Prior to megafauna extinction, elephants dominated African herbivore biomass. (Ben-Dor, Barkai, 2020)
These elephants "preyed" on baobab trees. These are the trees that the bee species inhabit that supply most of the honey for modern-day Hadza.
When elephants roamed
abundantly, they'd reduce baobab trees density and potential honey pots.
Elephants preyed trees; humans preyed elephants.
But with the extinction of megafauna, hunter-gathers had to rely on smaller game with less fat, whereby the carbohydrates from plants and honey had to make up for the lost fat.
Today, the Hadza have high rates
of cavities attributable to their honey consumption, exacerbated by tobacco. (Crittenden et al. 2017)
But cavities are rare in the fossil record until ~15,000 years ago, where researchers find a high caries rate (51%) in Morocco attributed to increased reliance on wild plants. (Humphrey et al. 2014)
The evidence suggests that Paleolithic hunter-gathers were more elephant-hunter than
honey-gatherer.
1st principles suggest humans are big meat eaters.
