| Description |
The role of plant foods in human evolution is largely ignored in the literature. The archaeological visibility of early hominin meat consumption, compelling ethnographic accounts of large game hunting, and recent trends in nutritional science all highlight the potential importance of animal foods in hominin diets. As a result, the nutritional contributions of plant foods remain under-explored. Ethnographic observations suggest that plants are a critical resource for mid- and low-latitude foragers. Paleoanthropologists concede that hominins were reliant on plants to some degree, but the role of meat consumption in driving changes in brain and body size in the hominin lineage are taken for granted. In the second chapter of this dissertation, I discuss human physiological requirements for specific macronutrients, and argue that meat is not a necessary dietary constituent. I present data on the plant contributions to the diet of Twe forager-horticulturalists, and examine the macronutrient and amino acid composition of common Twe plant foods. In the third chapter, I focus on the nutritional qualities of plant underground storage organs and discuss how they compare to animal foods in terms of nutritional composition and procurement effort. In the final chapter, I discuss the archaeological visibility of plant foods and assess the reliability of starch granules and phytoliths in dental calculus in recording Twe plant consumption. |
