The caveman myth: Early humans were mainly herbivores say anthropologists
The Huffpo has an article that provides a new perspective on the meat lobby argument that nature intended man to eat meat. The cartoon image of a caveman dragging his prey back to his cave may not be historically accurate. Maybe he’ll have to be redrawn as a vegetarian proffering a fistful of shoots and leaves.
Dr. T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus at Cornell University and author of The China Study, explains that in fact, we only recently (historically speaking) began eating meat, and that the inclusion of meat in our diet came well after we became who we are today. He explains that “the birth of agriculture only started about 10,000 years ago at a time when it became considerably more convenient to herd animals. This is not nearly as long as the time [that] fashioned our basic biochemical functionality (at least tens of millions of years) and which functionality depends on the nutrient composition of plant-based foods.”
That jibes with what Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine President Dr. Neal Barnard says in his book, The Power of Your Plate, in which he explains that “early humans had diets very much like other great apes, which is to say a largely plant-based diet, drawing on foods we can pick with our hands. Research suggests that meat-eating probably began by scavenging–eating the leftovers that carnivores had left behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.”
There is no more authoritative source on anthropological issues than paleontologist Dr. Richard Leakey, who explains what anyone who has taken an introductory physiology course might have discerned intuitively–that humans are herbivores. Leakey notes that “[y]ou can’t tear flesh by hand, you can’t tear hide by hand…. We wouldn’t have been able to deal with food source that required those large canines” (although we have teeth that are called “canines,” they bear little resemblance to the canines of carnivores).
In fact, our hands are perfect for grabbing and picking fruits and vegetables. Similarly, like the intestines of other herbivores, ours are very long (carnivores have short intestines so they can quickly get rid of all that rotting flesh they eat).
It’s not necessarily a sound argument for being vegan, since prehistoric man probably did plenty of things we don’t want to emulate, but it seems at least that the ‘man is meant to eat meat’ argument is cobblers.
It’s time to relegate that stupid myth to the dust-bin of non-history.
Stone age people did not live in caves, did not carry huge knobby clubs, did not compete for scarce resources, did not speak in grunts (“ugg-ugg”), and did not have to work hard all day every day.
Mostly they lived in houses, wore clothes woven from cloth, had metallurgy and glass-making, and produced sophisticated works of art. They also seem to have developed some technology we are not able to duplicate today. And the few who worked averaged 15 hours a week for a comfortable living. See Stone Age Economics by Marshall Sahlin.
The caveman myth serves a useful purpose; brainwashing the masses into thinking we never had it so good. People work harder and longer today than at any time in history, but in our corporate super-state making people believe in a miserable past keeps them from noticing how miserable THEY are.
The caveman myth goes hand-in-hand with the myth of progress: the fantasy that history is a long ascending arc toward a better, happier, and easier life, culminating in US!
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