This is a myth. I think 10,000 years ago there were only 2 million humans walking the earth. Fruit trees growing on uninhabited islands today have delicious sweet mangos. Fruits which exist but have never been cultivated at scale are also deliciously sweet.

yea just come to Borneo and try some of the native fruits to see how wrong that myth is ;)

While I'm sure not everyone had access to sweet fruit all the time, are you sure it was really so rare?

Fruit is meant to be eaten, so as long as plants have the spare energy, I don't see why they wouldn't make lots of appealing fruit.

Veggies would make more sense to be bitter.

Also, where did you get 1000 generations from? That's 20000 years in one place. It seems like a lot of humans would be a lot more mobile than that.

> Fruit is meant to be eaten

Meant by who? Evolution don't give a fuck...

I thought the whole evolutionary advantage was that animals spread the seeds around after eating the fruit, making survival much more likely. So not 'meant to be eaten' as in intentional choices, but meant to be eaten as in - this is why its an evolutionary advantage.

By the plant. The plant that is driven by its genes to maximize its offspring.

Can you cite some sources please? I've tasted some very sweet wild berries.

here is some info refuting that often parroted myth:

1. https://twitter.com/Botanygeek/status/1149968041964396545

2. https://deniseminger.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/

And I had some very sour apples so I think our anecdata cancel each other.

The existance of fruit that isn't sweet is not a counter example to the fact that sweet fruit exists at all

In addition to things other folks have said: Honey has existed for quite some time, because bees have existed for quite some time. Honey is pretty full of sugary goodness.

> Earlier fruits didn't have anywhere near the sugar content of the cultivated ones today

This is not substantiated[1][2]

1. https://twitter.com/Botanygeek/status/1149968041964396545

2. https://deniseminger.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/