Were my ancestors carnivores?

A look at carnivores and people ..

A carnivore’s teeth are long sharp and pointed - Humans have molars for crushing and grinding.

A carnivore’s jaws move up and down only, for tearing and biting. Human jaws move up/down and from side to side for grinding.

A carnivore’s tongue is rough. Human tongues are smoother.

A carnivore’s saliva is acid (better for digesting animal protein?) – Human saliva should be alkaline.
Human saliva contains ptyalin, a chemical that digests starches.

A carnivore’s stomach is simple, secretes more HCL. Human stomachs are oblong in shape, complicated, secrete less HCL.

A carnivore’s intestines are three times the length of its trunk, good for the rapid expulsion of animal proteins, which quickly rot. Human intestines are twelve times the length of our trunks. Keep food longer.

A carnivore has the enzyme uricase to break down uric acid. Humans don’t.

A carnivore’s liver can eliminating more uric acid. Humans livers eliminate less uric acid. Uric acid being a product of meat consumption (and high fructose syrup and fructose).

A carnivore has claws. Humans have hands very good at picking fruit, veggies, using tools, climbing trees, digging in the ground, building.

A carnivore use claws in fishing and hunting, humans used spheres and their hands. Both carnivores and humans ate fish raw, humans could preserve fish for later consumption.

A carnivore is not capable of higher intelligence allowing the domestication of animals (even a hunter gatherer must have had enough intelligence to form alliances with some animals i.e. domesticate).

A carnivore does not have the insight or hands to invent methods to find/preserve food. I think humans have always been inventors, it’s a characteristics of homo sapiens.

A carnivore eats meat raw. Humans … ? not sure.
..

So, they were not carnivores. But they were not omnivores either.

What were they then? I think humans were/are in between. We are blessed to be a mix of both.

Probably. There is evidence that some groups of people were using bow and arrows and also using bone needles to sew hides together 60,000 years ago which suggest they were hunting and tanning hides. We are constantly rethinking how our ancestors lived in prehistory. I think human progress moves in fits and starts so that certain skills and technologies were developed along our time line than for some reason forgotten. It's possible that humans had wide spread agriculture but then forgotten the techniques and skills to maintain an agrarian culture and not once but maybe several times.

agreed

http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2010/10/28/food-for-thought-cooking-in-human-evolution/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+plos%2Fblogs%2Fneuroanthropology+%28Blogs+-+Neuroanthropology%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

thanks.. fire and cooking may have had an impact on the evolution of our digestive tracts, if humans used cooking long enough .. otherwise the best diet would be a raw one.