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Science

Dog Domestication May Have Begun Because Paleo Humans Couldn't Stomach the Original Paleo Diet (scientificamerican.com) 138

Posted by BeauHD from the human-dog-partnership dept.
A new theory described today in Scientific Reports posits that hunter-gatherers whose omnivorous digestive system prevented too much protein consumption likely shared surplus meat with wolves. Those scraps may have initiated a step toward domestication. Scientific American reports: [Maria Lahtinen, a senior researcher at the Finnish Food Authority and a visiting scholar at the Finnish Museum of Natural History] did not originally set out to solve a long-standing dog mystery. Instead she was studying the diet of late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in Arctic and sub-Arctic Eurasia. At that time, around 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, the world was engulfed in the coldest period of the last ice age. In frigid environments then, as today, humans tended to derive the majority of their food from animals. Nutritional deficiencies came from the absence of fat and carbohydrates, not necessarily protein. Indeed, if humans eat too much meat, diarrhea usually ensues. And within weeks, they can develop protein poisoning and even die. "Because we humans are not fully adapted to a carnivorous diet, we simply cannot digest protein very well," Lahtinen says. "It can be very fatal in a very short period of time."

During the coldest years of the last ice age -- and especially in harsh Arctic and sub-Arctic winters -- reindeer, wild horses and other human prey animals would have been eking out an existence, nearly devoid of fat and composed mostly of lean muscle. Using previously published early fossil records, Lahtinen and her colleagues calculated that the game captured by people in the Arctic and sub-Arctic during this time would have provided much more protein than they could have safely consumed. In more ecologically favorable conditions, wolves and humans would have been competing for the same prey animals. But under the harsh circumstances of the Arctic and sub-Arctic ice age winter, sharing excess meat with canines would have cost people nothing. The descendants of wolves that took advantage of such handouts would have become more docile toward their bipedal benefactors over time, and they likely went on to become the first domesticated dogs. As the authors point out, the theory makes sense not just ecologically but also geographically: the earliest Paleolithic dog discoveries primarily come from areas that were very cold at the time.
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Dog Domestication May Have Begun Because Paleo Humans Couldn't Stomach the Original Paleo Diet More

Dog Domestication May Have Begun Because Paleo Humans Couldn't Stomach the Original Paleo Diet

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  • Doggies!! (Score:4, Informative)

    by DethLok ( 2932569 ) on Friday January 08, 2021 @09:21PM (#60913616)

    Yep, article makes sense (as far as I know) and is summarised well.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 )

      I'm a bit skeptical because I already know that this bit is either outright false or not quite correct, depending on how you read it:

      Nutritional deficiencies came from the absence of fat and carbohydrates, not necessarily protein. Indeed, if humans eat too much meat, diarrhea usually ensues. And within weeks, they can develop protein poisoning and even die.

      There have been many cases of people living off of meat only diets for years at a time with no ill effects. If the meat is totally lean meat, like rabbit meat, then supposedly you can get protein poisoning, but if it has fat, which most meat does, then you should be ok. Though at the same time it says "fat AND carbohydrates", so yeah, if you were missing both of them, you'd ha

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by alexo ( 9335 )

        I'm a bit skeptical because I already know that this bit is either outright false or not quite correct, depending on how you read it:

        Nutritional deficiencies came from the absence of fat and carbohydrates, not necessarily protein. Indeed, if humans eat too much meat, diarrhea usually ensues. And within weeks, they can develop protein poisoning and even die.

        There have been many cases of people living off of meat only diets for years at a time with no ill effects. If the meat is totally lean meat, like rabbit meat, then supposedly you can get protein poisoning, but if it has fat, which most meat does, then you should be ok.

        Which is explicitly mentioned in the summary (emphasis mine):

        "During the coldest years of the last ice age -- and especially in harsh Arctic and sub-Arctic winters -- reindeer, wild horses and other human prey animals would have been eking out an existence, nearly devoid of fat and composed mostly of lean muscle."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        I don't have the reference ATM, but my understanding is that since the liver gets oxygen from the portal vein, it is metabolically limited and can only process about 1500 calories of protein a day. So the "poisoning" is a combination of starvation (since in the conditions where this might come up, you will need more than the usual 2000/day) and the leftovers you can't actually digest.

