Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Step 1.4: How diets have changed from the age of the cavemen to current
day
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ALEX JOHNSTONE: Our diet as humans has changed over millions of years.
We have evolved from Stone Age, or Palaeolithic Age, of 2 and 1/2 million years
ago to now, what I call the Obese Age. This is as a result of the ready-to-eat
food available 24 hours a day at relatively cheap cost, making it very easy to
over-consume relative to our energy requirements.
We can gain insight into how our diet has changed from archaeology, from burial
sites, plant and bone remains, and vessels, utensils, and depictions, such as
cave drawings. In this following section, we will briefly explore how nutrition has
influenced the development of Homo sapiens. I met with Dr Karen Milek, lecturer
in archaeology from the Department of Geosciences to find out more about this
process.
KAREN MILEK: I'm here with a selection of different hominin skulls, which we
have in the collection at the Department of Archaeology here at the University of
Aberdeen. And you can see that they're all really different. They have different
brain sizes and shapes, different cranial capacities. They have different shapes
to the face and also different shapes and sizes of teeth. And all of these
evolutionary characteristics are related to past environments, past diets, social
structures within all of these groups.
So if I start with a modern human, this is the skull of a modern European female.
And you can see that it has a very large cranial capacity compared to many of
the other specimens here, especially a lot of cranial capacity in that frontal lobe.
This is a female, and that frontal lobe is nearly vertical.
You can also see that we are perfectly adapted to upright locomotion on the
basis of this hole here, which is very centred on the skull. This is where the spine
enters the skull. And as you'll see when we look at some of the other skulls, the
location of this entry point of the spine changes according to the type of
locomotion that our ancestors had, whether they were knuckle walkers or
whether they were walking upright.
FutureLearn 1
FutureLearn 2
both Europe and Africa. In Europe, it evolved into Neanderthals, and in Africa it
evolved into modern humans.
This bizarre looking fellow is the skull of Australopithecus boisei, nicknamed
Nutcracker Man. And as you can see, it looks really different from some of the
other specimens. And that's because this species evolved with very distinctive
characteristics, probably related to a very specialised diet. And it has really large
jaw bones, and this is probably related to very large muscles that were wrapped
around the side of the head and indicate that this species was probably highly
specialised at chewing tough foods like nuts, roots, things like that.
ALEX JOHNSTONE: The theory of evolution says that a change in diet which
boosted to a nutrient rich diet led to enhanced brain growth, which enabled
acquisition of skills such as toolmaking, language, and cultural expression.
Modern man is genetically Stone Age, and we still consume some foods that
were available in this Palaeolithic period.
We can look to historical data to tell us how our food intake and nutrition has
evolved over time. Cookbooks, courtly literature, religious texts, published
chronicles, household and hospital accounts and medical texts all provide us
with insight into how our diets changed in the past.
The change in global weather conditions and traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle
has resulted in a shift from foraging to agricultural diets. Major shifts in food
choice and nutrient intakes occurred around the Industrial Revolution and
changed farming practices around cereal production. In the 21st century, mass
produced ready-to-eat meals and processed foods have emerged alongside
globalisation and large-scale farming practices.
What can we learn about eating from our ancestors? We know that life
expectancy for hunter-gatherer ancestors was lower than it is today. However,
studies of contemporary diets rich in palaeolithic foods, including lean red meat,
seafood, fibrous foods have revealed significant and positive changes to
markers of disease. This has led to renewed trends to incorporate this way of
eating in our modern diet.
These diets, however, are difficult to stick to because of the low grain and cereal
content. They are also contrary to current healthy eating advice. And we will
consider some of the purported advantages and disadvantages of palaeolithic
style of eating later in the course.
Over millions of years from primate to modern human, our diet has evolved as
an omnivore. Modern diets in the developed world have contributed to the
development of obesity and related noncommunicable diseases, such as
FutureLearn 3
FutureLearn 4