Posted on 02/04/2020 9:26:50 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Charred fragments found in 170,000-year-old ashes in a cave in southern Africa are the earliest roasted root vegetables yet found. The finding suggest the real "paleo diet" included lots of roasted vegetables rich in carbohydrates, similar to modern potatoes.
"I think people were eating a very balanced diet, a combination of carbohydrates and proteins," says team leader Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
In 2016, her team found dozens of bits of charcoal in an ash layer in the Border cave in South Africa. This ash layer is what is left from the fires of early people.
By studying the charred remains of hundreds of modern plants under a microscope over the following years, the team were finally able to identify the charcoal fragments as being the rhizomes -- subterranean stems -- of a plant from the genus Hypoxis.
Seeds of root vegetables and other plants have found at an 800,000-year-old site in Israel where early humans lived, but Wadley's find is the earliest clear evidence of roasting.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Middle Stone Age cooking
Early evidence of cooked starchy plant food is sparse, yet the consumption of starchy roots is likely to have been a key innovation in the human diet. Wadley et al. report the identification of whole, charred rhizomes of plants of the genus Hypoxis from Border Cave, South Africa, dated up to 170,000 years ago. These archaeobotanical remains represent the earliest direct evidence for the cooking of underground storage organs. The edible Hypoxis rhizomes appear to have been cooked and consumed in the cave by the Middle Stone Age humans at the site. Hypoxis has a wide geographical distribution, suggesting that the rhizomes could have been a ready and reliable carbohydrate source for Homo sapiens in Africa, perhaps facilitating the mobility of human populations.
- Cooked starchy rhizomes in Africa 170 thousand years ago | Science 03 Jan 2020: Vol. 367, Issue 6473, pp. 87-91 | Lyn Wadley, Lucinda Backwell, Francesco d'Errico, Christine Sievers
Finally spending some time on the GGG backlog.
Wash them really, really good first.
‘Vegetarian’ is Neanderthalese for ‘Bad Hunter’..................
Bad hunters have been around a long time...
Also, would that be the earliest root cellar ever?
*Who were smarter than the modern Democrat party elites...😋
I just realized, based upon this post, that we can blame man caused global warming on those ancient Africans who began cooking their root vegetables instead of being thoughtful enough to be satisfied eating them raw.
Meat and potatoes, it’s what’s for dinner!
I could make a joke about “Vegetables and Dirt” being the top of the line entrée in some ethnic restaurants, but that would be wrong.
“the earliest roasted root vegetables yet found.”
So even back then, somebody didn’t eat their vegetables.
Did they also find organic goat cheese and white wine vinagrette?
I wonder if their health insurance plans cut prices if they ate healthy?
Maybe a few extra bucks off for joining a gym
There’s still a fruitcake that’s older.
Witch doctor herb. Kind of a stone age ibuprofen. Not dietary.
Take me out to the cave man,
Take me to Africa,
Buy me some mammoth, a big rib rack,
I don’t care if he’s white, red, or black,
Cause it’s root, root, root for potatoes,
If they don’t roast, it’s a shame,
For it’s ONE!-TWO!-three spears, you’re out
At the Cave Man Game!
Somebody did not want to eat them even back than, eh?
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