        • You're not going to do much spear hunting on 2000 calories.

          When I was wildland firefighting they had us on 5000+ calories, and we all lost a lot of weight.

        • You donâ(TM)t have a reference because your statement isnâ(TM)t true. 1500 calories a day maximum through protein through some bizarre gross anatomical limitation ? What?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sjames ( 1099 )

            You may feel free to google for more information, stick your fingers in your ears until they meet in the middle or just ignore it. I'm not holding a gun to your head.

            • Protein consumption is based on activity level. A heavily active person needs to consume 2g of protein for every lb of lean body mass. So if you were someone weighing 175lb with 10% body fat, you would need to consume about 320g of protein per day. At 4kcal per g, thats still less than 1300 kcal. If your activity level is just fairly active (daily workouts lasting less than 2hr per dsy) theb your consumption is 1.5g per lb lean body mass. A moderate activity level is 1g and mostly inactive is around 0.75 g.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by sjames ( 1099 )

                It's why it only comes up in extreme cases like a winter survival scenario where extremely lean rabbit is all that's available.

                • Rabbit starvation is a real thing. You have to eat the organs, brains, and eyes, if you are stuck in that survival scenario.

              • Your numbers are off by a factor of 10 - 100.
                Your body can only metabolize about 1g per 1kg (aka 2 pounds) per day.

                And sport burns energy, not proteins. Does not matter where the energy is coming from.

                My point is I really doubt the liver toxicity effect since its too difficult to reach in the first place.
                Well, a pretty stupid point of view. So if you force 5 times as much through the liver as you "normally" would, the liver can stil, handle it? Ah, ha ...

                • You forget that ketogenics convert proteins into ketones which is an energy. And my numbers are not off. Maybe your math works for you with your pencil neck and flabby chest. These numbers come straight from decades of fitness and body building journals. You think Tom Platz only consumed 100g per day? Or Lee Haney or even Corey Everson?? No fucking way. The more lean mass tou have the more protein you need to repair. The more red muscle fibers the more ketones you are going to need. Do you even have a clue

          • The statement is true.
            And if you want to gain weight, aka muscles, the max per day is 0.1% of your body weight that can be gained in muscles. If you do not burn those proteins.

            1500 calories a day maximum through protein through some bizarre gross anatomical limitation ?
            And why exactly would that be the case?

      • Having maintained a very low carb diet, high in protein, since 2012, as the only true solution to diabetes; I can assure you diarrhea is NOT a side effect. In fact constipation is more common due to the high density and low waste nature of the food. Almonds are pretty much the low carb high fiber solution to that effect. There is roughly 4g of insoluble fiber bound into its 6g of carbs of your typical 30g serving. I doubt Paleolithic man ate almonds though, as they contain cyanide in their pre-ripen state.

      • In topics regarding health, it helps to read carefully
        You are completely mistaken.

        Modern people eating mostly meat: eat fatty meat.
        A typical white caucasian would not survive 3 or 4 weeks of proteine only meat.

        The few currently living "races" who can survive longer (and some even gain weight) are Maori and Inuit, and likely a few more I'm not aware about.

      • People who eat meat only get protein poisoning. If you look at Inuit societies, for example, they ate seal blubber to stave off protein poisoning.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 )

      Yep, article makes sense

      It didn't make sense to me.

      What possible motivation would humans have to feed wild wolves?

      If they had extra meat, the logical thing to do would be to hunt less, not give the extra meat away to encourage vicious competing wild predators to stay nearby.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by RazorSharp ( 1418697 )

        I think the article may be overthinking things. Wolves require nutritional content from organs and humans prefer meat. Wolves also eat bones and entrails that humans may discard. I could see the wolf-human relationship developing from a food sharing relationship, but the nutrition angle just seems like an extraneous theory.

        Another possibility: humans left behind less desirable parts of animals so the wolves would be well fed. If hungry wolves are around they will eventually attack. But, as you point out, fe

        • Re:Doggies!! (Score:5, Informative)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday January 08, 2021 @11:59PM (#60914140)

          Wolves require nutritional content from organs and humans prefer meat.

