Primitive people ate. Fats

Nowadays, in the diet of a modern person there is not only a variety of various products, but also very different nutritional supplements. In this article we will look at what modern people eat and what their ancestors, the inhabitants of the Stone Age, ate.

Diet of ancient man

The diet of a person who lived in the Stone Age is significantly different from the diet of a modern, modern person. At that time, it was impossible to find sugar or salt in the form in which it is found now, and the same fruits were considered a real luxury. Basically, ancient man ate plant and animal foods. There was very little fat in the diet. The main substances consumed by humans were vitamins, antioxidants and fiber. Moreover, there was a lot of fiber: up to 100 grams or more per day.

Those tribes that were located in areas rich in fruit foods could afford a lot of fructose in their diet. Some tribes found a place for themselves where they could successfully hunt wild animals. People consumed mostly dry and lean meat. It contained many useful acids. It was a very balanced meal. It's hard to believe, but ancient people often knew better about food than the inhabitants medieval Europe or even modern people.

Ancient man mainly hunted rhinoceroses, deer, and marine mammals. His diet included nuts, various roots, and plant leaves. He even made them various tinctures, which were very beneficial for the body, salts in food ancient man There was practically no food, much less smoked food. Much later, ancient man discovered a method for preparing vegetables, meat and other products. The ancient people also prepared the salads we were accustomed to without salt. At the same time, they used special dishes made of baked clay.

How many calories did ancient man consume?

It should be noted that ancient man consumed great amount calories. At the same time, he moved a lot. According to scientists, ancient man burned three thousand calories or more per day. This was due to the fact that ancient people got up very early, went hunting, hunted. The return journey also took a lot of time and effort, especially if the hunt was successful.

Nowadays, people do not think about how many calories they consume. It's obvious that main problem For modern man, it is not a lack of food at all, but an excess of it. The food of modern man is literally saturated with fats, often not healthy, but harmful - those that are deposited in his body, forming cholesterol plaques.

What do modern people eat?

The healthiest cuisine is considered to be the cuisine of Asian peoples. It is rich in plant foods and low in fat.

More and more often in the diet of modern people you can find biologically active additives, which can be useful, but at the same time, if used incorrectly, can cause harm to the body. The main difference between the diet of modern man and the diet of ancient people is that modern food contains a huge amount of salt. Moreover, salt can now be bought in every store. The same goes for sugar.

Modern man, despite the active brain activity, requires an order of magnitude less calories than the ancient one required. According to scientists, modern man consumes the same amount of calories compared to ancient man, but burns half as much per day.

Naturally, each time space has its own mysteries and not secrets revealed. Primitive people cause a lot of interest and curiosity among both scientific researchers and ordinary earthly representatives of mankind.

• Where did you live primitive people.
• What did the primitives eat?
• What clothes did they wear?
• Tools of labor of primitive people.
• What did the primitives paint with?
• Lifespan.
• What responsibilities did men and women have?

Where did primitive people live?

The question of how primitive people hid from bad weather and dangerous animals of that era is very interesting. Despite their seemingly low mental development, primitive people were well aware that they needed to organize their own nest. This says a lot about the fact that even at that time humanity had developed an instinct for self-preservation, and the desire for comfort had its place.

Huts made from animal bones and skins. If you were lucky and managed to win the hunt for a mammoth, then from the remains of the beast, after butchering, people of the past era built huts for themselves. They set the powerful and strong bones of the animal deep into the ground so that they would hold on and not fall out under unfavorable conditions. weather conditions. After building the foundation, they stretched a rather heavy and strong skin of animals on these bones, as if on a foundation, after which they fixed it with various sticks and ropes to make their house unshakable.


Caves and gorges. Some were lucky to stay in natural gifts, for example, in a mountain gorge or in caves formed by nature itself. In such structures, it was sometimes much safer than in makeshift huts. About twenty people lived both in huts and in caves, as primitive people lived in tribes.

What did primitive people eat?

Primitive people were alien to such foods that we are used to eating today. They knew they had to get and cook food on our own, so they always did everything possible to get the booty. In moments of luck, they managed to feast on mammoth meat. As a rule, men followed such prey, with all possible hunting tools for their time. It often happened that during the hunt many representatives of the tribe died, after all, the mammoth is not a weak animal that is also able to protect itself. But if you managed to kill the prey, then tasty and nutritious diet was provided for a long period time. Primitive people cooked meat on a fire, which they also got themselves, because there were no matches, let alone lighters, in those days.


