----- Original Message -----
From: "Phosphor"
> o dear...let's start at the bottom:

There's no need to be condescending.

>primitive tribes move around to gain
> access to the richest sources of game at any given time of year.  they
> design their calendars according to this.

I don't doubt that what you say is correct.  But I think what you're
describing are optimal conditions for both animals and paleo-type humans.
Is life optimal and ideal?  It's a lovely Romantic notion to think that
choice always overrode chance.

Animals--and are humans so different?--tend to be opportunistic feeders,
eating what they can when they can.  How many of us have ever stuffed one
bite or several into our mouths not because we were hungry but because the
food just happened to be there right in front of us and easily had?  Where
did we acquire this ad-lib feeding trait if not via our paleolithic
ancestors?

Do you really think paleo h/g's pushed hunger and survival aside to pass
over a catch--"No, no, no, no, I won't kill and eat that fill-in-the-name
animal today because he won't be fat for another x-number of weeks/months."
Living long and successfully within nature requires considerable immediacy
to the moment.  Put another way, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the
bush."   Only someone who is very sure where his next meal is going to come
from and when it will arrive has the luxury of  spurning easy food at hand.
How much assurance did paleo humans have that they would never go hungry for
a single day or for several days on end?   Pass up food when it's readily
available, and there might not be strength to later catch food, or as you
say,  to "move around to gain access to the richest sources of game at any
given time of year."

While paleo h/g's may have strongly *preferred* fat meat for its caloric
density and taste, the evidence that they were scavengers (ad-lib feeders)
as well as hunters supplies additional support that they ate, literally,
what was available, no matter whether it was fat or lean.  In the simplest
equation, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie.  To say they ate *only* fat
animals and *only* in their *right season* is an insupportable claim.

Theola