Paleoanthropologists have estimated that the earliest fossil evidence of Homo sapiens—anatomically modern humans—is roughly 196,000 years old.4 For the vast majority of the time since our species’ arrival on the evolutionary scene, we acquired food by gathering it from the wild.1,5 Wild plant-based foods and fungi were important staples in the paleolithic diet, including the wild ancestors of some species that are widely cultivated today.6 While the ancestral hunt for wild animals is often depicted as an epic conflict against woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, giant elk, and other prehistoric megafauna, early humans also took to foraging for humble insects7 and scavenging the remains of dead animals.8
credits to john hopkins uni