Is there a "food map" that distinguishes different human diets in large geographical areas during the Paleolithic?

Question

I think I've read that tubers and nuts were extremely important to Paleolithic hunter-gatherers who lived in East Africa. But different subsistence patterns (when gathering plants and hunting animals) in different parts of the world create very strong distinctions in how daily life functions in hunter-gatherer bands today, and it certainly did in the past. Is there a work out there which gives us a geographic survey, going from area to area in the Pleistocene and differentiating the major food zones our ancestors would have crossed over into, after which point they'd change their subsistence patterns and thus how they organized their lives? What I'm looking for is a book or map or something which tells us where "tuber country" began and ended, followed by "xxxx country," leading into Europe and Asia as well as South Africa. If it's a map, it might look like one of modern countries, except the borders are drawn based on major differences in human diet. Thanks!

Answer 1

I don't think such a map exists, or could exist, honestly. Mapping the ancient extents of plant and animal species is really, really difficult to begin with, and reconstructing the diets of Paleolithic humans is even harder. Furthermore, modern hunter-gatherers have by far the most varied diets on the planet, and Paleolithic people were likely the same way. Humans will eat just about anything: that flexibility is what lets us live virtually anywhere on the planet. If you're hoping that the boundaries of certain foods somehow dictated the boundaries and settlement patterns of certain cultural groups that happen to correspond to boundaries of modern nation-states, I'm afraid that just isn't the case at all and you're taking literally millions of years in leaps to try to justify the concept of a culturally bounded nation-state, which is at best only a couple hundred years old.