Posts with Comments by Joseph Dunphy

Even a caveman could eat it

  • "That is your browser pulling the info from your cache." 
     
    Worth knowing, but very much not the norm. Most sites do not work that way.
  • "I remember seeing an argument before that wheat and dairy became part of our diets even though they aren't healthy but because they have drug-like addictive effects" 
     
    How many drug addicts do you know of who seem to function very well in the long run? This is a very remarkable claim, offered without citation.
  • OK, guys, what the ... (expletitive deleted)? I resubmitted my post with my e-mail address removed, and your system reinserted it for me! First of all, as most sites require an e-mail address be included for a post to be accepted, it is not reasonable for you as a site owner to expect us to anticipate that the addresses we submit will appear on site, especially since the practice of making those visible after submission is practically unheard of, now that everybody knows that spambots harvest mail links. 
     
    I responded to a post far up the page, saw no mail links and got blindsided. Guys, this is not cool. Please remove all but the last copy of my post, and if my real address is going to appear on this one, then please remove this one too.  
     
    Harry writes: 
     
    "Over 10,000 years ago, everyone in the world lived the hunter-gatherer lifestyle - even the people of the eastern Mediterranean - so it is likely that most humans would do well on such a Paleolithic diet." 
     
    Doing a quick search under "Jericho" "10500" and "site:.edu", among other results I pull up 
     
    http://www.wsu.edu/~tako/Week9.html 
     
    and this quote 
     
    ". Archaic Neolithic in the Levant (10,500-8000 BP) 
    A. Neolithic I: 10500-9600 BP (PPNA) 
    1. Villages become larger & are located in areas 
    with high ag. potential. Deteriorating climate. 
    2. Structures still mostly circular or oval, often 
    slightly dug into ground, 4-6 m in diameter, 
    usually 1 room. Similar in size & artifact 
    content. 
    3. Jericho largest site of day at > 4 ha; 
    surrounded by a stone wall fronted by a ditch 
    & backed by a tower 8-m high. 
    4. Typical burial location under house floor or 
    near house in yard; late in period at Jericho, 
    some heads buried separately. 
    5. Peas, lentils, emmer, and probably barley 
    domesticated by 9800 BP" 
     
    so apparently not everybody was following a hunter-gatherer lifestyle 10000 years ago, as we're looking at mention of the remains of an agricultural settlement from 2500 years prior, more time than seperates our era from that of the Caesars. 
     
    Be careful about the assumption that the dawn of recorded history is the same as the dawn of civilization (c.4750 BC). The only thing that former represents is the earliest era from which surviving records can be found. If a book crumbles to dust, do the events it recorded cease to be events which occured?
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