Hiking a mammoth is dangerous and not always crowned with success, so not every time men took risks and took such an unpredictable step. The main diet of primitive people was a raw food diet. They obtained various fruits, fruits, vegetables, roots and greens, with which they were saturated.

Clothes of primitive people

Primitive people often wore what their mother gave birth to. Although, clothes were also found in their everyday life. They put it on not out of aesthetic concepts, but for the purpose of the safety of causal places. Most often, men wore such clothes so as not to damage them during the hunt. reproductive organs. Women protected the same causative places for offspring. They made clothes from animal skins, leaves, hay, found intricate roots.

Tools of labor of primitive people

Both for a hike on a mammoth, and for building a hearth, primitive people, as well as modern people, needed tools. They independently built and came up with what shape, weight and purpose each of them should be. Of course, they also came up with what to make them from themselves. To implement the invented, they used sticks, stones, ropes, pieces of iron and many other details. Almost all the labor tools of primitive people came to modern world almost unchanged, only the materials from which they are made have changed. Hence the conclusion is that their level of intelligence was high.

What did primitive people draw with?

Scientific researchers, investigating the secrets of the life of primitive people, often find unusual and skillful drawings in their huts. What did the primitives draw with? They came up with a lot of improvised means that could depict something on the wall. These were sticks, with which they knocked out patterns on the wall, and hard rocks, and iron fragments. From the fact that the primitives drew, even the most distinguished scientists are delighted and surprised. These unknown people had such a highly developed level of intelligence and such a high desire to leave a memory of themselves that they created drawings that were preserved for many millennia.

Lifespan of primitive man

Not a single scientist was able to accurately voice the exact life expectancy of primitive people. However, there is scientific evidence the fact that practically no primitive man did not live more than forty years. Although, their life was so eventful, full of freedom and creative ideas, that perhaps forty years was enough to fully realize everything they had planned.


Their life was dangerous, unpredictable, full of extreme sports, at the same time, they had high probability eat spoiled, poisonous or unfit for consumption food. In addition, hunting, implementing any ideas with one’s own hands, all this could lead to death.

By the sweat of his brow, he obtained his food: first he collected edible plants, fruits and roots, then he began to include animal food in his diet. The struggle for survival in harsh conditions left its mark on the nutritional pattern of our ancestors and led to morphological and physiological changes their body.

Homo sapiens(Homo sapiens) lived around the same time as the Neanderthals. For unknown reasons, the last species became extinct, and Homo sapiens began a victorious march across the planet, exploring new habitats and conquering new continents.

35 thousand years ago new people appeared in Europe, very close to to modern man – Cro-Magnons. They cannot be considered as the ancestors of all modern people. Cro-Magnons are one of many groups Homo sapiens who lived on Earth during the last glaciation.

Their stone tools were much better than those of the Neanderthals. New people knew how to make spearheads, daggers, and needles from bone. Later they designed the bow and arrows. The Cro-Magnons built houses that allowed them to shelter from bad weather. They first domesticated wolves, from which domestic dogs later evolved. The first cave paintings were also made by these people.

Cro-Magnons were great hunters and passed on their experience from generation to generation. They used spears, javelins, arrows and stone throwing discs. In hunting, they were very inventive, using deep camouflaged pits and pens in narrow gorges to capture prey. They often wore skins to get closer to the herd of animals. Hunting for large animals was collective. The Cro-Magnons first invented the harpoon and began to catch fish with its help. They also successfully caught birds in snares and came up with complex death traps for predators. Using hunting techniques and tools, Cro-Magnons were able to obtain highly nutritious animal food and significantly expanded their diet. This, obviously, contributed to the successful survival and reproduction of the species and helped them populate even the harsh cold regions of Siberia.

The Cro-Magnons did not disdain to collect edible plants, roots, fruits, and berries. This was usually done by women and children. Some of the plant matter was cooked over fire. Boiling and frying plant products increased their nutritional value and helped break down and soften cellulose, which is inedible for humans. The tubers of many plants were poisonous, but heat treatment removed from them dangerous toxins. People learned in practice how to survive in harsh conditions, accumulated the experience gained and taught the younger generation.

