Something everyone should be aware of...

Wibbs · 08-02-2007 11:28AM

Nature Boy wrote:

Thanks for the reply!

No worries.

Could you let me know where you got all of this from? Seems like an interesting read.

Books. No seriously. Books.:)

So, basically what you're saying is that we started off as herbivores and we are evolving into omnivores.

Yep pretty much although it's a little more complex than that. Early hominids had much bigger teeth. the trend for dentition in humans has been towards small. Same with jaw robustness. There is a correlation between our brain size increase and the increase in animal foods in our diet. It also drove tool use and technology to better our hunting skills.

What would you say is our reason for 'evolving' into omnivores?

It has major advantages over a purely herbivorous diet. Meat and animal fats gives you a much bigger "bang for the buck" in calories and nutrients than most plant foods. This is the reason why the herbivore has a much longer gut. it's not that meat "rots":rolleyes: in the gut and has to passed quickly. It's that plant foods need longer digestion times to extract the most nutrients. This is why cows chew the cud, to further breakdown the plant matter for digestion. It also means herbivorous animals have to eat more and more often than carnivores. Look at gorillas they spend most of their time eating. They often eat their own faeces to try to extract the most nutrient from their food. Ugh is the word here.

Not the only herbivore that does that.

Probably the biggest advantage is adaptability to new environments. If you rely on plants for food you can only go where those plants or ones like it occur. If you're a omnivore with carnivorous tendencies you can go wherever animals are. There's not a lot of fruit and veg goin on in ice ages. So basically our ominvorous diet allowed us to extend out of Africa far more easily than if we were veggies. It looks like we initially followed the coastline as we moved around the world, living off the seafood found there. there are huge dumps of shells and fishbones on the routes out of africa dated to around 60,000 yrs ago. you see it in Australia as well, we get to the coasts, hang around for a good while before there's evidence of movement into the interior.

Baring in mind that eating animal foods has been proven to cause some cancers and heart disease, increases colestorol etc.

Again it would be down to the type of animal food. Burgers and chips and high sugar foods will kill you slowly. A diet high in fish, poultry with far less red meat(with veg and fruit) will not. Eggs are ok but "in the wild" we would have only eaten them for a short part of the year. Same with a lot of fruit. High sugar foods like honey would have been a rare treat. Processed sugar would never have been eaten. Some are questioning the whole cholesterol hypotheses as well. Another subject entirely, but when you look at native diets that are very high in saturated fat you find none of the problems with a western diet. The Maasai have a diet that is almost exclusively animal based yet have normal cholesterol levels and little heart disease. tribes around the maasai who have a more veggie and grain based diet are on average far less healthy with far more heart disease. Same with the Inuit(eskimos). Eskimo actually means "meat eater". The more western based diet the inuit eat the more unhealthy they become. Certain types of vegetable oils are implicated in health problems. Transfats and all that. Anyway you could argue we never evolved to eat vegetable oils as they require relatively recent technology to extract same.

Tar.Aldarion · 08-02-2007 02:16PM

Nature Boy wrote:

Thanks for the reply!

Could you let me know where you got all of this from? Seems like an interesting read.

So, basically what you're saying is that we started off as herbivores and we are evolving into omnivores. Obviously, according to our friend Darwin, animals only change or evolve if it is beneficial to their survival.

What would you say is our reason for 'evolving' into omnivores? Baring in mind that eating animal foods has been proven to cause some cancers and heart disease, increases colestorol etc.

I've seen plent of links like yours(http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/natural.html etc etc)
There are many intelligent arguments for vegetarianism, but claiming that man is "naturally" herbivorous isn't one of them.
Anthropologists etc argue on both sides of a coin that I think does not matter at all. I think it is better to go the route of intelligence rather that one of nature. It is more impressive to view a system and step outside of it because of our intelligence. We are superior to other animals? prove it by bsteeping out of the chain of nature etc.
If we are naturally omnivorous or herbivorous, why act as such?
I don't think it matters what is natural, but what our intellect can let us defy it.

Humans were originally fruitarians btw, but fruit was, um, different back then.

