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« on: June 27, 2012, 06:05:49 am »
The text copied below is extracted from a volume published in Germany in the 1950's at about the same time as Cleave's paper on the natural principles of medicine (see elsewhere on this forum). While Cleave was probably unknown in the grand scientific arena, the german scientist who wrote this early advocation of paleo diet had been highly exposed as a top level scientist during the nazi era. He quickly fell into oblivion after his death. Cleave's utterance in favor of the natural principles of medicine and this text clearly show that both the idea of instinct and the idea of paleo diet have a much older historical background than what the current paleodiet gurus would like us to believe. The difficulty of unearthing the complete picture stems from the variety of scientific profiles involved in the making of the complete theory.
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The theme of this dissertation could give the impression that it does not address the classical medical or biological aspects of an in-depth nutritional study. But one must also view dietary issues from a historical and evolutionary perspective, because only then can the truth replace the many errors and misconceptions that exist publically today to do with this topic. There must be no doubt that in many circles of the population, not only amongst the general public but also amongst doctors, that a deep-set discomfort and uncertainty exists regarding questions about the modern diet. This discomfort is doubtlessly partially justified, when one sees how, due to many aspects of modern civilisation and technological developments, all areas of public life including foodstuffs are being subjected to forms of engineered change. Many of the dangers are without a doubt not as serious as often presented, in particular when the press is involved. However, there are many areas in the development of modern nutrition, especially concerning additives in food, which deserve intensive and serious investigation by the scientific community. This aspect is however, not the decisive factor that causes public anxiety, instead, it is the presence of a certain pessimistic attitude that can be found everywhere in the area of nutrition. Nowadays there are many voices, laypeople and doctors that openly express the opinion that our entire modern concept of nutrition has gone astray, that modern civilisation has influenced our nutrition in an entirely negative way and has ‘denatured’ food; this means alienating food from its natural properties and condition. Therefore, the goal of a nutritional study must be to return to the original nutritional models of primitive, simple and unspoiled human beings and to re-embrace their principles as our own. If this idea is expressed often enough, one can count on the fact that such powerful and appealing arguments could gain extensive influence over our population and lead them to accept that our entire modern diet is wrong. After all, one can only counter these arguments, which inspire the imagination of simple, common people, by thinking about and contemplating what is true about them. We should use all modern methods available to address this issue, not just biology but also cultural history, sociology, and archaeology, and reflect whether or not our diet today really is as irrational, degenerated and ‘denatured’ as we are lead to believe. There is no choice but to track the evolution of our diet from a mixed historical-biological standpoint and, when examining a wide and long spanning period of history, filter out and review the processes which distinguish the diet of humanity at the beginnings of history from that of the modern day. I believe that such an overview can be of great educational value and convince us that many ideas that we possess today about our diet are incorrect and that the classical principles of other nutritional studies - such as those taken from RUBNER or THOMAS – remain valid even today and that one cannot really speak of a ‘degenerated’ food. Nevertheless, I do not want to dictate the outcome and the lessons to be learned, but instead ask you to draw your own conclusions from what cultural history and dietary history – a mix of pure history, biology and sociology – reveals to us. If we are to actually implement these thoughts, we must revert back to the few facts that are known about the earliest history of humanity and attempt to establish what has changed in our diet over the course of history, in particular since the evolution from a primitive to a civilised form of existence.
Humankind, which for the first time entered historical consciousness in the early Pleistocene era, was a society of human beings that led lives as ‘foragers’, hunters and gatheres, and existed as far as we know across the entire world. These humans of the Early and Mid-Pleistocene era fed themselves largely from large game animals. In addition to this, in times when hunted animals where not available, they collected berries and other fruits of the forest. They were wandering tribes with no fixed home, choosing instead to allow the supply of animals that were currently in their vicinity to govern their movements. The location and abundance of these animals fluctuated naturally - particularly due to the effects of hunting – and these early hunter societies of Pleistocene-humans responded by migrating across vast swathes of land accordingly. Depictions of the early hunter customs can be found in the cave paintings of the Dordogne and northern Spain and they reveal to us that the animals hunted were mostly big game animals which humans were equally matched to in confrontation. It was an evenly-matched battle, a battle of life and death, and very often the hunter did not kill the animal, but was killed himself during the hunt. As a result, the early hunters were engaged in a constant struggle for survival in order to stay alive. In addition to this, animals became more timid after their first contact with humans and often moved out of easy reach to avoid them. This explains the cave paintings of Altamira and Les Eyzies, ritually painted on the walls at the time in order to help magically draw in and spellbind the animals, so that they would not leave the area and make themselves available to the hunters. The aggressive tendencies of the hunters and their attitudes towards animals were probably projected onto other humans as well. Evidence exists that suggests that it was not only game animals that were considered prey for humans, and that humans were in fact cannibalistic up and into the Middle or even Late Pleistocene era. Some American academics have come to the conclusion that the Cro-Magnon (early) human beings partially wiped out the Neanderthals in Europe by eating them. In the archaeological discoveries made in Zhoukoudian near Beijing, where Sinathropus pekinensis was discovered, clear signs of cannibalism were also found. It can therefore be said that early human beings not only hunted animals, but in some circumstances also regarded fellow humans as potential prey.
