For many decades modern man has been inundated with all kinds of food, and new food keep coming up every year. Dieting and fad diets have become so widespread that it's interesting to note that our ancestors from the Paleolithic era did not need a wide range of food to survive.
Researchers from Oxford University, in a study published in PLOS ONE, have revealed that man's ancient ancestors, Paranthropus boisei, hominins who lived in east Africa between 2.4 million and 1.4 million years ago, subsisted mainly on tiger nuts, and got additional nourishment from fruits, grasshoppers, and worms. Because of their big flat molar teeth and powerful jaws, this group of human ancestors were nicknamed 'Nutcracker Man.'
This answers several questions that scientists have been asking for years, pertaining to the very strong jaws of this hominin. For a while scientists were baffled why the hominins's teeth seemed to be made for consuming soft foods yet their strong jaws belied something else.
Dr. Gabriele Macho from the school of archeology in Oxford, the study author, surveyed modern Kenyan baboons who lived in an environment similar to that of Nutcracker Man, and the research team found that the baboons also ate large quantities of tiger nuts. This food contained sufficiently high amounts of minerals, vitamins, and the fatty acids that would have been particularly important for the hominin brain. They also added that hominin must have chewed the tough nut for a very long time to break it down into much smaller pieces they could swallow, and also to break down the enzymes in it prior to digestion.
Dr. Macho further explained, "I believe that the theory - that "Nutcracker Man" lived on large amounts of tiger nuts - helps settle the debate about what our early human ancestor ate. Tiger nuts, still sold in health food shops as well as being widely used for grinding down and baking in many countries, would be relatively easy to find. They also provided a good source of nourishment for a medium-sized hominin with a large brain. This is why these hominins were able to survive for around one million years because they could successfully forage - even through periods of climatic change."
Hominins could extract sufficient nutrients from a tiger nut-based diet. About 10,000 kilojoules or 2,000 calories a day, or 80 percent of their required daily calorie intake - can be extracted by the hominin in about three hours. Considering that he forages between five to six hours a day, and that this particular human ancestor lived for about a million years, this is apparently sufficient nutrition.