Nature Boy · 08-02-2007 03:05PM

Good points fellas (or girls

). I doubt anything could ever change my mind about being veggie, but it's no harm hearing different points of view

Hmmm. I wonder, if we are herbivores evolving into omnivores, do the evolutionary reasons still apply today? Do we really need a quick and higher source of calories? Do we really still need to adapt to new environments? I can understand why, maybe tens of thousands of years ago that may have applied. But in this day and age... I'm not so sure.

I think what I just said is merely another way of putting Tar's point!

Terry · 08-02-2007 04:30PM

Was I the only one here who was taught about how our teeth evolved from being much sharper to how they are today because of the discovery of fire?
I was in primary school when i learned that.

brianthebard · 08-02-2007 04:41PM

Nature Boy wrote:

Good points fellas (or girls ). I doubt anything could ever change my mind about being veggie, but it's no harm hearing different points of view

Hmmm. I wonder, if we are herbivores evolving into omnivores, do the evolutionary reasons still apply today? Do we really need a quick and higher source of calories? Do we really still need to adapt to new environments? I can understand why, maybe tens of thousands of years ago that may have applied. But in this day and age... I'm not so sure.

I think what I just said is merely another way of putting Tar's point!

Our brain still uses a fifth of our daily calorie intake. We still need protein from meat to help muscle growth (Yes there are veg with protein, but its just not as available, there's less of it, and its not of the same quality, ok?) I disagree completely with the idea that we can step out of the natural cycle or the chain of nature or whatever other phrase you want to use. When we can procreate without sex, not be hungry for food, not need to sun to survive, etc, etc, etc. Then I'll believe we've seperated ourselves. Not til then. I find that people in city and urban environments are willing to believe(perhaps fool themselves) that they have been seperated from nature, but in reality they have only been disconnected.

nesf · 08-02-2007 04:42PM

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

I've seen plent of links like yours(http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/natural.html etc etc)
There are many intelligent arguments for vegetarianism, but claiming that man is "naturally" herbivorous isn't one of them.
Anthropologists etc argue on both sides of a coin that I think does not matter at all.

Some anthropologists also argue that violence is a product of modern culture and that it's not present in native cultures untouched by modern influence (and their arguments held sway for quite a while). The thing is that anthropology a lot of the time works off so little proof/fact that you have to take a lot of what they come up with with a large pinch of salt. Not that it's false, just that taking it as fact can be misleading.

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

I think it is better to go the route of intelligence rather that one of nature. It is more impressive to view a system and step outside of it because of our intelligence. We are superior to other animals? prove it by bsteeping out of the chain of nature etc.
If we are naturally omnivorous or herbivorous, why act as such?
I don't think it matters what is natural, but what our intellect can let us defy it.

That's not a good argument for vegetarianism in that you could use it to justify any action that was against what natural. We can choose between what is natural and what isn't and you can laud that as a product of our intelligence, but you could equally argue that because of our intelligence that it is natural for us to be able to choose.

There are many good arguments for vegetarianism but nearly all of them come down to some moral choice making it wrong to eat meat. The health arguments fall apart in that a well balanced diet involving fish is either equally good for you or better for you (depending on who you talk to) than a well balanced vegetarian diet. The intelligence arguement, while initially appealing, is based on the idea that it is somehow superior to deviate from the natural using our intelligence. That again is a moral position rather than anything objective.

Gaspode · 08-02-2007 04:59PM

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

Humans were originally fruitarians btw, but fruit was, um, different back then.

Care to explain that one Tar? Were we really?

I never heard of fruitarians until you put it there and I googled it. Man what a load of mumbo jumbo the webistes spout. Example: http://www.fruitarian.com/ao/WhatIsFruitarianism.htm

I've no doubt you can survive on fruit and water alone, but OMG the boredom!
Its sites like this that spout the sort of rubbish that very quickly becomes the accepted 'facts' that people often base their diets on.

in this country the official line is that observing the food pyramid is the best approach to nutrition LINK:http://www.indi.ie/index.cfm/loc/9-1. (The pyramid you will note includes meat)
While I will admit the food pyramid does need updating, I think it still remains the most sensible approach to eating for the majority of people in Ireland.
In America the Mayo clinic have developed several food pyramids Link: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/healthy-diet/NU00190 depending on your ethnic origin and health status. I suspect that a similar approach will be adopted here within a few years.

(Is it just me or has this thread drifted from the original subject?)