As established in the text above, as well as by the anatomical structure of human teeth and intestinal tract, human beings were always omnivores and unlike some herbivorous anthropoid apes, never avoided eating meat. I mention this because in modern literature, it is often claimed that our prehistoric ancestors were restricted to eating grains and plants, that meat was not a suitable food and that vegetarianism was the preferred natural choice for the human body. This is without a doubt incorrect as human beings were always omnivorous, clearly eating other animals from the very beginning of their existence. During this period, nutrition from plants in the form of berries and wild grasses did not play an important role, serving essentially only one purpose: to supply vitamin C. All other nutrients, including vitamins and minerals, could be supplied through eating meat. Because of these observations, the basic truth is proven that meat is by no means a ‘degenerated’, modern form of nutrition and has instead virtually dominated the diet of human beings from the very beginning. This did not change much even when at some point in the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age, the second stage of human history began, namely the crossover from existence as foragers and hunters to nomads. This change took place irregularly in leaps and bounds, but resulted logically from the development of hunting methods. As game animals moved out of reach of humans, humans were forced to follow them and therefore constantly change their location and adapt their ways of living to match the herd movements of hunted animals. Humans had to, in the words of RÜSTOW; learn to ‘farm’ these herds. The ‘farming’ of these herds in the early stages of nomadism was to some extent a precursor to the later breeding of herd animals. Many changes took place at this crossover between the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and the existence of nomads. Instead of pursuing and killing the herds of hunted animals, their numbers were maintained, only being killed for food when it was absolutely required and attempts were made to preserve them and if possible to let them increase in number.
This second stage in human history, developing in central Asia and crossing over the plains and steppes of Eastern Europe brought no substantial change in the human diet, insomuch as animals and animal products from cultivated herds remained the primary sources of nutrition. At this time, like times before it, food from animals remained the basis of the human diet. It can therefore be said that human beings fed themselves on a diet of primarily meat for several thousand years. This fact cannot be underestimated and the regular consumption and reliance on meat occurred for a considerable amount of time. Through excavations at different Palaeolithic and Mesolithic settlements in Europe and Asia, it has been made possible in recent years to gain a more detailed insight about this topic. The oldest of these settlements to be examined using modern methods, a Palaeolithic region from the crossover period from hunter-foragers to nomads is in England. I am referring to Starlarr in Middle England, a late hunter settlement that according to carbon dating, can be traced back to around 7500-8500 B.C. By measuring the ratio of the human population to the number of hunted animals, data on the intake of protein from animal sources has been calculated. The archaeologist CLARK made the calculation by comparing the number of fossilised human remains to the number of fossilised remains of hunted animals, concluding that these humans, within a tribe of 15 people, consumed around 26 kg of meat per day, especially meat from stags, deer, aurochs, but also whenever possible from sea-birds and fish. These extended families are believed to have been made up predominantly (around 2/3) of children, meaning a daily consumption of around 260g of protein from animal meat for a fully grown person; an amount that is considerable higher than the amount we consume today. The humans that fed themselves in such a way were healthy and robust and adequately prepared themselves for the daily struggle for survival. There is no sign that these people suffered from degenerative diseases that can be traced back to the heavy consumption of animal protein. What is interesting, is that the population density at that time was very low, consisting of 1 to 5 people for every 100 square meters of inhabited ground. CLARK mentions in his report that this low population density was not a result of low birth rates or high death rates, but instead was simply because these early hunters could not secure enough food with their primitive weapons to feed and sustain large families. The primitive level of tools at the time therefore restricted the health and size of the population. If these early humans would have had better tools, much more food could have been obtained and the population size would have increased dramatically as the amount of wild animals available at the time would have easily fed ten times the population that existed. These interesting figures demonstrate the great extent to which the human diet at the time consisted of meat and animal products.............." ( the whole text is about 25 pages)
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