Experts reveal cavemen may actually have been mostly vegan in mind-blowing new study

Think you know all there is to know about the cavemen?

Clearly not, because a new study just dropped which knocks everything we thought we knew about their diets into the water!

You may have thought that they were skilled hunters tackling Mammoths, bears, and lions, but the truth is… they conquered much smaller game.

In fact, the Harvard School of Public Health may have been wrong, as it was found that the meal plan behind the Paleo diet is totally different and Stone Age people ate a mostly vegan diet.

That’s right! Vegan cavemen.

As the Paleo diet was adapted to focus on what was eaten until 2000 BC, many originally believed it was meats, fish and a balanced diet of fruit and vegetables.

But that’s no longer correct, so if you’re eating the Paleo diet right now, it’s time to switch it up.

The researchers found something interesting in one group of prehistoric settlers. (Getty stock)

The University explained: “The Paleo diet, also referred to as the caveman or Stone-Age diet, includes lean meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.

“Proponents of the diet emphasise choosing low-glycemic fruits and vegetables.”

As a lot of the diet focuses on protein intake, it encourages you to eat foods which would have been available in the Paleolithic period as ‘our genetics and anatomy have changed very little’.

But a study published to the Nature Ecology & Evolution Journal analysed the chemical signatures of the Paleolithic group, the Iberomaurusians which showed that meat being their majority source of protein wasn’t correct.

The team looked into the nitrogen and zinc isotopes in teeth enamel as well as collagen which would show the meat consumption associated with the Iberomaurusians.

When focusing on carbon isotopes to see whether fish or meat would be the primary food course, they found that it could have been plants instead.

The Paleo diet could be different than what we believe. (Getty Stock)

Zineb Moubtahij, the lead author of the study said: “Our analysis showed that these hunter-gatherer groups, they included an important amount of plant matter, wild plants to their diet, which changed our understanding of the diet of pre-agricultural populations.”

They also found an abundance of cavities in remains, which suggested that they ate a lot of ‘fermentable starchy plants’.

Klervia Jaouen, a co-author of the study, said ‘high proportion of plants in the diet of a pre-agricultural population’ wasn’t normal but their findings was only specific to this one group.

However, he maintained that this was the first time they had found evidence using isotope techniques that saw a ‘significant plant-based component in a Palaeolithic diet’.

Moubtahij said: "The study's major conclusions clearly show that the diet of these hunter-gatherers included a significant proportion of plants belonging to Mediterranean species, predating the advent of agriculture in the region by several millennia.

"Archaeobotanical remains found at the site, such as acorns, pine nuts, and wild pulses, further support this notion."

Topics: Health, Food And Drink, History, Science

Britt Jones