I just watched a fascinating video about Roman Gladiators and how a recent archaeological study in Turkey determined that they were practically vegan. John McDougall, MD presents this information in a video excerpt from his talk, The Starch Solution, at the Healthy Lifestyle Expo 2009.
After the video discussion:
I found an article describing the conclusions the archaeologists made that Dr. McDougall refers to. Aside from their determination that the gladiators consumed a plant-based diet, they also decided they were fat. Fat gladiators?? I truly find that hard to believe.
Don't anthropologists have the tech to determine if a skeleton was that of an obese person rather than a lean or muscled person? Shouldn't these archeologists be running these tests or outsourcing them to confirm this instead of just saying...well, they ate lots of starches so they had to have been fat. That doesn't really sound scientific to me. Especially with what I know about a vegan diet.
And I'm not saying they didn't drink the charred wood or bone ash where they supposedly got their calcium, but I have to say they probably got plenty of calcium from the greens they ate. Not to mention, since they didn't eat animal proteins, calcium wasn't leached from their bodies.
This article just reinforces my idea that we guess about a lot of things, especially in history.