NatureBoy - yes I was taking the piss, (in a friendly non-trollish manner of course) but I assumed the previous posters were too with some of the stuff they were posting.

Wibbs · 08-02-2007 05:47PM

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

I've seen plent of links like yours(http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/natural.html etc etc)
There are many intelligent arguments for vegetarianism, but claiming that man is "naturally" herbivorous isn't one of them.

Agreed.

If we are naturally omnivorous or herbivorous, why act as such?
I don't think it matters what is natural, but what our intellect can let us defy it.

Well by natural I am saying this is what we evolved to eat.

Humans were originally fruitarians btw, but fruit was, um, different back then.

I'd love to know at what point hominids were fruitarians. From Home erectus on we were most certainly not. Before that point it could be argued we had a more vegetable based diet to be sure, judging from the morphology of teeth, jaws and skulls. in any event most fruit even in jungles are seasonal so supply might have proved problematic. Add to that the fact that "our" species and our immediate forbears had largely left jungles for the open grasslands where fruit would be in far shorter supply.

julep wrote:

Was I the only one here who was taught about how our teeth evolved from being much sharper to how they are today because of the discovery of fire?

It's a theory alright along with the idea that our stomach acids reduced because of fire.

Nature Boy wrote:

Hmmm. I wonder, if we are herbivores evolving into omnivores, do the evolutionary reasons still apply today?

Well evolution continues on and in small ways one can still see it. EG where some groups of Asians can't metabolise dairy as well as most Europeans.

deswalsh wrote:

I never heard of fruitarians until you put it there and I googled it. Man what a load of mumbo jumbo the webistes spout.

It's worth a click for the laughs alone. I've rarely read such hippy nonsense in my life.

I've no doubt you can survive on fruit and water alone, but OMG the boredom!

Frankly I doubt it. That level of fructose can't be good for your teeth or liver. I suspect there are a fair few nutrients you would be low in to boot.

in this country the official line is that observing the food pyramid is the best approach to nutrition LINK:http://www.indi.ie/index.cfm/loc/9-1. (The pyramid you will note includes meat)

Personally I would remove most of the bottom bread cereal section, the very top section and just go on the middle three.

Tar.Aldarion · 08-02-2007 08:42PM

nesf wrote:

Some anthropologists also argue that violence is a product of modern culture and that it's not present in native cultures untouched by modern influence (and their arguments held sway for quite a while). The thing is that anthropology a lot of the time works off so little proof/fact that you have to take a lot of what they come up with with a large pinch of salt. Not that it's false, just that taking it as fact can be misleading.

I thought I was saying just that, people can argue back and forth all they want. I take it with a pinch of salt.
Also, that I don't think that it matters which we were.

That's not a good argument for vegetarianism in that you could use it to justify any action that was against what natural. We can choose between what is natural and what isn't and you can laud that as a product of our intelligence, but you could equally argue that because of our intelligence that it is natural for us to be able to choose.

I did not say that it was one of the good reasons to be a vegetarian.
I was just mentining to NatureBoy that I think his line was not. I said then, that there are other better reasons.
It may have looked like I was then citing one, but not really.
What I meant was to elaborate on why his reason was not a good one to be arguing about at all, as I think it serves no purpose, and that there is no good reason to be herbivorous if we were herbivorous in the past, and the same again with omnivorous.

There are many good arguments for vegetarianism but nearly all of them come down to some moral choice making it wrong to eat meat. The health arguments fall apart in that a well balanced diet involving fish is either equally good for you or better for you (depending on who you talk to) than a well balanced vegetarian diet.

A pescatarian diet may be just as healthy, not moreso.
I suppose I am one of those depending people. (:
Fis can be bad for you due to mercury levels, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), dioxins and other environmental contaminants. Some of these can cause cancer(What doesn't?)

A major review of the 89 best studies between 2002 and 2006—published in the March 24, 2006, issue of the British Medical Journal—finds that there is no evidence of health benefits from eating oily fish or taking fish oil supplements. Researchers from nine institutions analyzed the 89 most rigorous studies that looked at the effects of omega-3 fatty acids on various health issues. Researchers said that they found no strong evidence that fish consumption had an effect on overall deaths or the prevention of heart disease, cancer, or strokes. Mike Knapton, a director at the British Heart Foundation, even noted that “some studies have shown a slightly increased risk associated with eating very high amounts of oily fish, which is possibly related to mercury levels.” The magazine New Scientist summarized the review: “An analysis of studies found little evidence that fish oil supplements cut the risk of heart problems and even suggests that they could increase risk of heart attack in men with angina.”

