Expert: John Shea - 6/28/2007

Question
Palaeoloithic diets for Cro-Magnon cavemen in Europe are generally described as being very high in animal-food(anywhere from 65% to 90% to 100%, depending on the source). However, it's been suggested by some that the half of humanity living in warmer, non-glacial climes in Palaeoltihic-era Earth, would have eaten diets much higher in plant-food. While this seems logical, this is not necessarily a given, as there are modern-day Neolithic examples in equatorial regions, such as the Masai, Samburu etc. who eat diets consisting mostly of animal-foods.

The trouble is that all the info I know of centres around Palaeolithic humans in Europe, so I haven't a clue what humans actually ate, 60,000 years ago,
ago, on the Indian Subcontinent, say. Could you perhaps give me some idea of the diet of Palaeolithic humans in the er areas of Earth at that time?

Thanks

Geoff

Answer
Dear Geoff
This is really an area where archaeologists just don't have good data.  We don't have any human fossils from around 60,000 BP from India, so studies based on bone chemistry won't help.
The best prehistorians can do in a situation like this is to rely on analogy with recent human hunter-gatherers in broadly comparable environments. India is a particularly tough case, in this, because you get widely different plant and animal resources and energetic demands depending on altitude and other local geographic variables.
If you're looking for such data based on hunter-gatherers, your best bet is to look at Robert Kelly's 1996 The Foraging Spectrum.  He has some estimates of diet composition based on "effective temperature" indices.  Lewis Binford does something similar in his (2000) Constructing Frames of Reference book but that is a massive tome, and it will take you a long hard slog to get through to the estimates you are seeking, and in the end, they are really just estimates.
If you're looking for archaeological evidence, again, its sparse, but there is a good summary of the Indian subcontinental record by a fellow named Kennedy. Forgotten the title, I am afraid, something like "God-Apes, Ape-Men".
For diet estimates in Africa around 60 Kya, have a look at any good reference on African prehistory (Hilary Deacon is a good start for South Africa).  One problem, though, is that pre-60 Kya, we are not sure anybody is using the specialized hunting aids recent hunter-gatherers use, like nets, traps, bow and arrow.  If they did not have this technology, then their choice of animal prey may have differed significantly from recent humans.
There have been a couple of recent conferences on prehistoric human diets.  Check out the website of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany.  Abstracts of some of their conference papers are posted there.
Cheers,
John Shea