Memories of the 28th Century

I hate to bring this up again, but I sometimes see a stack of boxes for something that is called Caveman Food, or something like that, and the verbiage on the package indicates that the makers of the stuff want the gullible to think that it reflects what cavemen ate. Perhaps I should waste some money to buy a package, but that will be wasted money. The box indicates that it is some collection of seeds and goo to hold the stuff together. As I am sure you remember from my post “Evolution, Dentition, and Diet” human teeth started being rather modern in size and shape with H. Erectus (ergaster) almost two million years ago, but carbohydrates, including most plant material other than seeds, would not have been common food, because they need to be cooked to become worth eating. The timing for the invention of fire is uncertain, but it didn’t become general until about 500,000 ybp; although there is evidence that it might have been in use a million years before that, and human dentition suggests that it was in general use by the time that H. Erectus showed up. Then there’s the matter of what a caveman might be, and when they lived.

I get the feeling that “caveman” was fairly well defined but misunderstood at some points in the past, but there are too many ifs about what that might mean now. Wikipedia isn’t useful in this matter. But Dictionary.com has “caveman 1. A man of the Paleolithic age; cave dweller”. Paleolithic age was from about 2.5 million ybp to about 12,000 ybp. During that period humans lived anywhere that they could from trees to caves to wooden houses. Since people were living in what we would easily recognize as houses (huts anyway), it would have been notable if someone lived in a cave, because the cave had permanence; many of them still exist, but the huts fell apart and rotted into humus millennia ago. But “Caveman Food” is what this is about, and that’s such a broad term that it might be anything from some wild tubers to some slow animals or fish. Cavemen ate whatever they could wrestle into their mouths and down their throats that would stay down and not kill them. Some cavemen ate mostly meat, while others ate a mix of plant food along with the dead animals. Some time ago I wrote about the development of cooking; it almost certainly was initially a way to extend the period during which dead meat would be safe to eat. Maybe the best concept of “Caveman Food” would be a piece of meat that has spoiled to the point where it doesn’t smell good. Meat is still edible at that point, but not desirable as food.

I wonder what the people of Petra, Jordan eat. http://www.visitjordan.com/default.aspx?tabid=63. There are restaurants in Petra, so one can find out what modern cavemen and cavewomen eat. http://www.lonelyplanet.com/jordan/petra/restaurants. Some of them sound interesting. When I go there, I will report on the food, etc. (Your contributions will make this happen sooner.) But we know how to find out what caveman food really is. For now, I think that the Red Cave Restaurant looks interesting with traditional Jordanian home cooking. Mystic Pizza might be good, but there’s a place by that name in Mystic, Ct also it might be confusing. El-Arabi Restaurant has Bedouin specialties, and that would be interesting, but Bedouins don’t generally live in caves, in contrast to the people of Petra. I might also want to try the Land of Peace Shop, which has clean loos.

In the U.S.A. there is the Cave Restaurant in Richland, Missouri, which is presented as the only restaurant in a cave in the U.S.

In Italy you will find a restaurant in a cave at Via Narciso, 59, 70044 Polignano a Mare, Italy
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restauran...ri_Puglia.html . There are other cave restaurants around the world. Caves make for savings in energy, but ventilation would be more difficult, and I wouldn’t to try one in earthquake country.


http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/caveman?s=t