On Fri, 5 Jun 2009 11:54:52 +0100, Geoffrey Purcell 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Re climate:- While some palaeos lived in pleasant climates, others also lived 
in extremely harsh climates where cooking food would have been an awkward 
choice. I can't help thinking that part of the reason why the Inuit ate so much 
raw food was because it was, in certain situations, just too much hassle to 
cook food in such a climate(eg:- during shortages of animal-derived oils for 
cooking)
>

[Brad]  The Inuit ate plenty of food cooked as well.  Caribou were typically 
cooked.  It was not a hassle to cook.   If the weather was such that they 
could not cook, they generally could not hunt either.

> 
>
>Re free time:- Which palaeoanthropologists claim a period of only 4 hours per 
day? That seems ridiculously low, and probably based on  very unusual modern 
hunter-gatherers in the tropics, with plentiful access to wild vegetables/fruits 
and the like. Even in the latter scenario, 4 hours is too small, IMO. I mean, it's 
a fact that famines were common-place among more modern hunter-
gatherers, and the feast-and-famine notion has been routinely ascribed to 
Palaeolithic tribes by many researchers. Frequent famine, by its very 
definition, implies that hunter-gathererers had to spend vast amounts of time 
hunting for food that wasn't there for the most part, so they couldn't just 
have sat around all day or they would have all died of starvation.

[Brad]  Famines were not "common-place".  In fact, HGs generally lived in 
environments that provided a surplus of food.  In most tribes, less than a third 
of the tribe was typically involved in hunting and gathering.  Often a fraction 
of the hunters provided the vast majority of the meat.  It is a documented 
fact that HGs had large amounts of free time which they spent singing, 
dancing, playing games, etc.  The actual work of hunting, food prep, building 
shelter, making material, etc. was not burdensome.

>Plus, human culture is so complicated(even in the Palaeolithic), that any 
sparse free time , other than hunting/gathering, would have been given over 
to any number of activities, not just cooking food. Abd, like I said, judging 
from Inuit etc. habits re eating raw meats right on the spot instead of taking 
them home, Palaeo tribespeople likely only ate cooked-foods when it was 
convenient(ie when they had the time) and, otherwise, just ate the foods raw.

[Brad] For HGs convenience was less of an issue than preference or need.  
Cooking typically was not a problem.

If you are genuinely interested in reviewing the literature on this topic, I 
recommend that you start with Man The Hunter by Richard Lee and/or Limited 
Wants, Unlimited Means by Gowdy (?).