Grotte des Pigeons is seen from the surrounding hills.
Ian Cartwright
Are You Related to Neanderthals? Photos
View Caption +
The high-quality genome sequence was generated from this small Neanderthal toe bone.
Bence Viola
View Caption + #2: A French military band.
Wikimedia Commons
View Caption + #3: Dancers from Sardinia.
Cristiano Cani, Wikimedia Commons
View Caption + #4: A man of Han Chinese ancestry.
Jonathan Kos-Read, Flickr
View Caption + #5: A Dai wedding party.
Sophie Leblanc, Flickr
View Caption + #6: Indigenous people from Brazil.
SeCom/Agencia de Noticias do Acre, Wikimedia Commons
View Caption + #7: Mixe hail from what is now the state of Oaxaca, Mexico.
Wikimedia Commons
View Caption + #8: People of Papua New Guinea.
Wikimedia Commons
View Caption + #9: Australian aborigines.
Steve Evans, Wikimedia Commons
View Caption + #10: Native Americans at a Pow-Wow.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Flickr
Related Links
These bacteria produce acid as a byproduct of breaking down sugars. This acid then attacks tooth enamel and leads to cavities, Peter S. Ungar, an anthropologist at the University of Arkansas who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email.
Fans of the paleo diet are very dedicated. They report not only looking better, but also feeling better.
DCI
Most scientists believe that hunter-gatherers ate a dietlow in carbohydrates and rich in protein, and that it was only during the agricultural revolution that carbohydrate consumption increased.
But the new findings suggest humanity's sweet tooth may be much older than that.
For instance, new evidence has revealed that other Paleolithic communities "ate a range of starchy and fat-rich seeds and nuts, as well as berries," Marijke van der Veen, an archaeologist at the University of Leicester who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email to LiveScience.
Still, the carb-loading cave dwellers were probably the exception, not the rule.
"While about 90 percent of adults in the U.S. suffer from cavities, little more than a handful of early human ancestor teeth have them," Ungar told LiveScience. In contrast, less than 2 percent of Stone Age foragers had cavities, he said.
"This study, and others like it, make clear the fact that our oral environments are not those to which our teeth initially evolved," Ungar said.
More from LiveScience:
Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
This story originally appeared on LiveScience.