From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Mon Apr 14 2003 - 11:07:44 MDT
GTS writes:
> I've never seen any credible evidence that prehistoric cultures subsisted on
> less than ~30% animal based food sources. My own estimate as an amateur
> researcher is perhaps a bit lower than Cordain's. In some of Cordain's
> papers, such as the one I quoted here, he estimates as much 75% of calories
> from animal sources. I would guess about 45% to 50% based on the
> preponderance of the evidence I've seen from all authors and researchers.
Isn't it likely that the diets of prehistoric people varied tremendously
from season to season and even from day to day? (And from place to
place?) Some days they'd get lucky and find meat; some days they'd
get really lucky and find a lot of meat; then there would be dry spells
where they'd have to subsist on other foods. Some seasons game would
be plentiful and rich; others it would be rare and/or of poor quality.
You can crank all this variability down and come up with a figure like
45% or 75% of calories from animal sources, but how meaningful is that?
The truth is that early diets were controlled by season and circumstance.
People did not have the choice that we do every day as to what food
to eat. They ate what was available.
In those circumstances, humans had to evolve to be able to tolerate a
wide variation in diets, from periods of no meat to periods of almost
100% meat. No doubt somewhere in that continuum is an optimal point
(different for each person actually!). But you're not going to find it
out by averaging food consumption over the year or over a lifetime for
some particular prehistoric culture.
Hal
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