Philip J. Goscienski, M.D.
January 2008
It's not likely that there were famines during the Stone Age for one main reason: nutritional diversity. From the distant past, a couple of million years ago to perhaps 100,000 years ago, humans existed in temperate climates where hundreds of types of plants and animals flourished. Even during the periodic advances of the Ice Ages there were always plenty of choices.
But how about those harsh winters, the severe droughts? Those were problems only after humans had left the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to become farmers and herdsmen and began to rely on a relative handful of crops and animals for sustenance. Even today's hunter-gatherers, no matter where on the globe they happen to be, are familiar with 100 or more species of edible plants and scores of insects and animals that can sustain them. Farther back in time, no matter how harsh conditions became, some plants and animals would survive the longest drought or the severest winter. And early humans knew how to find them.
Australian aborigines offer a perfect example. They survive and multiply in some of the driest, hottest areas of the continent. Early explorers of the outback, without the knowledge of previous generations, frequently died in those very same areas.
The Agricultural Revolution made it possible for great civilizations to rise but it put those growing populations at risk. It took only a few generations for farmers to unlearn what their forbears knew. Even now, single-crop economies are the norm; only 8 cereal grains provide 56 percent of the calories and 50 percent of the protein that the world consumes. More strikingly, 75 percent of the world's grain production consists of only 3 types, wheat, maize and rice. How susceptible we have become to any catastrophe that targets these crops! We only have to reach back a few generations — the Irish potato famine — to see what a simple microorganism can do to alter the destiny of a country, a region or the world.
There's another aspect of diversity that nutrition scientists are only now beginning to recognize, namely, the need for humans to eat a wide variety of foods. Through tens of thousands of generations our body chemistry evolved in a nutrient-wealthy world, the forests and savannahs of Africa. We are perfectly adapted to a diet that includes more than 4,000 known nutrient substances, and probably thousands more that we may never identify.
To be sure, there are a few niche groups such as the Masai of Africa and the Inuit of North America who live on a diet that seems to lack adequate plant foods. The truth is that they are examples of the remarkable human capability to get by on a wide range of diets, just like modern Americans, and continue to reproduce. Close examination of their health status reveals that both the Masai and the Inuit suffer from poor dentition, anemia and early deaths in childhood.
What's the lesson for us? We can live longer, healthier, more active lives if we follow the Stone Age example. Anyone can add more fruits, vegetables, nuts and seafood to the family menu. That might even leave you too full for that nightly snack of potato chips and Pepsi.
Philip J. Goscienski, M.D. is the author of Health Secrets of the Stone Age, Better Life Publishers 2005. Contact him at drphil@stoneagedoc.com.