The Stone Age diet – What did our human ancestors eat? | DW Documentary
What did man’s ancestors eat? How did they prepare their food? How did their food contribute to their evolution and their anatomical and cognitive development? This film provides answers based on new research findings.
Food. Since the beginning of time, obtaining food has been one of the most important activities of mankind. Research using new methods for examining and analyzing human fossils reveals previously unknown facets of prehistoric man. The results demonstrate the central role that food plays in the anatomical, genetic and social evolution of humans.
Until the beginning of agriculture in the Neolithic period, the first humans fed on what nature provided for them. Their diet shaped their evolution and humanity as we know it today.
This two-part documentary invites you on a journey into the past and shows the complexity and diversity of prehistoric life based on scientific findings from around the world. Suzana Herculano-Houzel explains how the cooking of food influenced the mental performance of early humans. Delphine Vettese from the Natural History Museum in Paris shows how cutting techniques for mincing meat and scraping out bone marrow were passed down from generation to generation. João Zilhão and Ernestina Badal present the results of their research into prehistoric food remains.
From archaeological sites in the Dordogne to Portugal, the USA and Jordan, the film shows spectacular images of caves, semi-caves and other prehistoric sites in nature.
#documentary #dwdocumentary #dwdocs #archaeology #food #ancestors #stoneage
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Video “The Stone Age diet – What did our human ancestors eat? | DW Documentary” was uploaded on 02/12/2025 by DW Documentary Youtube channel.
Rock buns.
Everyone knows that they were on a Paleo Diet.
Great documentary, questionable soundtrack.
A fantastic documentary! Thank you, DW!
The Inuit eat their meats raw!
Let me guess, she's a carnivore?? Lol
Don't be evil, don't find excuses, go vegan ❤ Dominion (2018)
11:49 Some salt and pepper would be nice.
I find it hard to believe that any scientist ever seriously thought early humans were pure carnivores instead of omnivores! If you stranded one of those scientists on an uninhabited island with no food, I bet they'd quickly realize it's a lot easier to Hunt blueberries than to take down a grizzly bears!
Can't believe that lady ate raw meat
Bone soup
Meat. We ate mostly meat.
Grocery stores 🤮
@8:20 She (eating raw meat) totally forgot to mention the PH of our stomach that will beautifully make the hard work. Also there's no evidence our ancestor ate as she did. Probably -my opinion – they ate more fat and organs associated and the use of some sort of 'tool' or utensils to cut meat into small pieces or just a stone. In fact, stones where commonly uses to break the bones an eat the inside and connective tissue.
Excellent doc.
DW news is full of left wing propaganda, git them a pass
Just follow Liver King, he knows very well what our ancestors ate 😂😂
The difference between reindeer and caribou is reindeer can fly.
what if, instead of taking a huge bite of raw meat and chewing for 3 minutes and it doesnt get all digested, you use a stone scraper tool to scrape at a piece of raw meat until its like chopped goo chunky paste, and eat that?
Stones?
Im sorry…..i can't eat plantssss…..i want ….MCD😮😮😮
There is so much bullshit science in this documentary, already 10 minutes in and they're saying our bodies can only absorb 30% of the nutrients of raw food… Shut the hell up.
At least the food back then was gluten-free, pasture raised, organic, grass-fed, non-GMO, free-range and 100% recyclable 😂😂😂😂
Really great video. It answered so many questions except one. Did the consumption of grains in that part of our development cause palegra (spelled wrong)?
It would be very hard to find specimens that matched that diet but a wealth of information it could provide.
It would be good to know if making hybrids of those original plants made them toxic.
Meat doesnt leave plague
Fresh raw meat is pretty good. And in the army we didnt have time to chew. Never pooped out a peice of meat.
If you find wild carrot, make sure its not poison hemlock first
Misguided and misinformed. If you want to know more about nutrition, read Thomas Colin Campbell, America’s nutritional biochemist
It’s meat and seasonal unprocessed plants. It’s not that hard to figure out.
and now 15 towsend years later we still produce food that is poisonous. ?? at that time natural food was not.
I bet the first ancestral animal that ate cooked food (probably an animal caught in a wildfire) noticed a difference right away in how they felt. I think they made the connection right away and the information spread quickly.
They were able to find fruit once a year, as fruit only grows once a year, so that would have been a surprise for them before Winter just as it is for the bears now.
It's highly nutritious "BREAD" loaded with calories? What rubbish. I've never heard such rot.
The agricultural transition has begun to shrink our brains now. We are going backward with mental disabilities and senility.
Anything with calories and protein they could get their hands on. Same with Hunter Gatherers today.
She will have superb teeth eating raw meat.
The cooking was the real factor ( by the way , the only one !), which made us the only species to develop intelligence. Perhaps in others worlds ( Enceladus? , Titan? ) Squids have used acids to digest proteins and fat at 100% to develop theirs brains like hominids in Planet Earth.
How dare you! You monsters! These animals have feelings too! How could you do this?
What? No tofu? No oat milk? No Beyond Meat?!
😂😂😂
Speculation presented as fact is not science
We ate everything that didn't kill us.
I doubt if it it would be as easy to chew and swallow raw Wooly Rhino or Mammoth…. Very interesting and thought-provoking programme though. I wonder if it could be a good thing to sometimes eat raw meat
What she says about raw meat is not true. The Inuit and other arctic peoples traditional diet is primarily raw fat and meat and blood. Humans digest raw meat completely. But they do so more slowly so raw it provides energy over a longer time.
I really hope that the lady in blue doesn’t get salmonella and tapeworms
How can we trust a left wing platform like DW to tell the truth?
Proten and fat, cooked meet and more cooked meet, that is mostly all i eat, very healthy like my meet eating ancestors,
primates have been documented using hot springs to cook sweet potatoes & meat
There's a reason people used to sit around chewing the fat. If you've ever tasted raw bacon (yum!) you'll see how chewy it is
This is awesome!!!
Nothing like catching a fish and cooking on the beach while the sunsets 😊
European genes aka caucasian skin did not appear in the human family until 3000 years ago so ancient humans or cavemen were all melenated. For historical context.