Ate primitive people. Fats

At present, in the diet of a modern person, there are not only many 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 now found, and the same fruits were considered a real luxury. Basically, the ancient man ate plant and animal food. There was very little fat in the diet. In general, among the 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 in areas rich in fruit food could afford a lot of fructose in their diet. Some tribes found a place for themselves where they could successfully hunt wild animals. Meat people consumed mostly dry and lean. It contained many beneficial acids. It was a very balanced meal. It's hard to believe, but ancient people often understood food better than the inhabitants medieval Europe or even modern people.

Ancient man mainly hunted rhinos, deer, marine mammals. In his diet were nuts, various roots, leaves of plants. Of these, he even made various tinctures, which were very useful for the body, salt in food ancient man there was practically no, and even more so, smoked food. Much later, an ancient man discovered a method of cooking vegetables, meat and other products. The salads familiar to us were also prepared by ancient people without salt. At the same time, they used special dishes made of baked clay.

How many calories did ancient people consume

It should be noted that ancient man consumed great amount calories. At the same time, he moved a lot. According to scientists, an ancient person burned from three thousand calories and more per day. This was due to the fact that ancient people got up very early, went hunting, hunted. The way back 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 its overabundance. The food of a modern person is literally saturated with fats, often not useful, but harmful - those that are deposited in his body, forming cholesterol plaques.

What do modern people eat?

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

Increasingly, in the diet of modern man can be found biologically active additives, which can be useful, but at the same time, if used improperly, they can harm 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 fewer calories than the ancient required. According to scientists, a modern person consumes the same number of calories as an ancient person, but at the same time 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 draw.
• Lifespan.
• What were the responsibilities of men and women?

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 of bones and animal 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 your own, so they always did their best to get loot. In moments of luck, they managed to eat 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 it was possible to score 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 people of primitive times was a raw food diet. They obtained various fruits, fruits, vegetables, roots and herbs, with which they were saturated.

Clothing of primitive people

Primitive people often walked in what the 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, such clothes were worn by men, so as not to damage during the hunt. reproductive organs. Women defended the same causal places for posterity. 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 what to make them, of course, they also invented themselves. To implement the invented, they used sticks, stones, ropes, pieces of iron and many other details. Almost all the tools of labor of primitive people came to modern world almost unchanged, only the materials from which they are made have changed. Hence the conclusion that their level of intelligence was at a high level.

What did primitive people draw

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 have been preserved for many millennia.

The lifespan of a primitive man

Not a single scientist could accurately voice the exact figure for the life expectancy of primitive people. However, there is scientific evidence that virtually no primitive man did not live more than forty years. Although, their life was so rich, full of freedom and creative ideas, that maybe forty years is enough to fully embody everything that was planned.


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

In 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 an imprint on the nature of the diet of our ancestors and led to morphological and physiological changes their body.

Homo sapiens(Homo sapiens) lived at about the same time as the Neanderthals. For unknown reasons, the latter species died out, and Homo sapiens began its victorious march across the planet, mastering new habitats and conquering new continents.

35 thousand years ago, new people appeared in Europe, very close to modern man – Cro-Magnons. They cannot be regarded as the ancestors of all modern people. Cro-Magnons are one of many groups Homo sapiens that 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 bow and arrows. Cro-Magnons built housing that allowed them to hide from the weather. They first tamed wolves, from which domestic dogs later descended. The first rock paintings were also made by these people.

Cro-Magnons were great hunters and passed on their experience from generation to generation. They used spears, darts, arrows and stone throwing discs. In hunting, they were very inventive, using deep camouflaged pits and pens in narrow gorges to capture prey. Often they put on 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 fish with it. They were also successful in snaring birds and devised elaborate death traps for predators. Using hunting techniques and tools, the Cro-Magnons were able to obtain highly nutritious animal food and greatly 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.

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

Scientists have made a reconstruction of 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 was in 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 about 100 times more people per unit area. The population soon 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 has switched to carbohydrate food. The transition to a diet with a predominance of cereals led to a violation of the nutritional balance. It contributed problems with teeth. Caries has become a mass disease of the population, and the frequency of tooth loss in adults has increased. The lack of protein food was the reason beriberi, the human body also lacked iron, many developed anemia. Infant mortality has risen.

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

Homo sapiens, improving hunting tools, learned to get animal food quite regularly, plant component was also a significant part of his diet. Agriculture basically solved the problem of feeding the rapidly growing population, but the mono-diet became the cause of beriberi 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 kind of cooking, however, archaeologists say that already a million years ago our ancestors sought to process food and even cook 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, the ancient man hunted alone, gradually hunting became a collective activity, good hunting allowed to feed the whole tribe. When human brain began to develop, and the diet of ancient man became more complex. Ancient people were engaged in primitive gathering and at first they did not need any complex tools and manipulations. Then a person 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 its development and plant foods could no longer provide the brain and body with the necessary energy. Although scientists have not yet figured out whether protein food of animal origin affect the development of the brain, or vice versa, the increased energy consumption of the brain prompted a person to absorb meat. One thing is clear for sure: the development of the human brain and the calorie content and quality of food are very closely related.

How ancient people thought that meat treated with fire becomes more nutritious and tastier today, none of the scientists knows. 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 vegetable 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 the history of mankind appeared.

Diet of primitive man

According to excavations, the Cro-Magnons ate plant and animal food in equal volumes. But soon the Cro-Magnons switched to vegetable food. But on the other hand, it was the Cro-Magnons who learned to domesticate cattle, and they no longer needed to go on a difficult and dangerous hunt with the whole tribe. To this day, tribes are found in the Amazonian jungle that consume mainly plant foods, since meat production in their habitat is very difficult and dangerous. Cro-Magnons began to develop agriculture, and it was less dangerous to human life than hunting and gathering. Although lean years often happened, which led to the extinction of the tribe.

Cooking way ancient world divided into three stages:

a person discovers the potential of animal food

a man learns to cook meat with fire

man opens condiments and spices

a mixed diet