From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Apr 13 2003 - 00:50:15 MDT
Barbara Lamar wrote:
> But I do find it difficult to
> believe that early humans with no hunting gear more
> sophisticated than the spear could have gotten a large % of
> calories from meat. I base this in part on first-hand
> experience hunting and on written accounts of hunting in
> North America in the 1800's when game was more plentiful than
> it is now and when people had guns.
And from another post you wrote:
> The cultures that come immediately to my mind when I think of getting a
large %
> of calories from meat are the various groups collectively known as Eskimo
people.
> Here's what a quick search...
You seem to be forgetting that North American people, including Eskimos, are
not truly Paleolithic. Homo did not appear on the American continents until
roughly 10 to 15 thousand years ago. That's just yesterday in terms of human
evolution.
It is very common for cultural anthropologists, (from whom I suppose you may
be drawing much of your argument, directly or indirectly), to look at
supposed primitive cultures currently alive on the western continents and
then to draw mistaken inferences about our Paleolithic pasts in Europe and
Africa.
As for hunting being unlikely because it's difficult without a gun, well,
that's just plain silly. Humans have been spearing animals with arrows and
spears for eons. In some cases it took a group effort by much or all the
tribe, as for example in the hunt for the mastodon, (the elephant's terrific
and extinct cousin). But a single mastodon could feed a tribe for a month.
> One more point about the diets of hunter-gatherers: most wild game is far
leaner
> than domestically raised meat.
On this much we can agree.
-gts
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