On Wed, 30 Oct 2002 08:10:02 +1000, Phosphor <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>... one fat
>emu gives  say 100,000 calories. one dugong probably 500,000.
> how many yams do you have to dig up to get these amounts?

How long does it take to hunt a fat emu?
This is probably a caloric investment well worth 100kcal or 40 days.
But how *shure* and how *often* could a fat emu be found?
Not only for one human, but for a band of, say 20 persons.
Would it be enjoyable to depend so much on hunting luck?
Or would famine be much more frequent for them as we use to think
from settled villages.

And what about the dangers of injury and death when hunting?
Australia is free of big dangerous predators and prey.
Africa is not.
Does it pay to risk a injury or to become disabled for how many calories?

These days I saw a film about wood-dwelling african tribes how they dug
out a "yams"-root. They used a special kind of long (and sharp) digging
stick. An affair of minutes, and prey which doesn't run but waits the
whole year. They know and recall good places.
They claimed that they needed the roots to get enough carb-calories.
Maybe to support their hunting against rabbit starvation.
(There were no dougongs or fat emus to be found in this forest,
as far as I know)

A.S.