5,000 years is just a blink in evolutionary history. Throughout the vast majority of human existence, mankind evolved with a strong propensity to find its nuitrition and survival by eating animals of all sorts.The fact that humans were able to understand that the marrow of bones left behind by predators was good food, was essential for early food storage and survival. Humans also retained the capacity to digest fruits, edible roots and some whole plants. Yet the human population could never really grow or achieve its intelectual and cultural potential as long as humans were half starved, wandering hunter gatherers. It was not until they learned to cultivate grains, a nuitrition source that while they were able to digest but not what they were genetically equiped to use as a primary source, did the storage of adequate food stuffs become possible. People did not have to hunt/gather as a primary occupation. The population expanded greatly and civilization and culture evolved.Yet as the murder of Otzi shows and as is plainly discerned from current times, humans have always had the capacity to destroy themselves and the civilizations they have built. How else do you explain Biden and his cohorts?
Of course that's true. And if Homo sapiens has existed in his present for for 200,000 years, as the evidence suggests, what were people doing for 195,000 years before history dawned?
I doubt that they were bumping around in the woods.
I think the suggestions of lost civilisations is worth considering. The earth would likely have erased traces of them if they occurred in the distant past. The only thing I find unexplainable is the absence of evidence of metals.
Some additional bites from a book review in last weeks WSJ.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amber-waves-review-cereal-drama-11604266382
Ms. Zabinski introduces us to wheat in its earliest, wildest iteration, describing a seed that was at first nearly inedible for humans. Herbivores gobbled it up with impunity, fermenting grass and seeds alike in their multichambered, specialized stomachs. But wheat’s protective hull was so incredibly hard that our hunter-gatherer ancestors cracked their molars simply trying to chew on it. Eventually stones were used to grind the seeds into flour, providing primitive pastes and gruels when other resources were scarce. This required an inordinate amount of time, energy and organization.
...How did this wild seed metamorphose from a tooth-busting, energy-intensive liability into the miraculously adaptable asset we have today? As Ms. Zabinski explains, while most animals are unable to procreate with different species, “plants in general and grasses in particular are rule benders.” Thus, when an ancient variety of wheat known as einkorn met the weedy goatgrass in some metaphorical moonlit meadow, merging their genes, the implications of this unexpected coupling were profound.
The resulting offspring was emmer. Its seeds were softer and less difficult to clean; its versatility allowed our ancestors to bake the very first bread. More important, it spurred the advent of farming, for instance in theMesopotamian village of Abu Hureyra in modern Syria...