Sorry to disturb your debate with Lex, but this is faulty logic, Tyler. You cannot look at what primates do today and then claim our common ancestors did it. It simply does not follow any more than saying because we humans smoke tobacco, our common ancestors did so. It doesn't work that way. You'd have to go back and find evidence of it. We don't find evidence of plant foods in human settlement sites.
I can appreciate that herbs may have a place in the human diet. What I do not care for is the type of New Age "superfood" and "cleanse" talk found sometimes here, but mainly in raw vegan circles. Aajonus does not impress me one iota. I have to agree with Lex that if people would improve their diet by eating animal foods, all of this other nonsense would fall by the wayside.
Both you and Lex are making false assumptions. I did NOT say that because modern humans practise herbal medicine that Palaeo humans must have also. One can make a reasonably good case that it is highly likely that Palaeo humans also practised herbal medicine because Palaeo-like hunter-gatherer societies pre-civilisation(ie Neolithic) practised herbal medicine. However, that is by no means an absolute certainty as such Neolithic-era tribes also sometimes practised things not found in the Palaeolithic(eg:- consuming raw dairy etc.)
What I ACTUALLY was saying is that there is incontrovertible proof that WILD animals self-medicate themselves with herbs as a matter of routine whether as a means to heal wounds or kill parasites or whatever. This is simply a statement of fact. I am not referring to human methods of healing domestic pets, despite Lex's claims, I am referring to wild animals' preference for using herbs as a means of healing(that includes carnivores, of course).
Now, it is also a fact that the primates(ie gorillas/chimps etc.) also practise herbal medicine as a routine part of their lives. Now we only split from the primates c. 5(?) million years ago so , given that the primates use herbs for health purposes, it is logical to assume that our ape ancestors up to 5 million years ago also used herbal medicine like any other primate. Now, one can make a very vague, absurdly
unlikely claim that as soon as our hominid ancestors split from the apes 5 million years ago, that they suddenly gave up all use of herbal medicine(despite no common-sense explanation being there for such a change) and then supposedly restarted the use of herbal medicine with the Neanderthals, c.60,000 years ago.
The remarks Lex makes re herbs and tobacco are meaningless in a Palaeo context. After all, wild animals do not merely use wild herbs to "get high" but to heal themselves from all sorts of health-problems, much like what witch-doctors did with tribal members in Palaeo times. Come to think of it, there is evidence of shamans/medicine-men in Palaeo times given cave-paintings etc.Oh, and since even carnivores in the wild routinely use herbal medicines in order to get well, it's a bit silly to claim that a raw, zero-carb diet alone can solve all problems.
To cut a long story short, though, if we become overly fanatical and condemn all non-diet-related issues then all we have is either raw animal food diet or modern medicine. Now, diet alone cannot heal every condition and most people come to RAF diets precisely because modern medicine has completely failed them in numerous ways so that they choose a RAF diet as a last resort. Plus, the whole of modern medicine is wholly dependent on the past science of herbal medicine. For example, many pain-killers and other drugs
used to prevent people from dying in war-time etc, have been directly derived from herbal medicine(eg:- aspirin from white willow bark). Now, of course, such drugs are often too synthetic and concentrate the active ingredient too much etc., but the wild herbs they are derived from are perfectly healthy in moderation and, indeed, more effective.
In short, to equate herbal medicine, which has had thousands of generations of expertise behind it, with more dubious more recent
fields such as crystal gazing etc., is just not reasonable. The evidence re herbal medicine in the Middle Palaeolithic(300,000 to 50,000 years ago)
lithic is solid, and as more evidence appears as palaeoanthropologists keep on discovering more sites, more evidence will appear. The alternative is to assume that our hominid ancestors suddenly gave up herbal medicine when they split from the chimps and then restarted it in the Upper Palaeolithic, which makes no sense at all, whatsoever.
