Primitive Economic Man (PEM) paradigms have been popularly applied in economics, nutrition science, sociology,psychology, and anthropology to explain human behavior for two centuries. PEM contains two general assumptions:(1) that most humans make cost-benefit decisions to further their own personal economic orpolitical condition; and (2) Darwinian selection favors these types of cost-benefit trade-offs; in other words,the children of selfish, cost-benefit oriented individuals differentially survive in greater frequencies throughtime. Regarding subsistence practices, the application of PEM paradigms has led to the development of a hostof models to test whether Darwinian selection has acted upon human behavioral choices to favor those thatlead to the maximum caloric intake possible relative to work effort. These models remain popular in archeologydespite the fact that nutrition science falsified this assumption a century ago in 1915. This paper explores morespecifically why PEM deserves a proper burial if we ever hope to fully understand and appreciate diachronictrends in human subsistence practices. At the same time, there are components to PEM paradigms that shouldbecome important pieces to broader, more holistically-based models of human dietary choices through time