          Many humans are happy to eat brains, lungs, liver, and kidneys.

          Wolves also eat bones and entrails that humans may discard.

          Primitive humans smashed bones to reach the marrow. Even when muscle tissue is very lean, there is often fat in the marrow.

          Many humans eat bone marrow today. One of my co-workers is from Ghana. He was surprised to learn that Americans don't eat chicken bones.

          If hungry wolves are around they will eventually attack.

          If well-fed wolves are around, their population will expand until they exhaust the food supply. Then you have a bigger problem.

          • All good points, but I was not trying to argue that any one case provides an explanation. Rather, counter to the story, I think there is a large degree of randomness at play that cannot be explained by a single hypothesis. I guess I should have just said that instead of spinning my wheels.

            To spin the wheels just a little bit more, another possibility is that these wolves were just more friendly than gray wolves and therefore easier to domesticate. Dogs are not actually descended from gray wolves, but rathe

          • Americans don't eat chicken bones

            That's because we're food-rich and lazy these days. We used to "eat" bones of all sorts, but usually what we did was boil them into stock. It extracts the nutritional bits and allows the body to digest it far more efficiently than just munching on a bone.

        • You make good points. It wasnt a intolerance to the diet, but merely not wanting to waste scraps. hungry wolves attack people, while less hungry ones hunt targets of opportunity. Your info on cats, from my understanding is off though. Cats became accepted as pets during the plague. They killed the rat population that was carrying the fleas that transmitted the disease. It is my understanding that before this time, they were not accepted in European societies. Egypt on the other hand...

      • Re:Doggies!! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian@bixby.gmail@com> on Friday January 08, 2021 @11:57PM (#60914132)

        Humans adopt baby animals, no matter how inappropriate they might be. Any native jungle community tends to resemble a menagerie, even in more "civilized" locales my dad had a crow and a raccoon (until it bit his sister), my brother-in-law had everything from lizards to a hawk. If you've got more meat than you can eat you'd be able to imprint wolf puppies on humans, it was known to happen in Athabaskan communities until very recently.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        Well, they didn't have dogs or cats and the meat wasn't going to last forever.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Shades72 ( 6355170 )

        If you look at top predators in their natural environment, what do you see more often than not?

        Smaller animal species helping out the top predators in many different aspects. And to the benefit of both.

        In short: the "live and let live" approach.

        Wolves can be used as perimeter safety guards. And ones with a bite. If I understood correctly, during the Roman days, people would use geese as very rudimentary alarm systems.

        If animals can come to such relationships by themselves, I don't think it is too farfetched

      • So like, you didn't read any of those slashdot stories about the other studies correlating dog domestication to dogs eating from human garbage piles?

        That the early dogs (wolves) were eating human leftovers is not in question at this point. The details of the relationship and the timing of changes in the relationship are what is being studied.

      • a) they could not eat the extra meat ... you missed that point?
        b) man and wolfe are probably hunting together and sticking together since the dawn of man kind

        Wolfes and similar animals are pretty smart. When they see humans hunting, they help in the hope of a part or (ab)use their movements to snatch an animal somewhere. Just like Dolphins do in some parts of the world.

      • If they had extra meat, the logical thing to do would be to hunt less, not give the extra meat away to encourage vicious competing wild predators to stay nearby.

        1) When you kill a large prey animal like a reindeer or horse, you do not get to specify how much meat you get at once. "Uga, that deer is is too big and will make my butt look big. Let's go for a smaller less fatty one. . . . " Sure in cold climates, the meat will last longer but there may still be extra meat. Also what is not specified is the type of extra meat. I would guess humans still get the choice cuts while the extra could be things like hard to eat organs and scraps close to the bone can be given

      • I came here to say the same thing (hunt less), but you beat me to it.

        Also, if it's as cold as the article makes it sound, just freeze the excess meat (hang it from a tree branch to protect it from predators, like people do today in bear country), and hang around the campfire telling stories.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by spitzak ( 4019 )

        I would think avoiding piles of rotting meat lying around the camp would be a good reason to give it to the wolves.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by raind ( 174356 )
      No surprise there, give a dog a chunk of meat their your friend forever.

