Neanderthals were not mostly carnivorous. In fact, some of our best evidence for Paleolithic starch consumption comes from neanderthal remains.

Either way, there is a ceiling for protein consumption and because of that, Paleolithic hominids had to get a certain percentage of energy from carbs or fat. Unfortunately, there is no way to determine which they chose from the bones like we can for protein with isotopes. There are papers that theorize animals based on faunal remains and others plants based on local botany. There are starch sources buried in the ground even in mid-winter and in fact some of them are best in late winter even in the far north (cattails) because they store sugars in their root systems to prepare for spring. Siberians dig up lily roots for starch. There are also berries that can be found frozen in winter under the snow.

So really, we have no idea, but people make huge mistakes when they try to extrapolate from their own botanical knowledge. Most Americans wouldn't survive in the wild. And most of us cannot imagine what life was like back then. It continuously surprises even seasoned anthropologists. Based on paleoclimate and data from hearths, I'm going to say that Europe was probably originally settled by raw meat eating carnivores (not modern homo sapiens at this point), then there came a population of homo sapiens that interbred with these original settlers and also probably overhunted many large fatty game, pressuring hominid populations to rely more on leaner small game and thus forcing them to rely more on plants to avoid rabbit starvation. Might be why the descendants of this population only have a small amount of DNA from these archaic hominids. But now I'm just speculating.

A lot of starches that paleolithic and neolithic people used could be harvested and processed into a dried state, to be reconstituted with water later. Some of these techniques make roots and the starchy insides of trees/plants store-able for years.

Read the potato section of 1493 (by Charles Mann)for a description of the creative ways folks in the Andes used to process potatoes to make them store-able, using little to no technology. The resultant stored starches might not sound very appealing or palatable to us. Also, if you have Netflix you can stream a movie called Pururambo about the indigenous of New Guinea. Towards the end you see 20 minutes or so of them harvesting the pulpy interior or a large tree they felled, that forms the staple starch in their diet. The resultant starch looks every bit as white and powdery as white flour or white sugar.

Not much seasonality in the tropics. The idea that paleolithic humans only had fruit or starch available for a small amount of time in the year is (in my opinion) frankly a myth.

Humans have millions of years of tropical adapation; we've not lived in cold climates for long and as Melissa points out carbohydrate is available and exploited year round. Humans while well adapted to a large amount of meat and fat consumption; are not carnivores.

As a side note I'm northern european.

Thank you melissa, great website btw.

But I'm so confused on how someone like deVany thrives without or with so little starch in his diet? (He's naturally lean and pretty strong/active) Well trained gluconeogenesis? Because I'm pretty weak and slow without Starch.