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There’s a lot of opinions about the current Paleo diet. Some proponents say eat what our ancestors ate – meat, veggies, fruit, nuts. But what about things like lentils? Beans? Milk or wheat? Are those allowed in the Paleo diet? There are differing opinions. How do we really know what our ancestors ate?
Stomachs don’t fossilize, so this actually is a pretty difficult question to answer. In order to figure it out, archaeologists and scientists have to use indirect methods, and infer our ancestors’ diets based on clues. It’s a treasure hunt involving ancient food and ancient diets. And the results could lead to understanding how our food influenced our evolution, and eventually, how we developed into the human species we are today.
Today on the podcast I welcome Dr. Briana Pobiner. Briana is a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian, and has traveled all around the world, looking for fossils and using them to deduce what did our ancestors eat.
You can follow Human Origins at the Smithsonian Institute @HumanOrigins.
For patrons of this podcast, check out the bonus content at Patreon.com. You’ll find photos that Briana took from the road during her archaeological digs. If you are not a patron and want to become one, you can sign up at Patreon.com. Thank you for you support!
Some of the background music you heard are clips from:
SUNBIRDS by BOCrew (c) copyright 2012 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/BOCrew/38854 Ft: THEDEEPR / THECORNER / feat : FORENSIC /
Drops of H2O ( The Filtered Water Treatment ) by J.Lang (c) copyright 2012 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/djlang59/37792 Ft: Airtone
reCreation by airtone (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/airtone/59721
B34 by zikweb (c) copyright 2006 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/zikweb/8168 Ft: NoSushi
Photo from rawpixel.