ive gotten him into allot of raw stuff lately though, he was shocked when he dropped a ton of weight by just adding a good salad as the main bulk of every meal...

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Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?