      A little love helps too. :)

  • It's not a theory. (Score:4, Informative)

    by zephvark ( 1812804 ) on Friday January 08, 2021 @09:23PM (#60913620)

    It's a random unsupported hypothesis. It sounds cool and... that's about it. Get back to us when you have any evidence at all.

    • It's a random unsupported hypothesis. It sounds cool and... that's about it. Get back to us when you have any evidence at all.

      Yes, it's not a Theory in the strict sense, but rather a "theory" in the common sense, Mr. Pedantic. :-) That said, hard evidence for things like this will really hard to come by until a time machine is invented 'cause intestinal tracts and dinner-table behaviors don't really fossilize well.

    • You can't get more scientific that that, man. Personally I prefer Unscientific Reports, specifically their Bigfoot coverage.

  • Look, I love dogs and would definitely share meat with them.

    But there is no way a hunter/gather society would mistakenly get too much meat. Get extra to make pemmican, jerky, and to feed our canine/feline friends? Sure.

    But they do not do it by accident.

    Being Omnivores, we take extra care to get the non-protein food that we need. That does not make us stupidly get to much meat.

    And if we did, we could always feed to a future food source instead of a friend.

    • Being Omnivores, we take extra care to get the non-protein food that we need. That does not make us stupidly get to much meat.

      The article was mainly talking about during the winter when vegetable/fruits would be very hard to come by. The proposed that people actually did get essential fats from eating the non-lean parts of the animals and let wolves, who are able to survive on higher ratios of just protein, eat the leaner / left-over bits. I'm sure they didn't think this out consciously, but probably as a learned behavior from their elders. Also the cooked fattier parts were probably tastier and possibly easier to chew.

    • Re:Sounds foolish to me. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian@bixby.gmail@com> on Saturday January 09, 2021 @12:08AM (#60914192)

      Have you ever seen photos of the piles of bones at the bottom of a buffalo jump? There were similar slaughter locations for horses (which would have weigh 400-600 pounds each) and reindeer (200-400 pounds each) in Siberia.

  • known for over 100 years (Score:5, Informative)

    by jblues ( 1703158 ) on Friday January 08, 2021 @10:13PM (#60913766)

    This has been known for 100 years.

    V. Stefansson [wikipedia.org] the Finn, went to live with Eskimos and adopted an all meat diet. He noted that the humans ate the fatty meat (often pemmican), and dogs were given the lean meat. Here's an article about it: https://www.atlasobscura.com/a... [atlasobscura.com]

    When he got back nobody believed it would be possible to subsist on such a diet, so he proved the institutions wrong. It was posited that he would come down with scurvy. He didn't.

    (I suspect the body's vit. C needs increase with the amount of sugar consumed)

    • There's vitamin C in some meats as well as fish. Even the polar explorers of old knew that eating fresh seal meat would prevent scurvy.

    • Whale blubber has vitamin C FTR. Humans can adapt to this diet, but it's a big no thanks from this guy (thumbs pointing at self)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jblues ( 1703158 )

        Lol, same here. Good to know that it is an option. I'll stick to fruit and veg.

        Oh by the way, here's another vitamin C anecdote: When milk was pasteurized in Europe, some folks developed scurvy, because the process kills the vitamin C, along with the tuberculosis or whatever else might have been in there. (Something pathogenic more likely in crowded urban farming conditions). They must've had a terrible subsistence diet, if they were counting on the vitamin C from milk. I guess that means you don't want to

        • I guess that means you don't want to overcook your whale blubber either.

          You really don't: vitamin C degrades even at temperatres that aren't that high. Raw, warm whale blubber should be fine.

    • That's really interesting. Your comment provides perhaps the best evidence that can be given. But the overall thesis of the article still suffers from a fatal flaw: it's essentially superfluous. There's a tendency to come up with grand theories about how things came about even though no strict, necessary explanation is needed. For example, I've heard it claimed that humans learned to cook meat because of the sweet smell that came from an animal that was burned by some happenstance (lightning, forest fire, e

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jblues ( 1703158 )

        Lol, I bet you are right. A plentiful summer, with full stomachs, abundant wood and not much to do. Let's light a fire! Let's throw some of this spare meat on it. Fuck! That's really good!

