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From:
Ray Audette <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 26 Mar 1997 21:57:58 -0800
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As a hunter-gatherer who hunts every day on the grasslands in and around
Dallas, Texas, I can tell you that there is not much vegetable food to be
had.  Besides a few berries, nuts and edible roots found around the creek
beds which can be eaten only seasonally there is not much but grass. As
grass is not edible to any species of primate I must eat large amounts of
game.

The fat content of my diet depends on the game caught and thus the method
used to hunt.  My own method uses no weapons as this is illegal within the
city limits.  Using only my Harris Hawk, I take rabbits, hares, squirrels,
ducks, geese, pheasant and quail.  I never stay out longer than 1.5 hours
and have about an 80% success rate.  I often feel (especially on the bad
days) that I
could do nearly as well only throwing rocks. As all of these with the
exception of the waterfowl (the most difficult to catch) are very low in
fat eating only what I could hunt and gather in this way would prove
difficult.  I would probably suffer from what the Inuit call rabbit
starvation.

Large game that has good fat reserves will require that I employ a weapon.
At close range, a sharp stick will kill any animal (many states in the U.S.
allow hunting bear with spears). Getting close enough to use this sharp
stick is the problem even if it is propelled by a bow or spear-thrower.
Using this method, I could still surprise the occasional cow (or buffalo in
the old days) at the watering hole and obtain enough fatty meat to survive.
As rustling is still
considered very serious in Texas I don't regularly do this!

To take large game, I need dogs!  Alone with a pack of dogs, I can out-hunt
a dozen men armed only with spears or bows or a pack of wolves. The dogs
will bring the game to me. As the dogs will hold the animal at bay, I run a
lot less chance of injury (those horns hurt-ask any Texas cowboy) and can
even employ a bow or spear-thrower and further reduce my risk. When mankind
teamed up with dogs through their mutual neotenazation during the
Mesolithic era, fatty large
game became the food of choice.  As wolves are temperate creatures and lack
our efficient cooling system, this symbiosis was most efficient in cooler
climates. Some have postulated that this resulted in the extinction of many
species of large fat bearing mammals (mammoths, ground sloths, wooly
rhinos, etc.)and the predators who depended on them.  In the old world this
neoteny took many thousands of years to fully develop.  This extinction in
the new world had to wait for these hunting teams to arrive over the land
bridge, but once they arrived it happened much faster.

Once the fattest large game was hunted to extinction, mankind began to
associate with domesticated (ie neotenized) animals who also carried fat
reserves such as cows, pigs and sheep.  When the limits of this pastoral
lifestyle were met the result was the Neolithic Revolution and current
eating habits.

Ray Audette
Author "NeanderThin: A Caveman's Guide to Nutrition"
http://www.sofdesign.com/neander


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