Although the study's authors did not find the expected increase in cancer rates as a result of eating fish, the authors suggested that the harm from “[t]oxic compounds, such as fat-soluble methylmercury, dioxins, and polychlorinated biphenyls … found in oily fish and fish oils … would be seen only after long-term [consumption].” They wrote that the “dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls increase the risk of cancer” and that the mercury in fish “may increase the risk of myocardial infarction and cause neurological damage.” Most concerning, the authors wrote that “harmful effects of methylmercury could be cumulative.”

When fish is breaking down it also tends to inhibit some nutrients, and how effective we can absorb them(I think I recall?).
Apart from that, yes fish is very good for you.
I don't see any arguments that it could better for you though.

The intelligence arguement, while initially appealing, is based on the idea that it is somehow superior to deviate from the natural using our intelligence. That again is a moral position rather than anything objective.

I don't follow when you say that that is a 'moral' position?
Maybe I am taking it up wrong but would you mean that it is more perspective than objective.

Care to explain that one Tar? Were we really?

I'd love to know at what point hominids were fruitarians. From Home erectus on we were most certainly not. Before that point it could be argued we had a more vegetable based diet to be sure, judging from the morphology of teeth, jaws and skulls.

I don't know, I just remember articles on it. It was certainly before Homo erectus and could be argued to be a pre-human species, as homo wasn't in the name... Back then some 'fruits' were harder, and had different properties of nutrition.
Ancient frugivorous primate relatives aside, this is just moving the goal posts. I could just say we were insectivorous originally by this line etc. All previous diets in this line are irrelevant.

Well by natural I am saying this is what we evolved to eat.

Are you going just by what we can digest and what is good for us?

Frankly I doubt it. That level of fructose can't be good for your teeth or liver. I suspect there are a fair few nutrients you would be low in to boot.

Long term, people will suffer somewhat from a strict fruitarian diet.
Try breatharianism and liquidarianism diets.

kraggy · 09-02-2007 01:01AM

julep wrote:

Let's try and keep the debate here reasoned

...which is exactly what you've done by saying:

julep wrote:

Bottom line is, those ****ers would attack you if they had the chance. It's kill or be killed. I've been chased by a herd of cattle on more than one occasion

...cause it's an everyday dangerous situation that we all have to combat on our way to work and in the run of our daily lives all over the globe.

julep wrote:

Last, but certainly not least, we are omnivores. simple as that.

You might be, but i'm not.

Please, if you're making a point, make a valid one.
:rolleyes:

Terry · 09-02-2007 01:52AM

Did you read my entire post or just the bits that you could take offense to?
The comment was clearly tongue in cheek. The following sentence referred to me being chased by a herd of cattle after taking a short cut home through cattle pasture. It was a frightening experience, but one i look back at now and laugh at. the thing is, they are large animals and could quite easily kill you if they were to trample on you. Cows are a curious animal.

As for the omnivore comment, we are, by default, omniverous. You could go so far as to argue that we are cannibals. After all, we do dine on mothers milk when we are born. Yes, that is a complete stretch, but there you go.

You choose not to eat meat. Fair enough. That just means more meat for me.
conversly, my lack of soya consumption means more for you. We're all winners.

nesf · 09-02-2007 02:01AM

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

I thought I was saying just that, people can argue back and forth all they want. I take it with a pinch of salt.
Also, that I don't think that it matters which we were.

I think I phrased it badly. I meant to get across that I don't think that anthropological studies are useful if we are going to talk scientifically about this. More of a 'taking it a bit further than you rather than disagreeing with you.

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

I did not say that it was one of the good reasons to be a vegetarian.
I was just mentining to NatureBoy that I think his line was not. I said then, that there are other better reasons.
It may have looked like I was then citing one, but not really.

Fair enough, I misread you then.

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

What I meant was to elaborate on why his reason was not a good one to be arguing about at all, as I think it serves no purpose, and that there is no good reason to be herbivorous if we were herbivorous in the past, and the same again with omnivorous.