        So many of the useful drugs were researched with one purpose in mind and a better use was found by accident.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by meburke ( 736645 )

      Yes, Steffansson lived at a New York hospital and lived on a "meat only diet" for over a year, and was in better health after that year than before he went in. The maintenance of life for people with ciliac disease was a "meat only" diet up until about the last 60 years or so.

      AFAIK. there has never been a study that substantiated the need for carbohydrates in the diet. (After a certain amount of protein is digested, the liver supposedly makes a base carbohydrate compound through a process called, "carbolysi

  • Self-contradicing nonsense. (Score:3)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Friday January 08, 2021 @10:13PM (#60913768)

    If they did not eat it, then by definition it was not the "paleo diet", now was it?

  • The paleo diet is kind of nonsense. (Score:5, Informative)

    by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Friday January 08, 2021 @10:30PM (#60913814)

    That whole paleo diet thing was always nonsense. We can actually look at tribal peopl today. Australian Aboriginals, Indigenous folk in the Amazon, etc, who where substitance living, and you'd see much more diverse diets.

    While Kangaroos form the staple fro most aboriginal tribes (There are a *lot* of them and its a big old slab of of low-fat meat that can feed a lot of people, there was plenty of other stuff. Yams, berries, lots of different plants, grubs, as well as seasoning from plants like lemon myrtle etc. Oceanic tribes ate a lof of fish , turtles and crocodiles. Etc etc.

    Those guys actually ate really well. Same goes for other indigenous folks.

    But despite the claims of "no grains" , that is contradicted by the evidence.

    IIndigenous women would often go and collect grains from long grasses and seeds and the like and the like and mash them into flours for simple "bush bread"

    All of this is common amongst MANY indigenous paople around the world. (obviously not the kangaroos, american indian folks would be eating buffallo and turkeys, etc)

    • American Indians ate the ancestors of the horse. Whereas in the 'Old World' man tamed the horse to be a companion worker, the 'indigenous' (actually, the earliest immigrants) hunted those animals to extinction in the New World, long before the European settlers brought tamed horses over.

      The fossil record shows there was a huge extinction event of the large land animals in the New World a bit after humans crossed the Bering Strait.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by spitzak ( 4019 )

        While humans certainly killed off a lot of large fauna in the new world, horses were already extinct there before they arrived.

    • In the present day Amazon, protein is not that prevalent; Waorani men, for example, spend lots of their days hunting just to provide enough protein. The bulk of the diet in that region is starch, typically yucca, along with fruit.

      This may of course be a habitat thing; the Waorani, along with other indigenous groups in the Amazon, have had their hunting territories reduced. Otoh, most of them have much smaller populations than they did one or two hundred years ago.

  • Did it need this Explanation? (Score:3)

    by nukenerd ( 172703 ) on Saturday January 09, 2021 @05:39AM (#60914984)
    Even stone-age hunters would have plenty of meat left over on occasion, whatever the weather, such as when a herd of bison wandered into their neighbourhood. I expect the killing spree left plenty of meat over, and the wolves would gather and the guys would amuse themselves tossing the poorer joints and other left-overs to them. Then the wolves would start hanging aroind the cave entrance all the time and the guys would start giving them individual names. Next thing, the wolves came with them on hunts and helped bring the bison down.

    Wolves and dogs are very intelligent and know when they are on to a good thing. Win-Win.

  • consider.
    wolves bark when disturbed which makes them a good warning signal for humans.
    scraps and bones are a cheap cost for early warnings

  • Why not big cats? Bears? Sundry other dangerous critters?

    • The current speculation is that wolves live in social groups whereas most big cats other than lions are predominantly solitary creatures. This is true for bears as mother bears are fierce because the main predator of her cubs will be male bears. Being social, wolves are more likely to accept humans or other animals as part of their group whereas solitary animals are not inclined to do so as they barely tolerate others of their own kind.

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