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Our ancestors gorged on carbs before humans even existed as a separate species �study
Next time you eat macaroni and cheese, know that youre taking part in one of humanitys most ancient and longstanding rituals: gorging on carbs.
Healthy carbohydrates, overrated carbohydrates, cutting carbohydrates& we love them. We cant get enough of them. But did we domesticate crops so that we could give ourselves a constant supply of carbohydrate-rich foods, or did the crops themselves domesticate us? Brand new research suggests our love affair with carbohydrates goes back further than we ever thought possible.
Our ancestors feasted on roasted tubers before humans even existed
Modern science has challenged the view that our ancestors gorged on mammoth flesh. Sure, our ancestors may occasionally have taken down an ancient pachyderm, but they dont appear to have been a staple of our early diet.
Instead, early humans seem to have developed a taste for carbohydrates. They roasted starch-heavy foods like cassava, plantain, taro, and sweet potatoes. They may have prepared barley and bulgur.�
The latest research traces the evolution of a gene that makes us able to digest starch more easily by breaking it down into simple sugars that our bodies convert into energy.
Remarkably, researchers based in Connecticut and New York State have shown that these genes existed in our ancestors bodies long before they �or we developed agriculture.�
They may even go back 800,000 years, which is before Homo sapiens (thats us) or Neanderthals (our late cousins) became distinct species of hominids.�By testing samples from that far back, the scientists found that hominids living nearly a million years ago had a copy of this starch-digesting gene.
Meanwhile, European farmers from about the last 4,000 years had several more copies of the gene, which could be an adaptation to eating even more starch than before.
How does the carbohydrate-loving timeline map against our species history?
The consensus among hominid historians is that anatomically modern humans have existed for about 300,000 years.�
Anatomically modern means they looked like us. They had the anatomy of modern humans. Our human ancestry can be traced back to Africa.
Starting about 200,000 years ago, the humans of Africa began migrating to other parts of the world. However, all of those humans died, and all of the humans that exist in the 21st century are descended from a single group that left Africa between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago.
Sorry, creationists.
Humans started cultivating crops about 12,000 years ago, but cave paintings, sculptures, musical instruments, jewelry, and seafaring came much earlier. The Egyptians built the Great Pyramids of Giza about 4,500 years ago, and about 500 years later the first European civilization �the Minoan �dug its roots.�
This is around the time scientists say European farmers started having an extra copy of this particular starch-digesting gene �i.e. when we started eating loads of carbs.�
But the earliest evidence of this gene is from 800,000 years ago before humans had even branched off from other Homo species. The research therefore supports the theory that it was (probably cooked) carbohydrates, not animal proteins, that gave us the evolutionary boost we needed to take over the world, in the form of an expanded brain.
So expand your brain: go make that macaroni and cheese. Eat it and take part in a most ancient ritual.