True, but the issue for me is entertaining the idea that we were herbivorous in relatively recent times (evolution wise). It a false argument and not premising that we are omnivorous invalidates any discussion generally.

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

A pescatarian diet may be just as healthy, not moreso.
I suppose I am one of those depending people. (:
Fis can be bad for you due to mercury levels, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), dioxins and other environmental contaminants. Some of these can cause cancer(What doesn't?)

Everything causes cancer...

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

When fish is breaking down it also tends to inhibit some nutrients, and how effective we can absorb them(I think I recall?).
Apart from that, yes fish is very good for you.
I don't see any arguments that it could better for you though.

Again, it depends on who you talk to and which studies you find more compelling. It is, as I said, very much open to debate at the moment. Two points of it are interesting to me: 1) the influence of environmentals like pollution in this and how much of the negative side of things do they make up and 2) how the research itself pans out over the next few years. At the moment the studies conflict with each other (from what I've read, but I'm not very well up on this tbh).

Oh and link to your sources too when you are quoting papers/articles. (for copyright reasons)

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

I don't follow when you say that that is a 'moral' position?
Maybe I am taking it up wrong but would you mean that it is more perspective than objective.

I mean in that if you look at arguments for vegetarianism they mostly deal with positions where it's 'wrong' to eat meat or 'right' to rise above our natural instincts. These are moral rather than objective positions, I don't mean this as an insult btw. If you really want to get down to it you can start looking at health arguments as a similar thing (not so much as whether something is healthy or not more that we should eat healthily and that it is somehow wrong not to). It's not that these arguments aren't valid, it's only that people might disagree with the premises (like whether killing animals is acceptable and such).

I'm using moral in the broader sense here of a distinction between right or wrong, or correct conduct.

nesf · 09-02-2007 02:02AM

Terry wrote:

Did you read my entire post or just the bits that you could take offense to?
The comment was clearly tongue in cheek. The following sentence referred to me being chased by a herd of cattle after taking a short cut home through cattle pasture. It was a frightening experience, but one i look back at now and laugh at. the thing is, they are large animals and could quite easily kill you if they were to trample on you. Cows are a curious animal.

As for the omnivore comment, we are, by default, omniverous. You could go so far as to argue that we are cannibals. After all, we do dine on mothers milk when we are born. Yes, that is a complete stretch, but there you go.

You choose not to eat meat. Fair enough. That just means more meat for me.
conversly, my lack of soya consumption means more for you. We're all winners.

Terry? o_O

Terry · 09-02-2007 02:25AM

That's my name.
I traded this months moderator supply of coke and hookers in exchange for a name change.
Cue mass confusion at lunch time on Monday.

cormie · 09-02-2007 02:34AM

I typed Terry Veggie into google to see if anything funny would come up and I got this. I suppose Terry just aint meant to be a veggie

nesf · 09-02-2007 02:41AM

Terry wrote:

That's my name.
I traded this months moderator supply of coke and hookers in exchange for a name change.

I traded mine for this t-shirt: http://www.chazography.com/wp-content/uploads/10-22-2005_stupid.jpg

Terry · 09-02-2007 02:41AM

cormie wrote:

I typed Terry Veggie into google to see if anything funny would come up and I got this. I suppose Terry just aint meant to be a veggie

Yep. just wasn't meant to be.

Me wrote:

Cue mass confusion at lunch time on Monday.

Sorry. tomorrow.
I keep thinking today is Friday. (no friday until 6am. I go by tv listing times, which begin at 6am).

Terry · 09-02-2007 02:42AM

nesf wrote:

I traded mine for this t-shirt: http://www.chazography.com/wp-content/uploads/10-22-2005_stupid.jpg

Ooh. topical.

nesf · 09-02-2007 02:55AM

Terry wrote:

Ooh. topical.

Yup.

Tar.Aldarion · 09-02-2007 01:28PM

Terry wrote:

After all, we do dine on mothers milk when we are born. Yes, that is a complete stretch, but there you go.

We are all guilty of Anthropophagy(The fancy name.) and self-cannibalism.
We breath in the skin of other humans, we eat our own nails and breathe in our own skin.

