How did our ancestors know what plants were edible?

Question

A serious question. For plants that have become edible over time through cultivation (like the potato), and plants that have parts that are poisonous connected to the non-poisonous parts (like rhubarb), how did our ancestors figure out that things like potatoes and rhubarb were edible, or would eventually be edible? It couldn't be simply trial and error (seriously, how many people would seriously knowingly subject themselves to eating something that just killed someone else?). Could a food scientist or anthropologist shed some light on this?

Okay, so it looks like it was a lot of "trial and error", "see what the animals ate", and "use slaves as test subjects". Does that mean that for my examples of rhubarb and potatoes they witnessed some animals strip off the leafy parts of rhubarb and eat only the stalk, and for potatoes they witnessed animals dig up the potato tubers (which have been proven to be poisonous prior to cultivation); or take a poisonous plant and just keep trying to find the parts that weren't poisonous?

Answer 1

Observing the plants eaten by animals and trying a little bit .The ones that don't taste bitter, are OK for eating.
http://www.wilderness-survival.net/plants-1.php

Answer 2

It was trial and error and then, watching which plants animals ate and which ones they avoided. Sometimes, people would rub a leaf on their skin to see if they would get a reaction. But, plants such as mushrooms have posed problems for thousands of years because some are edible and some are not. And, then you've got food allergies like peanuts, eggplant and the like which threw the whole poisonous food thing into perplexity.

That is why tribes appointed medicine men or shamen to watch over herbs, plants and what people ingested. It was a very serious matter. If people began dying, the medicine man would be banished from the tribe and killed for not protecting his people.

Answer 3

They had a number of ways to determine which plants were safe and which were not.
In many parts of the North-East belladonna produces bunches of blue berries. Animals and birds are forever looking for food, but the belladonna berries remain untouched.
If a person is lost in the woods, and must eat plants in order to stay alive. In order to determine which are safe, he tries one small mouthful. If, the next day he feels no discomfort, he knows that plant is safe.
Another point that might interest you. The Romans knew that when a person is forced to eat belladonna or mandrake as a means of execution, there is a point where he seems to be drifting off into space, feeling no pain. So through many trials on prisoners, they learned how much would put a person in this painless dreamworld without actually poisoning him to death.
These were a couple of the earliest anesthetics used by surgeons.

Answer 4

I'm pretty sure it was trial and error. Someone got sick from eating something poisonous and everyone else knew not to eat it. Maybe there was a designated person that would try out plants and if he didn't die or get sick they figured it was ok to eat.

Answer 5

It was trial and error, but typically after some calamity or disaster disrupted the normal eating pattern and required that they either experiment or starve. In most cases, animals (and, of course, that's basically what we were when in the hunter/gatherer stage of our evolution) stick to known, safe food sources unless some external event pushes them out of their comfort zone. I would not be surprised if droughts, floods, sudden weather strikes of other sorts, fires, competing tribes, etc., didn't cause many a death as the struggling survivors tried to eat things they wouldn't otherwise have eaten. They would have been poisoned, died from dehydration from things that gave them uncontrollable diarrhea, died from intestinal blockage from things that wouldn't break down properly, etc, etc.

Answer 6

Our ancestors (australopithecus afarensis, robustus; homo habilis, ergaster) were adept at finding eatables. They were not far from the trees really. Meaning that THEY would have been the "animals" making the choices.
There are accounts of learned humans who wanted to taste 'any' and 'every' thing. There's an account of a 17th or 18th century British Naturalist obsessed with tasting the chemical compounds he had discovered/worked. "His colleagues found him one day in his laboratory, slumped over dead, surrounded by several different chemical compounds any one of which could have killed him." *
"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. ..." Pigmaei.

Answer 7

I think actually they ate very few plants and vegetables. (which caused a whole other set of problems) I would have to agree with trial and error. They had no way of knowing unless someone got sick or keeled over.

Answer 8

Plenty of people in remote areas still live like our ancestors did. They don't go to school, exactly, but they teach and study very diligently about what is edible and what is not. The knowledge is a matter of life and death to them, and it was acquired at a great price.

Answer 9

contemporary human beings in basic terms left Africa approximately one hundred,000 years in the past. whilst our ancestors left Africa, sure, they did would desire to eat animals during the iciness. There does no longer have been something to eat, and there is an outstanding variety of archaeological evidence for this. whether, merely before that factor, our ancestors in Africa have been in all probability omnivores ingesting occasional meat... going each and all of the some time past to whilst human beings diverged from different primates 10 hundreds of thousands years in the past. That leaves ninety 9% of our evolutionary time as ingesting a frequently plant based strengthen weight loss application. no longer in basic terms that, however the final 10,000 years of evolutionary time have been spent ingesting a plant based weight loss application. After the rural revolution, maximum all human beings is grains for foodstuff an outstanding variety of the time. in case you think of you're a real carnivore, you will desire to be waiting to eat uncooked meat, even drink animal blood, with no need ill. The mere scent of animal blood will make maximum persons ill. no person will eat uncooked meat. human beings gets foodstuff poisoning from meat it relatively is began to wreck, yet a real carnivore won't. human beings are not actual carnivores. Our ancestors ate meat for a time in there by using fact it substitute into the only foodstuff source attainable, and because they discovered a thank you to capture it (with weapons) and then prepare dinner it. We did no longer even eat meat long sufficient to evolve the capability to be waiting to eat uncooked meat with no need ill.

Answer 10

I know that way back in the day, people would eat foods that did not taste bitter. That's how they knew berries were good to eat. However, that wouldn't explain lettuce and such.. because those are bitter foods. I've wondered this myself. Perhaps, since animals eat it, they thought humans could too??