What did ancient humans eat in a day?

What did ancient humans eat in a day? The paleo diet says meat, and mostly meat. The bones and teeth disagree. In a cave at Taforalt in Morocco, Stone Age hunter-gatherers had more than half their teeth rotten from starchy plants, and their enamel points to plants as their main source of protein. A Neanderthal tooth from Shanidar Cave held cooked starch in its plaque. In 1936, Arne Høygaard weighed the food of hunting families in East Greenland: seal topped the list, but plants were on the scale too. So why does everyone picture a caveman with a leg of meat? Bones last in the ground while plants rot away, and in 1975 a doctor put the human gut next to a dog's and decided our ancestors ate only flesh. Hunter-gatherer diets, the Hadza, and where the paleo diet came from. 0:00 The fridge and the fire 0:33 Only meat by the fire? 0:59 Rotten teeth at Taforalt 2:29 One day on the slope 3:41 Why we saw only meat 5:03 Seal on the scale 6:43 A doctor and a dog 8:23 Which caveman do you copy? Every study behind this video is listed below. 📚 RESEARCH & SOURCES: ▸ Rotten teeth at Taforalt: "Earliest evidence for caries and exploitation of starchy plant foods in Pleistocene hunter-gatherers from Morocco" by Humphrey, De Groote et al. (2014, PNAS) ▸ Plants as the main protein: "Isotopic evidence of high reliance on plant food among Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers at Taforalt, Morocco" by Moubtahij, McCormack et al. (2024, Nature Ecology & Evolution) ▸ The burials: "Iberomaurusian funerary behaviour" by Humphrey, Bello et al. (2012, Journal of Human Evolution) ▸ The cave and its game: Worthey, Fernandez et al. (2025, PLoS ONE) ▸ Land snails: Taylor, Barton et al. (2011, Quaternary International) ▸ Neanderthal bones: "Isotopic evidence for the diets of European Neanderthals and early modern humans" by Richards, Trinkaus (2009, PNAS) ▸ Cooked starch in plaque: "Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets" by Henry, Brooks, Piperno (2011, PNAS) ▸ Ohalo: "The broad spectrum revisited" by Weiss, Wetterstrom et al. (2004, PNAS) ▸ What lasts in the ground: "Effects of Evolution, Ecology, and Economy on Human Diet" by Pontzer, Wood (2021, Annual Review of Nutrition) ▸ Høygaard's year in East Greenland, reanalysed: "East-Greenland traditional nutrition" by Mullie, Deliens, Clarys (2021) ▸ Montana: "Mammoth featured heavily in Western Clovis diet" by Chatters, Potter et al. (2024, Science Advances) ▸ Following the Hadza: "Eat first, share later" by Berbesque, Wood et al. (2016, Evolution and Human Behavior) ▸ Hadza calories, as reported by Schnorr et al. (2014, Nature Communications) ▸ Calories on sale: FAO food balance sheets, via Our World in Data (2023) ▸ "The Stone Age Diet" by Voegtlin (1975) ▸ "Paleolithic nutrition" by Eaton, Konner (1985, New England Journal of Medicine), as reported by Cordain et al. below ▸ The atlas count: "Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets" by Cordain, Miller et al. (2000) ▸ "The Paleo Diet" by Cordain (2002) ▸ Americans on a diet: 2024 Food & Health Survey, International Food Information Council ———————————————————— PEOPLE & SITES MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO: ▸ Grotte des Pigeons, Taforalt: a cave in eastern Morocco with a cemetery of hunter-gatherers. ▸ Louise Humphrey: studied the teeth of its 52 adults. ▸ Zineb Moubtahij: measured their enamel. ▸ Amanda Henry: scraped plaque from Neanderthal teeth, one from Shanidar Cave in Iraq. ▸ Ohalo: a camp in Israel where the plants survived. ▸ Arne Høygaard: his expedition weighed the food of families in East Greenland from 1936. ▸ The Hadza: hunter-gatherers of today in Tanzania. ▸ Walter Voegtlin: a doctor in Seattle who wrote The Stone Age Diet. Chart redrawn after Voegtlin, 1975. ▸ Eaton and Konner: two researchers who worked out a Stone Age diet with science. ▸ Loren Cordain: counted 229 peoples in an atlas and wrote The Paleo Diet. ———————————————————— 🎨 Animation by Fulcrum ———————————————————— #ancienthumans #food #paleodiet #cavemandiet #prehistory #huntergatherers #archaeology #anthropology #neanderthals #humanhistory #nutrition #education