I think I phrased it badly. I meant to get across that I don't think that anthropological studies are useful if we are going to talk scientifically about this. More of a 'taking it a bit further than you rather than disagreeing with you.

Fair enough, I misread you then. Heh.

Fair enough, I misread you then.

True, but the issue for me is entertaining the idea that we were herbivorous in relatively recent times (evolution wise). It a false argument and not premising that we are omnivorous invalidates any discussion generally.

We were not herbivores in recent evolutionary times. Clearly humans had to have included meat in their diet. I don't see how people can argue against that.
Which we were designed to be, looking at our biology and chemistry is different.
This is a very confusing argument for me in general(I argue with myself a lot...), mostly because of how I would define herbivores and the conflicting sources I read.
Can a herbivore digest meat? If they can, but don't need to, and one is better for them - does that make them omnivores or herbivores by design? We can digest cardboard, just as we can digest meat, and plants. According to books like say, The China Study(http://www.thechinastudy.com/), which is most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease, a plant based diet is more suited to us, as a meat based one adversely affects us.
So if we are suited to one diet more than the other does that not make us designed for that one?
On the other hand, if we can be reasonably healthy on either, which one are we designed to be?
If we could not get everything we need from non meat sources it would be clear that we should be omnivorous, but we can.
Yet, we can digest meat and some properties of meat are beneficial too.
This is without going deeper into chemistry and biology of omnivores, carnivores and herbivores, as it gets complicated, there is conflicting information and some exceptions in animals.

Terry · 09-02-2007 02:25PM

Let's just go with what agent Smith called us.
We are parasites.

Tar.Aldarion · 09-02-2007 04:10PM

Ah yes, a good old parasite spreading around the world until we die out. I'd take bets on when, but I'll be dead just before.

nesf · 09-02-2007 07:15PM

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

We were not herbivores in recent evolutionary times. Clearly humans had to have included meat in their diet. I don't see how people can argue against that.
Which we were designed to be, looking at our biology and chemistry is different.
This is a very confusing argument for me in general(I argue with myself a lot...), mostly because of how I would define herbivores and the conflicting sources I read.
Can a herbivore digest meat? If they can, but don't need to, and one is better for them - does that make them omnivores or herbivores by design? We can digest cardboard, just as we can digest meat, and plants. According to books like say, The China Study(http://www.thechinastudy.com/), which is most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease, a plant based diet is more suited to us, as a meat based one adversely affects us.
So if we are suited to one diet more than the other does that not make us designed for that one?
On the other hand, if we can be reasonably healthy on either, which one are we designed to be?
If we could not get everything we need from non meat sources it would be clear that we should be omnivorous, but we can.
Yet, we can digest meat and some properties of meat are beneficial too.
This is without going deeper into chemistry and biology of omnivores, carnivores and herbivores, as it gets complicated, there is conflicting information and some exceptions in animals.

It does get wacky depending on how you choose to define herbivore or omnivore. When you look at dictionaries it varies from herbivores being animals who only eat plants to animals who mainly eat plants and carnivores come under the fuzzy heading of flesh eating animals.

I think what it comes down to usually is people talking about humans being exclusively herbivore (i.e. exclusively eating plants). Most reasonable people would accept that mainly eating plants but also some meat would come under the heading of omnivore.

What I've found interesting from an evolution point of view is whether we were occasional omnivores (as in meat being an occasional food rather than a staple) or not. This, when you look at peoples like the Inuits, is quite a complicated question.

scojones · 09-02-2007 07:31PM

Terry wrote:

Let's just go with what agent Smith called us.
We are parasites.

The Big Chunky Charlie!

Terry · 09-02-2007 07:35PM

See, this brings up other parts of evolution such as skin pigmentation, differences in visual acuity (national geographic informed me that people in north east Asia developed an extra layer of skin on their eye lids to protect their eyes from blinding sunlight during the last ice age. not entirely educated on the facts. it was a long time ago. I'll look for a reference later) and several other differences in other continents and even countries.
Perhaps certain early hominids were strictly herbivores and others strictly omnivores. maybe early migration brought these two seperate early humans together and created an omnivourous species.
Remember, the world was a completely different place 20,000 years ago and plant life and animal life were present in places they are no longer present.

Something everyone should be aware of...

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