Picture a caveman feast and you probably see meat: a mammoth slab, a spear, a roaring fire. The evidence says that picture is wrong. When researchers study hunter-gatherers who still live off the land, hunted game usually supplies only a fraction of the calories, while plants, insects and honey carry the rest.
This is the story of what ancient humans actually ate, told through the fingerprints they left behind: starch grains stuck in Neanderthal teeth, tens of thousands of charred plant remains at an Ice Age camp, and hearths a million years old.
You'll find out:
- Why the steak-heavy "paleo" plate is the least representative part of the real record
- What the Hadza and the Kalahari foragers actually eat, measured meal by meal
- The starch and plant residues found in Neanderthal dental plaque at El Sidron
- Why cooking, not meat alone, made the plant world edible
- What our own amylase genes reveal about how long we have been eating starch
- Why the wrong story survived: meat is dramatic, and drama makes history
Key moments
- 00:00 The caveman feast myth
- 00:30 The question
- 01:18 How paleo was invented
- 02:11 Why the record disagrees
- 02:57 What living foragers eat
- 03:52 Starch in Neanderthal teeth
- 04:46 Fire made plants food
- 05:37 Our starch-digesting genes
- 06:30 Why the meat story survived
- 07:26 Which ancestors, which season
- 08:18 The real ancient dinner
Watch the full video on YouTube
▶ Watch the full video on YouTube
Exploring the strange questions about humans, science, history and the world around us. @TheQuestionArchive
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