Scientists have reconstructed the Cro-Magnon diet. It turned out that plant and animal food was consumed by people in a ratio of two to one. The body received proteins and fats from the animal component of food (mammals, fish, birds, insects). But despite the abundance of potential food, man was limited by natural resources. According to experts, 1 sq. km of land could feed no more than 60 people. Population growth occurred in an arithmetic progression, and Natural resources decreased geometrically.

However, there is no consensus among scientists regarding the diet of primitive Homo sapiens, since the nature of nutrition is largely determined by climate and geographical features areas of his residence. In some regions with rather harsh conditions thousands of years ago, people ate rather meagerly, mostly plant foods and only rarely - after a successful hunt - they ate meat.

About 10 thousand years ago, climate warming began in Europe, and this was a good prerequisite for the emergence agriculture. This event can be seen as a revolutionary step that contributed to the evolution of Homo sapiens. The development of agriculture made it possible to feed approximately 100 times more people per unit area. Very soon the population began to increase. Contacts between the tribes intensified: there was an intensive exchange of various products, the rate of dissemination of innovations and experience increased.

But the spread of agriculture also had a downside. The majority of the population switched to carbohydrate food. The transition to a diet with a predominance of cereals led to a violation of the nutritional balance. It contributed occurrence of dental problems. Caries has become a mass disease of the population, and the frequency of tooth loss in adults has increased. Lack of protein foods was the cause vitamin deficiency, the human body also lacked iron, many developed anemia. Infant mortality has increased.

Thus, agriculture, on the one hand, made it possible to solve the problem of survival and expansion of the human range, but on the other hand, people paid for it with their health.

Homo sapiens, improving hunting tools, learned to obtain animal food quite regularly, herbal component also constituted a significant portion of his diet. Agriculture basically solved the problem of feeding the rapidly growing population, but the mono-diet became the cause of vitamin deficiency and human diseases.

The first people (namely people, not apes) appeared on the scene of life about 1,000,000 years ago. In those prehistoric times, there could be no talk of any cooking, however, archaeologists claim that already a million years ago our ancestors sought to process food and even prepare it using a certain technology.

Initially, ancient people ate mainly plant foods. Gradually this vegetarian menu began to break meat dishes. The appearance of meat in the human diet appeared due to the development of hunting skills. At first, ancient man hunted alone, but gradually hunting became a collective activity. good hunting made it possible to feed an entire tribe. When human brain The diet of ancient man began to develop and became more complex. Ancient people were engaged in primitive gathering and at first they did not require any complex tools or manipulations. Then man had to develop intelligence in order to get hard-to-reach fruits or, for example, find a way to crack hard nuts.

The human brain began to develop and plant foods could no longer provide the brain and body with the necessary energy. Although scientists have not yet determined whether protein food animal origin affect the development of the brain, or, on the contrary, the increased energy consumption of the brain pushed a person to consume meat. One thing is for sure: human brain development and the caloric content and quality of food are very closely related.

Today, no one knows how ancient people figured out that meat processed by fire becomes more nutritious and tastier. Most likely, one of the ancient hunters stumbled upon the corpses of animals burned during forest fire, and decided to eat it. But more surprising is another fact, one of our ancestors came up with a brilliant idea, they realized that meat can be seasoned with herbal ingredients, such as crushed leaves and roots, etc. Then people began to memorize the methods of cooking meat and vegetable dishes and repeat them. Perhaps this is how the first recipes in human history appeared.

Diet of primitive man

According to excavations, Cro-Magnons consumed plant and animal foods in equal volumes. But soon the Cro-Magnons switched to plant foods. But on the other hand, it was the Cro-Magnons who learned to domesticate livestock, and they no longer had to go on difficult and dangerous hunts with the whole tribe. To this day, there are tribes in the Amazon jungle that consume mainly plant foods, since the extraction of meat in their habitat is very difficult and dangerous. The Cro-Magnons began to develop agriculture, which was less dangerous to human life than hunting and gathering. Although it was not uncommon for lean years to occur, which led to the extinction of the tribe.

Thus cooking ancient world was divided into three stages:

man discovers the potential of animal food

a man learns to process meat with fire

man opens herbs and spices

mixed nutrition occurs