The Diet Of Ancient Humans — DNA Just Proved Paleo Wrong Zach Benson [U8Fws6c5S2q]

Welcome to DNA Diet!

Everyone claims to know what our ancestors ate and most of them are wrong. DNA Diet clears the confusion by using the latest science in genetics and nutrition. The truth about your ancestral diet is written in your sciopero treni DNA. Let's read it.

LIST OF SOURCES

Every claim in this video traces to published research. Grouped by the point it supports, in the order it comes up.

1 THE PALEO PREMISE

Loren Cordain's discordance hypothesis: the human genome "froze" about 10,000 years ago, so grains, dairy, and legumes are recent intruders our bodies never adapted to.

Paleolithic Diet StatPearls, NIH / NCBI Bookshelf

2 THE AMYLASE GENE PREDATES FARMING

The starch-digesting AMY1 gene goes back far longer than agriculture. A 3-copy version is roughly 800,000 years old, copy numbers already varied in 45,000-year-old hunter-gatherers, and they climbed again among farmers over the last 4,000 years.

Yilmaz et al., Nature (2024) "Recurrent evolution and selection shape structural diversity at the amylase locus"

Bose et al., Science (2024) "Reconstruction of the human amylase locus reveals ancient duplications seeding modern-day variation"

3 NEANDERTHALS COOKED GRAINS AND LEGUMES

Starch grains in Neanderthal dental tartar from burlington weather Shanidar in Iraq and Spy in Belgium include cooked grass seeds.

Henry, Brooks & Piperno, PNAS (2011) "Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets"

4 30,000-YEAR-OLD FLOUR

Grindstones at Bilancino, Kostenki, and Pavlov carry cattail and fern starch, pushing flour-making back 30,000 years.

Revedin et al., PNAS (2010) "Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing"

5 STONE AGE CAVITIES FROM STARCHY PLANTS

At Taforalt in Morocco, about 51% of teeth show caries from acorns and pine nuts, and isotopes point to a plant-heavy diet.

Humphrey et al., PNAS (2014) "Earliest evidence for caries and exploitation of starchy plant foods in Pleistocene hunter-gatherers from Morocco"

Companion isotopic evidence of high plant reliance at Taforalt

6 LIVING HUNTER-GATHERERS EAT MOSTLY CARBS

The Hadza get roughly 65% of their calories from carbs, and honey is their top-ranked food.

"Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet. It had carbs." Knowable Magazine (2022)

Marlowe & Berbesque "Tubers as fallback foods and their alex rodriguez impact on Hadza hunter-gatherers"

7 THE GENOME IS NOT FROZEN

Lactase persistence evolved after dairying began, more than 400 variants were selected in the last 10,000 years, and human evolution sped up rather than stopped.

Evershed, Thomas et al., Nature (2022) "Dairying, diseases and the evolution of lactase persistence in Europe"

Hawks, Wang, Cochran, Harpending & Moyzis, PNAS (2007) "Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution"