have we evolved to become fruit eaters?
or did we lose our way somewhere along the course of history?
if we are designed to eat only fruit why did humanity add animals to the dinner plate?
was it related to the ice age and having no access to sufficient fruit?
did a band of people leave the tropics out of adventurous curiousity, eat meat out of necessity, become aggressive and return to the tropics to enslave the peaceful fruit eaters thereby forever changing the human diet?
there is no question about the snowballing of hard scientific evidence proving we are in fact frugivores. It cannot be long before the power of mass communication changes the way the entire world eats.
what is the endgame? will we all move back to the tropics and live off fruit?
imagine the entire human population dropping everything they are doing and travelling to the nearest tropical climate all on the same day.
my head is going to explode if i think about it anymore...
someone else pick up the conversation :)
p.s. i have a plane ticket to nicaragua for april 30th. see you all in paradise.
Permalink Reply by Paxkey * on excellent. i live off papayas now so that should be no problem. i have a friend from chinandega i may stay there for awhile. i was told i could find over a dozen varieties of mangoes as well.
nicaragua is just my first stop. going travelling for at least a year. may possibly never leave the tropics. ultimatlely i wish to never live in another dirty,cold, car-centric city again.
Permalink Reply by fruitsandnumbers on did a band of people leave the tropics out of adventurous curiousity
The reason why people left the tropics what not 'adventurous curiosity' but rather social and sexual selection.
You will notice that the native population of Africa is black, whilst in other continents they have lighter colors (white in Europe, yellow in Asia, red in America) - oversimplifying a bit.
It is reasonable to believe that people with paler skins were socially ostracized in primitive societies and denied access to mating partners, which made them abandon their homeland and look for new places to establish themselves. That is how the world got colonized by humans.
The ice age forced humans to dislocate themselves even further and occupy almost every corner of the planet, leaving a nefarious trail of destruction behind...
...or at least this is a reasonable hypothesis - at least in my view.
eat meat out of necessity, become aggressive and return to the tropics to enslave the peaceful fruit eaters thereby forever changing the human diet?
Exactly! Except that this return only happened in modern era: 16th-20th centuries. And also except that the peaceful tropical fruit-eaters also seem to have learned to eat some nasty things other than fruit along the way...
imagine the entire human population dropping everything they are doing and travelling to the nearest tropical climate all on the same day.
Now, that's a charming proposal...
p.s. i have a plane ticket to nicaragua for april 30th. see you all in paradise.
I'm very happy for you!! Are you gonna live in Nicaragua? Perhaps you'll come visit Brasil one day...
Love, Daniel <3
Permalink Reply by Paxkey * on would love to visit brasil. have to learn some spanish besides what i gleaned from speedy gonzales cartoons and taco bell commercials. i know even less portuguese but am anxious to learn.
so you believe whitey was given the boot. not sure about that. i believe fruit eating makes you more compassionate towards all life.
Permalink Reply by fruitsandnumbers on so you believe whitey was given the boot. not sure about that.
why not?
i believe fruit eating makes you more compassionate towards all life.
that is most true. but who says they were eating only fruit in the first place?
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what alternate hypothesis would you propose then?
only sheer curiosity?
i'm curious to hear your ideas about it!
Permalink Reply by Paxkey * on i made an assumption that you believed we were fruit eaters in our past.
i do not know the answer.
i do believe that fruit eating is the best answer for humankind to move forward.
but then that is also an assumption.
my curiousity is whether anyone else shares this belief.
if it is true that we thrive best on fruit i am perplexed as to why we ever stopped eating just fruit. are we new to eating only fruit or did we lose it somewhere along the way.
its hard to use logic when looking for answers based on an assumption.
just reaching out with philosophical and meta based logic and questioning while trying to avoid being verbose and pedantic. although failing miserbally on the later :)
Permalink Reply by Jon Fergus on I could be wrong, but I think it's fairly well established in scientific circles that variations in skin pigmentation occurred as a result of varying climates (specifically variations in UV intensity of different locations), which would go against your hypothesis of pigmentation leading to ostracization and migration. From everything I've read, migration happened first, leading eventually to variations in skin pigmentation (keeping in mind that the variations in skin pigmentation can go either way... living in greater UV areas leading to darkening skin and lower UV areas to lighter skin).
Here's a Ted talk addressing aspects of this subject:
Permalink Reply by Paxkey * on this makes the most sense to me. i believe it is true of canines for example that if we allow them to intermix they will all revert back to type. eventually looking something like the dingo. why should we be any different.
question i have is what would we look like if we all lived in a tropical climate and intermixed for a few generations. would we like like tropical asians or tropical africans or tropical amerindians or tropical east indians. there is definitely a diversity amongst tropical peoples sharing similar uv rays around the planet.
Permalink Reply by Michelle N on Permalink Reply by fruitsandnumbers on How do you explain the fact that the native population of each place has a specific color?
For some reason, people with paler skin seem to have left Africa to other continents.
Since Africa is the most blessed land in the world, it is hard to imagine that they left it searching for a better life. It seems most likely that they have been expelled.
And the most likely reason seems to be their difference in skin color.
Now, observe the following: human skin color is blackest in central to south Africa and becomes whiter as you go north towards north Africa, Middle East and then Europe.
