OneEarth2,
Yeah, there is definitely a lot of meat on a lot of people’s “Paleo” diets. However, it’s mostly misinterpereted by newbies and outsiders. The book “Paleofantasy” is a great example of someone who did no research into what the actual paleo community thinks of the paleo diet. There are all of the concerns within the paleo diet community that outsiders project onto them, such as the quantity of meat, there was no one paleo diet, diversity of foods is key, fermented foods, fats, etc.
That said, people living in the tundra at almost exclusively meat/fat. The Inuit of North American are one such group. During the ice age, those in more northern regions would have lived similarly. The size of human brains expanding is thought to correlate with hunting/scavenging/eating meat. That we could get this many calories from large game allowed our brains to increase in size. I think the switch to agriculture correlating with the extinction of megafauna is interesting and pretty good evidence that it is a possibility. Agriculture doesn’t give you fat, it gives you calories. This also points to evidence in the archeological record, where nutrition from fat is replaced with non-nutritions grains and we see the birth of tooth decay and a loss in bone density, etc. This theory makes sense to me, because agriculture is more work than hunting and gathering. I think environmental conditions (lack of calories) would be a motivator for people to take up this way of life. I have a hard time imagining people just doing agriculture for fun. I think there had to be an environmental reason for pushing people in this direction to begin with.
Cineraria,
Yeah totally. It makes me wonder if the religion came later, after people had been living this way for a while, wealth amasses, a sociopath rises and manipulates people into continuing the lifestyle.