What Did Prehistoric Humans Eat _6 Unbelievable Stone Age Dishes _Early Human Diets _Ancestral Foods

Imagine prehistoric people sharing a meal. You'll be forgiven for picturing people roaming around in search of animal carcasses and then scavenging raw meat or maybe roasting it over a fire, as that is the stereotype. But in reality, early humans had more balanced diets. Conventional wisdom holds that early humans subsisted on a diet of meat and fruits. However, a growing number of archaeological finds show that eating habits of early humans were remarkably diverse and variable, which was due to a number of factors such as climate, location and season. Fancy visiting the Stone Age eatery? Here you will see some of the oldest dishes ever created by mankind and see for yourself that prehistoric cooking was more elaborate than we thought. Some 780,000 years ago, prehistoric humans on the territory of today's Israel regularly gathered near a lake, currently non-existent. They caught fish and cooked it on the shore. The lake was a habitat of some fish species that became extinct over time. These species included huge freshwater carp-like fish that reached up to two meters in length. Researchers were able to prove that the humans did not place the gigantic carp directly on the flames, instead presumably wrapping it in leaves. The fish fried by these people was just the start of humanity's culinary prowess. In excavations in Iraq, archaeologists recovered the first real indication of complex cooking. These were the burned remains of ancient flatbread cooked on fire around 70,000 years ago. It appears that first, the seeds of beans, lentils and peas were pounded with stones to remove their husk. The crushed seeds were then soaked to make them softer and more chewable. Different types of wild nuts, grasses, wild mustard and wild pistachios were added into the resulting mixture to make for a more complex and flavorful eating experience. The result was something akin to a sort of butter cooked on hot stones. Humans who first got to approximately 55,000 years ago learned to include giant bird eggs in their menu. These eggs came from birds known as demon ducks of doom. True to their name, they were giant flightless birds standing two meters tall with tiny wings and massive legs. They laid enormous eggs, the size of melons. First Australians routinely raided these birds' nests, stealing these giant eggs and cooking them on fire. Prehistoric communities also ate wild cereals, so probably the paleo diet included a nice serving of warm oatmeal. The Stone Age people definitely ground wild oats and other grains prior to cooking at least 32,000 years ago, long before farming took root. An ancient stone recovered in Italy was clearly used to grind oats and other grains in prehistoric times. The ground grains were most likely mixed with water and cooked, the end result of which may have been oatmeal or porridge-like food. For all we know, our prehistoric ancestors may have eaten pancakes. Analyses of starch grains on 30,000-year-old grinding tools suggest that the Stone Age cooks made flour out of the roots of cattails and ferns, which researchers guess was likely mixed with water and baked on hot rocks. The result may have been more akin to hardtacks than a modern crepe, but the idea was the same, fried flatbread made from batter. Historians and archaeologists have traditionally linked bread to the dawn of agriculture, but the discovery of blackened crumbs in the Middle East indicates that hunter-gatherers learned to bake bread over 14,000 years ago. The Stone Age breadmakers took flour made from wild wheat, mixed it with club-rushed tubers and added water. The result was batter, which was then baked on hot stones. Researchers assume that bread was made when people gathered together for a celebration or feast. So we've seen that early humans weren't just meat-eaters. They had complex diets that consisted of a wide selection of foods. This dietary complexity, based on a balance of vegetation, grains and meat, enabled them to prosper in vastly different environmental conditions. While other species were stuck in an ecological niche, we were better able to adapt and migrate across the world thanks to our diverse diets. Thank you for watching. See you next time.