Humans seem to have evolved in Africa as a carnivorous ape.
While modern-day hunter-gatherer tribes do an awful lot of hunting and gathering, I'm wondering what proportion of calories came historically from meat (as opposed to tubers, fruits.).
As it stands, I'm betting 3:2 that it was near 80% calories from meat. Problem is...that completely turns upside down the historical paradise theory. If 80% was meat...an awful lot of that has to be from fattier (read larger) animals, and large-animal hunting is always and everywhere exclusively a male activity.
Most likely that means that in the ESE, Men hunted the food, and brought home the calories, while women cooked food, and found supporting foods (nuts, plants, etc.) that were pleasant adds. Also interestingly, the men did so in a structure that looked an awful lot like a modern recreational sports-team (no coach, no management structure, no authority, bunch of guys trying to work together to achieve a goal).
If my understanding is historical, I'd suggest that this ought to put us rather hardwired into gender roles, team activity, substantial egalitarianism (except for skill-based just deserts). Non-gender-specialized worklives must be very odd for us, as is this whole agricultural "boss" thing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
11 comments:
"If 80% was meat...an awful lot of that has to be from fattier (read larger) animals, and large-animal hunting is always and everywhere exclusively a male activity."
Not necessarily; her in Utah where I live we had several tribes of Paiutes and Goshutes who rarely hunted large animals. Among many of the tribes, big-game hunting meant hitting a jackrabbit with a stick. Most of their protein was from reptiles, rodents, and insects (crickets and grasshoppers were a big part of their diet). There were some who netted fish and birds, but large animals like deer, antelope, elk, etc. were seldom found in their diets.
I imagine our ancestors were similar; the ratio probably varied quite a bit depending on season and locale, which would partially explain why we are omnivorous; it increased our range of food types.
Bob,
Thanks for the comment. We know that folks can't live on Jackrabbits, though. Protein poisoning is a real issue. I'd guess then that the Paiutes were stable semi-agricultural societies?
I've read a bit recently about the various tribes, and even modern stone-age cultures have a pretty serious variance between what they eat. Some (Eskimos) run something like 100% meat diets on fish. Others run something like 80% starches (taro root?). The question is how you get the non-protein content necessary to not-going crazy.
And even more, what it was like in the historical African ESE where 90% of our history happened, and our psyches evolved. Because we didn't exit Africa much more than 100,000 years ago out of our 1.5-2M year history as humanish folks.
Well put overall.
Caveats:
1. Subsistence on a low meat diet is possible, just not biologically profitable. Meaning, you'll get conquered.
2. I think you're underestimating the potential for hierarchy.
3. Hunting doesn't ALWAYS mean patriarchy, just almost always.
These are partly guesses. It'd be interesting to see a survey of true paleolithic peoples' social structures.
My understanding is that the majority of the energy (calories) in a hunter-gatherer diet comes from plant sources, but hunting is high-risk, high-reward — with very visible rewards that can be doled out to the rest of the tribe for favors and status.
BobG,
Was that before, or after the large-scale megafauna extinctions in the Americas?
I really wish we still had that two-storey sloth and the bear-sized beaver. Big animals are nifty.
Unfortunately, also tasty.
Aretae,
I've heard the jackrabbits bit, the problem is it depends on who you ask. If you go by European sensibilities, then you're in for pain, but it works differently if you eat the entire thing.
Problem being that for me, both ideas are hearsay and I have no idea where to check them.
Isegoria,
Is your data extrapolated from modern hunter societies? They have been pushed to the edge, the most marginal lands. They are utterly unrepresentative of dominant hunter behaviour in the paleolithic heyday.
If not, then I'd like to see it. I like dataz.
@Isegoria,
I had understood that to be the standard view of modern hunter-gatherer societies. I am fairly certain it's wrong, if only because of the massive variety of options which I think run from 100% meat to 80% plant. On the other hand, I've been thinking of the ESE in africa, and my inclination is to think of massive herds of megafauna, as Alrenous suggests. So...yes, I'm going all contrarian on you again, knowing the standard view...I'm mildly convinced that it's wrong (60-40).
Alrenous,
well said.
I happen to know that some folks on my paleo-diet list have run headlong into protein poisoning (not from eating rabbit, but from too much lean meat). I can't answer your jackrabbit thing, but I do worry. Rabbits just don't have deer-levels of fat, nor do lizards.
My understanding is that there is some number (50%) of calories that you can get from lean-ish meat, and then you're screwed. Maybe I can get one of the MPD guys to come talk about it.
I'm no jackrabbitologist, but I imagine if you eat the whole thing like Alrenous said you're well out of the lean meat danger zone. (Wow, that just gave me a Top Gun flashback.)
Organ meats are fatty, for starters. I doubt that taken as a whole, rabbits are 100% protein.
Even after the extinction of the megafauna (either because of spears, ice, lack of ice, or something else) we forget how rich in game places tend to be in the absence of roads and condos. You read stories from colonial/pioneer days, and outside the deserts there was metric buttloads of game.
Where I live now, the population is just dense enough to trigger the county hunting ban and shooting on your property regs (damn! not that it stops some of my neighbors) and that makes it a nature preserve, and you wouldn't believe how many deer walk across my land every day.
I admit, some of them are probably the same deer.
But still, herds of deer. For a small hunter/forager population, there'd be tons of food.
It has to be a lot lower than 100%, though, as Aretae mentioned. (The number I found was 40%.)
Humans can and will expand until we abut the limits of the food supply. Even if there's tons of animals there ends up being tons of humans to match.
Part of the low-protein estimates are probably from finding tribes that ran past this limit. Certainly that's where modern tribes are.
Part of my conviction for the big-game hunters idea is stuff like this, combined with the fact that Australian megafauna also decided to up and quit just after humans arrived. I understand some of these species had survived over 20 previous interglacial stages, making the climactic explanation pretty dubious, especially coinciding with the introduction a species known to enjoy big game hunting.
I was always under the impression that "rabbit starvation" (also "trout starvation") was due to insufficient fat rather than excess protein.
My sister managed to get this, through a diet that via a combination of laziness and belief in what the media told her managed to consist of entirely fat free diet food. (And she wasn't even trying to lose weight, she was a professional aerobics instructor.)
Next thing she knew, she was in hospital with intense stomach cramps and her liver was in a bad way from insufficient fat in her diet.
Solution? Add chocolate.
Dr. Pat,
I'd never heard that before. And 3 quick lookups in doesn't contradict you, though It's ALWAYS presented as a high-protein, low-carb, insufficient-fat issue. I had thought that one could get by with maybe 50% cal from protein, and 50% from carbs...but nowhere do I see the hypothesis explored.
That's really interesting. Now I have to go learn something about rabbit starvation.
Post a Comment