>I agree that nuts and tubers would have been exploited when
>available.  It would be interesting to find a population of
>hunter-gatherers that actually *preferred* tubers to animal
>foods, if both were available.  In North America, the "duck
>potato" is widely available, but as far as I can tell most native
>Americans still made extensive use of meats.

On the  pacific north  west coast , the natives had plenty of animals
available , but they were spending lot of energy to care for their camas
beds ( a starchy onion )

jean-claude.