However, this hypothesis seems to break down when you consider that Australian Aborigines are entirely black and so are the populations in southern India. It is generally believed that the former originally came from New Guinea between 40 000–80 000 years BP. At that time Australia and New Guinea formed a single continent know as Sahul. The occupation of New Guinea is also believed to have occurred in that same period by people who came from Sunda by boat.
The problem is: to get to southern India you have to pass through northern India, where the population is lighter in skin-color; to reach Australia, you must pass through several regions with light skin-color populations; even in Indonesia skin-color is considerably whiter than in continental Australia.
If the hypothesis is correct, how to explain the presence of black people in Australia and southern India?
But if it is not, they how to explain:
1. Why is the skin color of all native Africans - without exceptions - black, all Europeans white and so on? People with different skin colors seem to do well no matter where they are, so this cannot be a selective factor.
2. Why did people leave Africa in the first place? Out of sheer curiosity? Because of food scarcity? Where they kicked out? If so, why?
My hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis - and as such not an unproblematic one. I certainly wouldn't be putting my hands in fire for it. But it's the best thing I could come up with so far... Perhaps you have better hypotheses?
Permalink Reply by L on The sun has to do a lot with the skin color, as those with fairer skin have less melanin (what gives you skin pigment) than those with darker skin. Those with darker skin can also take on more sun.
It is my belief that food shortages led to people leaving Africa, the mother land. As time went on, those living in northern climates started producing less and less melanin, as it was no longer needed. They experienced harsher changes in temperature, with much more cold climates and less sunlight. Thus, came the whiter skin tone.
Another great example is the native populations in the Americas. The native Americans, Incans, Mayans, Aztecs, Caribs, etc had features in between those of the African continent and those that lived in colder climates such as Russia. They are brown, with a particular hair type, features, etc.
Note that the native peoples in the Americas were said to have migrated from Russia by crossing the Bering Straight, which connected the northeastern strip of Russia with what is now Alaska, back during the Ice Age. Also note, that this migration occurred during the Ice Age, when food was probably scarce. That means they ate meat and lots of fat. Mind you, meat and fat don't help me get a mean tan, and I am pretty sure besides the lack of proper sun exposure, this also played a major part in skin pigmentation.
However, these people moved into a colder climate and eventually arrived to what is called a more temperate zone (an in-between that alters between really cold and really hot, and has seasons) according to Koppen climate classifications http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification, and continued moving from what is now the United States to Mexico across Central America, to what is today known as South America.
Basically, my point is... just imagine chilling in the sun all the time and eating the best foods for you. I went from pale as snow to my "true Caribbean color" (pretty much as brown as caramel) living in Africa for four months eating whole, unprocessed foods and getting excellent sun exposure. Eating veg/vegan as of two years ago also changed my skin tone to a darker color. Interesting right? Some may say this is an oversimplification, but if you look at history, grab a little science, and observe different cultures, etc., I think some of this stuff may make sense. This is my theory mixed in with knowledge. :)
Permalink Reply by Paxkey * on i am about to embark on this same self experiment starting in central america. thanks for the post.
Permalink Reply by L on This is great! I actually wrote a paper on this and made my own arguments for my Food Issues in Contemporary Society course.... attached ;)
EXCERPT:
"Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (2004) offers more insight on human evolution and how meat consumption became more common. According to Mcgee, “Our primate ancestors lived almost exclusively on plant foods until 2 million years ago, when the changing African climate and diminishing vegetation led them to scavenge animal carcasses.” McGee asserts that need for survival, not preference led to greater meat consumption. In addition, the animals that humans did eat were already dead, meaning hunting was not necessary, not at least for that time being. With due time, however, humans began developing tools necessary for hunting. This is where hunter-gatherers came into play. Nonetheless, circumstances, not social or taste preferences, led to meat consumption. If wild plant life was abundant all throughout history, would humans had ever altered their eating habits? Would they have favored meat over plant life as their main source of nourishment, had it not been for a diminished food source? I argue no. If humans were meant to eat animals, they would have done so way before environmental factors force them into the practice. Had it been their preference, they would have done so willingly.
Although it may seem that human ingenuity and utilization of available resources led to the progression of humankind, I argue that opportunity and necessity were the prime factors. In Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), he argues that Eurasian civilization is a product of preconditions, not resourcefulness. These preconditions led to a chain of developments, and in turn, these developments paved the way for farm-based societies. In origin, humans were hunter-gatherers, much like their primate-ancestors. They then evolved into an agricultural species, which allowed for the domestication of wild animals. By learning how to grow crops as well as domesticating animals, humans settled and began creating villages governed by ruling classes, laws and social structures encompassed in citadels, nation-states, and empires. Food surpluses and developments made life easier, and with more leisure and no longer having to forage for food, our ancestors had more time to advance in other ways. Thus began the concepts of material possessions, military superiority, and social dominance. One would say that this could be considered an early form of our present-day omnivorousness, as animals were used in ceremonies, feasting, and often-time reserved for priests and the elite. And with such, ensued our modern day civilization. The consequences of this all? Disease and violence. This may sound a bit of an overstatement, but in a larger context, it is not as ridiculous as it may seem. Stay with me, if you will. ..."
Lindsay replied to Caitlin Anne's discussion Study: Date Fruit can lead to shorter, easier labor in the group Pregnant/Postpartum, Breastfeeding & Fruity!
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