Food & Drink

Food sources of the hunter-gatherer humans of the Stone Age included both animals and plants that were part of the environment in which these humans lived. These humans liked animal organ meats, including the livers, kidneys and brains. They consumed little dairy product or carbohydrate-rich plant foods like legumes or cereal grains. They also ate leaves and roots. They hunted animals.[citation needed] Large seeded legumes were part of the human diet long before the neolithic agricultural revolution as evident from archaeobotanical finds from the Mousterian layers of Kebara Cave, in Israel. Moreover, recent evidence indicates that humans processed and consumed wild cereal grains as far back as 23,000 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic.

Near the end of the Wisconsin glaciation, 15,000 to 9,000 years ago, the Megafauna occurred in Asia, Europe, North America and Australia. This was the first Holocene extinction event. This event possibly forced modification in the dietary habits of the humans of that age and with the emergence of agricultural practices, plant-based foods also became a regular part of the diet. This extinction may have been caused by humans over hunting wild game animals such as the Wooly mammoth although other scientists believe that the megafauna extinction was instead caused by climate change.
“ The first wine-tasting may have occurred when Paleolithic humans slurped the juice of naturally fermented wild grapes from animal-skin pouches or crude wooden bowls.