Originally published August 23 2012
Vegetarian cavemen died off while meat-eaters survived, according to scientists
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) Animal rights activists may be uncomfortable with it, but new research shows that a vegetarian branch of humans died off long ago, while their meat-eating brethren lived on and thrived.
That is the conclusion of a recently published study in the journal Nature by a team of researchers from the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon and the Universite de Toulouse Paul Sabatier, who found that the pre-human species of vegan-eating man known as "Paranthropus robustus" disappeared from the human family tree.
Researchers said that species "relied more on plant-based foodstuffs," while the species that evolved into today's modern Homo Sapiens beginning about a hundred centuries years ago did not.
Using a laser to determine the ratios of isotopes of different elements in tooth enamel found in the early skeletal remains, the scientists were able to identify "diet and habitat changes," according to the journal.
The research concluded that the largely vegetarian species died out while the less diet-restricted "Australopithecus africanus" peoples, which developed human-like facial features and a human-sized brain cavity, continued to evolve.
"In terms of diet, it has been suggested that early Homo was a generalist but that Paranthropus was a specialist," the team, led by Prof. Vincent Balter, wrote.
Still, the earliest man was vegan
The new research seems to coincide with the conclusion of earlier studies which have found that the earliest of man generally relied more on fruits, nuts and berries than meat to survive.
"Dr. T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus at Cornell University and author of "The China Study," explains that in fact, we only recently (historically speaking) began eating meat, and that the inclusion of meat in our diet came well after we became who we are today," writes Kathy Freston, an author and vegan expert, writing for the Huffington Post.
She goes on to say that Campbell says "the birth of agriculture only started about 10,000 years ago at a time when it became considerably more convenient to herd animals. This is not nearly as long as the time [that] fashioned our basic biochemical functionality (at least tens of millions of years) and which functionality depends on the nutrient composition of plant-based foods."
Killing us with meat
Campbell's conclusions are further supported by Dr. Neal Bernard, a clinical researcher and author who is a leading advocate for health, nutrition, and higher standards in research. In his book, The Power of Your Plate, he writes that "early humans had diets very much like other great apes, which is to say a largely plant-based diet, drawing on foods we can pick with our hands. Research suggests that meat-eating probably began by scavenging--eating the leftovers that carnivores had left behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems."
Dr. Richard Leakey, one of the nation's foremost anthropologists who made scores of important archeological discoveries of early man in Kenya between 1968 and 1989, also notes that even first-year physiology students instinctively know that humans are herbivores. He once noted, "[y]ou can't tear flesh by hand, you can't tear hide by hand.... We wouldn't have been able to deal with food source that required those large canines (teeth)."
"The point is this," writes Freston, "thousands of years ago when we were hunter-gatherers, we may have needed a bit of meat in our diets in times of scarcity, but we don't need it now."
"Although we think we are, and we act as if we are, human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us, because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores," adds Dr. William C. Roberts, editor of the American Journal of Cardiology.
Sources:
http://dailycaller.com
http://www.nature.com
http://www.leakey.com/bios/richard-leakey
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