Early humans were mostly vegetarian.
Cavemen ate mostly vegetarian diets
Experts have suggested that the description of cavemen as 'hunter-gatherers' should actually be changed to 'gatherer-hunters' to reflect the fact that early human diets consisted of 80 per cent vegetables.
Archaeologists had long thought that the caveman diets were meat based as Stone Age men hunted deer, wild boar and mammoths but analysis of the remains of 24 people from burial sites in Peru suggests that meat only made up a fifth of an early human's diet.
The team studied the composition of human bones dating back 9,000 years and found that dental patterns imply that plants grown underground - such as potatoes - were the most likely source of food.
Randy Haas, the author of the research from the University of Wyoming, said: "Conventional wisdom holds that early human economies focused on hunting - an idea that has led to a number of high-protein dietary fads such as the Paleo diet."