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Top Comments: Early Humans Ate Vegetables [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-03
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[We had very bad, but entirely expected news today of the passage of H. R. 1, the omnibus budget bill that will likely end up killing thousands of Americans. I have nothing intelligent to say about it that others have not said better, so I am resorting to science again. I will say, however, that we have to redouble our protests to make clear that the American people are not going to put up with this.]
Most of the tools archaeologists find for early humans are made of stone, and are for the clear purpose of killing and butchering game. It’s probably this fact that has inspired the so-called paleo diet, which is mostly meat-based, the idea being that if all our ancestors were eating was meat, then that’s what’s most healthy for us as a species. However, a new report by archaeologists in China details a rare find of wooden digging sticks that are evidence for early humans harvesting and consuming edible roots. Ancient wooden tools are rare finds because, over the course of millennia, wood decays, leaving no trace. However, the archaeological site where the digging sticks were found, called Gantangqing, was at an ancient lakeshore, and the wood was preserved by moist underground conditions.
But the rest of the menu was colorful, nutritious, and largely vegetarian. Along with the tools, researchers uncovered ample plant remains, including hazelnuts, pine nuts, grapes, and kiwis. In the lake and along its muddy shore, early hominins would also have been able to pluck and eat the leaves and seeds of water lilies and dig up water chestnuts and other edible roots and rhizomes.
There are, in fact, very few stone tools at the site because the nearest source for stone that can be worked into tools is 5 kilometers away. As such, the hominins who occupied this site had to make do wth the local workable materials, such as wood. (Because there are no human remains, it’s not clear whether these hominins were Neanderthal-related Denisovans, or even the more primitive Homo erectus.
While this evidence of vegetable harvesting exists in China, it is likely that the consumption of vegetables was widespread among early humans. The wooden tool that would have been used in other locations would not have survived to the present day unless special circumstances occurred, as they did at Gantangqing.
Comments are below the fold.
Top Comments (June 29, 2025):
From Paul A:
I have to nominate zenbassoon's comment in annieli's post on the new detainee camp in Florida. If you're building a concentration camp, don't call it by the name of a prison instead.
From Ed Tracey:
In the diary by First Amendment about the hospital in rural southwest Nebraska that has announced its closing due to the upcoming Medicaid cuts in the future ... LowAndSlow predicts that operational reasons will ensure it is merely the first of many.
Top Mojo (June 28, 2025):
Top Mojo is courtesy of mik! Click here for more on how Top Mojo works.
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