Re: A.robustus diet included sedges


"Lee Olsen" <paleocity@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1164130872.705587.199830@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chapstick wrote:


I am a layman... when it comes to paleoanthropology... but love the
subject.
So, from my perspective, what have we got out there? How did we evolve
into
this big brained, obligate bipedal creature? One of the popular theories
about our encephalization is that the consumption of raw bone marrow led
directly to an increase in brain size in our early ancestry. And part of
why marrow consumption is frequently bantered about is specifically to
have
an argument against the AAT people that claim that consumption of seafood
lead directly to our larger brains.
I appreciate Su's sense of humor, and always enjoy that picture...
the
guy is wincing as he eats the marrow.
My point is that marrow is not often consumed in the raw form, by
current humans. Maybe, if early humns DID consume the stuff, and it
tastes
positively awful, then it lead directly to the taming of fire in order to
cook it! <smile>
our natural history museum has a bug-tasting every year... a very
popular event... and they eat an amazing variety of things.

OK, that is the part I'm having trouble with, "current humans." Current
humans are not hunter gatherers for the most part.

I concede this point. you are correct. There is nothing about our
"current" lifestyle that "had" to be present in our ancestry some 4 mya. I
like to imagine that our more-recent ancestors were not powers of ten
different than us though, in terms of "diet and exercise" (<grin>), social
structure, selection criteria (ie, if sexual selection is in play), and etc.
True, we are generally not hunter-gatherers unless we are bargain-shopping
for the latest playstation. perhaps our 4 million year-ago ancestor was
also NOT a hunter-gatherer...rather we were savengers... as the article you
sourced points out. That is, savenging seems to be yet a different sort of
lifestyle than the hunter-gatherer.

As I was trying to
point out with my ghoulish friends, they think nothing of eating live
bugs because they learned to eat them at a very young age, if dad eats
it, it must be good. Taste is like beauty, in the eye of the beholder.
Just because you think the taste of marrow is bad, doesn't mean
hominids thought that 3 mya.

<smile> I have never actually tasted marrow raw. I do occasionally eat
sushi, although I am not very fond of fish and need more for health reasons
I suppose. I HAVE eaten tartar... raw steak... and it is GOOD.
The study would be stronger, IMHO, if it had included insects. It is my
belief that infant humans.. (today!)... have a strong attraction to small
objects because the diet for a six month old was "naturally" supplemented by
insect consumption... during the course of the millions of years we evolved.

If you found just one site on the entire
planet with broken bone, you could argue that guy was starving,
desperate and hated marrow. This is not the case, there is no shortage
of broken bone throughout the archaeological record, it is ubiquitous.
There is no other known reason to smash up bone other than to get at
the marrow.
Why pick on the raw condition of marrow as opposed to say raw liver or
raw fish for that matter?

I will answer your question exactly. Marrow was touted has THE cause of
our encephalization. I didn't beleive it then, when i first read that years
ago, and I have had trouble with the concept.
The article you sourced says that it wasn't marrow acting alone, but in
concert with other items... and that answer is more "satisfying" to me. We
humans are indeed opportunistic and omnivorous and eat a buncha' different
stuff, as you point out below.
So, the best-yet answer to how we managed to encephalize would be that
we ate a variety of different foods as they were available. The available
foods probably included scavenged marrow and brains... meat occasionally,
fish occasionally, yams, insects, etc. Just about everything that didn't
eat us first, eh?
good to talk to you, and if you are writing from America, Happy
Holidays...
--chap

There are simply too many ethnographic
examples of hunter gathers eating all kinds of things that people in
industrialized societies think of as gross, raw and cooked.

What is "not often consumed in the raw form" today does not erase the
smoking gun evidence of the past.

For the lower Pleistocene Isaac (1989:134):
"2. The marks occur on a variety of taxa that vary in size from
relatively small animals (e.g. gazelles) to very large animals
(e.g. giraffes, hippos, and elephants).
3. Marks have been found on a wide variety of different anatomical
parts (e.g. skulls, mandibles, vertebrae, humeri, femora, cannon bones
and phlanges)."

Hury et al. (1959:29):
"Masses of smashed brain case bones were found, but no whole skulls
survived."
This evidence matches the conclusion of the paper
http://www.thepaleodiet.com/articles/Encephalization%20Final%20PDF.pdf

Hury et al. 1959. The Lehner Mammoth Site. American Antiquity
Vol.25(1). 2-30

Glynn Isaac (1937-1985)
The Archaeology of Human Origins: Papers by Glynn Isaac
Edited by Barbara Isaac. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989.








--chap



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