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55 species of edible plants found at prehistoric human ancestor site

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water lily seeds from excavation/Naama Goren Inbar, Yaakov Langsam

From ScienceDaily:

A tiny grape pip (scale 1mm), left on the ground some 780,000 years ago, is one of more than 9,000 remains of edible plants discovered in an old Stone Age site in Israel on the shoreline of Lake Hula in the northern Jordan valley, dating back to the Acheulian culture from 1.75-0.25 million years ago. The floral collection provides rich testimony of the plant-based diet of our prehistoric ancestors.

“In recent years we were met with a golden opportunity to reveal numerous remains of fruits, nuts and seeds from trees, shrubs and the lake, alongside the remains of animals and human-made stone tools in one locality,” Prof. Goren-Inbar said.

Of the remains found on site, Prof. Goren-Inbar and Dr. Yoel Melamed of the Faculty of Life Sciences at Bar Ilan University have identified 55 species of edible plants, including seeds, fruits, nuts, leaves, stems, roots and tubers. Paper. (paywall) – Yoel Melamed, Mordechai E. Kislev, Eli Geffen, Simcha Lev-Yadun, Naama Goren-Inbar. The plant component of an Acheulian diet at Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov, Israel. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2016; 201607872 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1607872113 More.

<em>Coffee</em> Tins Though popular culture pictures our ancestors as felling really big game, successful hunts were surely a rare, dramatic event. Thus, bison feature vividly on cave walls. Plants can’t run or fight so women, children, and many disabled men can gather and prepare them. No surprise if tubers never got the big, exciting publicity even if they fed more people more often.

Apparently, roasted lily seeds, pictured above, are somewhat like popcorn.

See also: Human evolution: Agriculture’s first steps were painful and profitless. So why did we really do it?

Was there a turning point in the human diet? Does it matter?

Meat eating speeded human face evolution?

Human origins: The war of trivial explanations

Neanderthals started fires with Mn compound?

and

Did Neanderthals follow the Paleo diet? Yes if it includes plenty of mammoths and rhinoceros

and

The search for our earliest ancestors: signals in the noise

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How Stone Age tools were made:

Comments
RCCF calibrates to shortly after the 1656 AM mabul year that included the asteroid impact/s w/ dino die off..so about 4100 +/- years ago RCCF = The Recent Complex Creation Framework to understand science in max avail context.Pearlman
December 12, 2016
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