Re comment:- "[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"
Given the preparation-time and length of time heating the food, cooking is inevitably a hassle.I was merely pointing out that the Inuit routinely would eat parts of a carcass raw before taking the rest back to camp for cooking. In some cases,(such as fish), they often just ate it all raw on the spot, for convenience. I am not stating that they didn't cook, merely that cooking involved more of an effort, so that they had an incentive to eat raw, at times.
Re comment:- " Famines were not "common-place".
Unfortunately, palaeo researchers routinely refer to famine(or even "feast-and-famine") as an important aspect of the Palaeolithic era. For example, it's been suggested by researchers that trade between isolated tribes was used to protect them against times of famine. Here are a couple of standard referencs to palaeo famine from the web:-
"Combined with a relatively low average age at death, the hypoplasia evidence suggests that Neandertals underwent periods of nutritional stress or famine on a frequent basis (55)↵
Trinkaus E (1995) J Archaeol Sci 22:121–142
taken from:-
http://www.pnas.org/content/98/19/10972.full
"Given the nature of their economy, paleolithic humans were subject to recurrent rounds of feast and famine, depending on the movement of game and the luck of the hunt" taken from:-
http://tinyurl.com/lgcrsk
What is interesting is that scientists have been able to come up with the theory of Intermittent fasting(re increasing lifespan), which is ultimately based on the data re feast-and-famine in the Palaeolithic era:-
"Insulin resistance is currently a major health problem. This may be because of a marked decrease in daily physical activity during recent decades combined with constant food abundance. This lifestyle collides with our genome, which was most likely selected in the late Paleolithic era (50,000–10,000 BC) by criteria that favored survival in an environment characterized by fluctuations between periods of feast and famine. The theory of thrifty genes states that these fluctuations are required for optimal metabolic function."
taken from:-
http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/99/6/2128
On a logical note, it does seem very unlikely that Palaeolithic humans would have been immune to famine. After all, if they had always had access to a plentiful food-supply, their population-numbers would have inevitably exploded. And, there is plenty of evidence to show that world population in the Palaeolithic was a lot lower than in the Neolithic.So, famine must have been commonplace.
Ever since Weston-Price, there has been a move by a few anthropologists to suggest that the life of a hunter-gatherer was a Utopian existence with plentiful food-supply and minimal need to forage, sort of hearkening back to Rousseau's "Noble Savage" notion.However, it doesn't really compute given the frequent evidence re famine and hardship experienced by such tribes.
Geoff
> Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 14:25:01 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Enzymes and cooking (was Re: PALEOFOOD Digest - 29 May 2009...)
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> 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 (?).
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