At 03:05 PM 4/27/06 -0500, Robert Kesterson wrote:
>Unless he just ate the fatty parts of the game and fish and discarded the 
>lean meat (which seems unlikely)

Not constantly, but in fact, many have described seeing precisely this 
behavior.  Fat was very highly prized by Amerind peoples and blubber was of 
course a mainstay of the Inuit.  Explorer Samuel Hearns wrote (in 1768):

"Sometimes the Indians selected only the fatty parts of the animal, 
throwing the rest away. "On the twenty-second of July," writes Samuel 
Hearne, "we met several strangers, whom we joined in pursuit of the 
caribou, which were at this time so plentiful that we got everyday a 
sufficient number for our support, and indeed too frequently killed several 
merely for the tongues, marrow and fat."

Here is an empirical counter-argument to the 
primitive-diet-low-saturated-fat myth, from Mary Enig (who disagrees a 
little with Eaton and a lot with Cordain):

"The fat of wild game, according to Eaton, is about 38 percent saturated, 
32 percent monounsaturated and 30 percent polyunsaturated.9 This 
prescription may be just fine for those who want to promote vegetable oils, 
but it does not jibe with fat content of wild animals in the real world. 
The table below lists fat content in various tissues of a number of wild 
animals found in the diets of American Indians. Note that only squirrel fat 
contains levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids that Eaton claims are 
typical for wild game. In a continent noted for the richness and variety of 
its animal life, it is unlikely that squirrels would have supplied more 
than a tiny fraction of total calories. Seal fat, consumed by coastal 
Indians, ranges from 14 to 24 percent polyunsaturated. The fat of all the 
other animals that the Indians hunted and ate contained less than 10 
percent polyunsaturated fatty acids, some less than 2 percent. Most prized 
was the internal kidney fat of ruminant animals, which can be as high as 65 
percent saturated."

These quotes both come from Enig and Fallon's article "Guts and Grease: The 
Diet of Native Americans," which is long but recommended reading.  The 
aforementioned table can be found about 1/4 of the way down the page.

Full article here: http://gettingprimitive.com/?q=node/111

- S.






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