Pretty much everyone knows about the existence of the fabulous cave paintings dating back 30,000 years in places such as Lascaux and Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc in France. In these caves, our forebearers used the walls as their canvases to paint amazingly vibrant and detailed paintings of animals and various other things. The paintings are beautiful, some of them even having been drawn using surprisingly sophisticated techniques of shading and perspective, and millions visit the caves to view .
Long we have assumed that we knew quite a bit about these drawing in these caves. But now evidence has been discovered that shows us, as is frequently the case, that we don’t know as much as we thought we did. Indeed, we have now found evidence that may make us question what we thought we knew about the diets of these people:
Don’t you see? If EneMan has existed since Paleolithic times, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that Paleolithic humans probably required his unique services. And if Paleolithic humans required his services, this calls into doubt much of what we know about the hunter-gatherer diet. After all, we know that a diet high in fiber (as in edible plants, fruits, etc.) is good for regularity, and archeology presently tells us that the bulk of the hunter-gatherer diet was made up of these things, with a lesser proportion of meat.
Yet, here we have EneMan.
Perhaps Paleolithic humans ate far more meat than we had previously thought. Perhaps I should write this up. Chalk one up for EneMan.
