On Wed, 24 Sep 1997, Steve Meyers <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> In The Paleolithic Prescription (PP), Eaton et al.  construct an
> average diet for Late Paleolithic humans that has 21% of total

What is meant by Late Paleolithic?  The usual term is Upper Palaeolithic
from c.40ka-10ka, but the Late Upper Palaeolithic is only the final part
of this.

> calories coming from fat (slightlyly less than half from animal
> sources).  The amount of animal fat is based on the average fat
> content of 43 species of present-day wild game from three
> continents. The average is 4.3%, with a range from around 1-8%.
> This is far below choice beef sirloin at 27%.

But as you note later this does not account for marrow, etc., which
feature heavily in reconstructions of the food utility of animal parts,
notably in Binford's various utility indices.  This is not really my
field: are there any zooarchaeologists on the list who could comment in
more detail?

> One question is: to what extent does the composition of
> present-day wild game approximate that of the game hunted by
> Paleo humans?  Many of the animals hunted by Paleo humans -- at
> least in Europe and North America -- no longer exist.

Some no longer exist, many do, we may not have mammoth, woolly rhino, or
aurochs but we do have horse, reindeer, deer, and many of the smaller
species.

> It seems that here too geography and climate would play a major
> role.  Much of the period in which homo sapiens sapiens has
> lived (roughly the last 100,000 years) was characterized by very
> cold climate, at least in the temperate regions.  Since fat is
> an insulator, it seems likely that at least some of the hunted
> animals in these regions had a higher fat content than that of
> present-day wild game, but probably still much less than
> domesticated cattle.

May be, may be not.  In a cold climate animals will put on a layer of fat
for the winter, which many modern western breeds of domestic animals do
not need to do, becasue they are cossetted by us.  If it is sufficently
cold, then it is possible to kill animals at the beginning of winter and
cache the meat for several months, thus allowing access to high fat meat
when the animals roaming the area are getting lean.   This was the
strategy of eneolithic h-gs on the steppes of Kazakhstan with respect
to the wild horses which were their main source of food.

> In their article The Cave Man Diet  (PPNF Health Journal, Vol.
> 21, No. 2), Fallon and Enig argue that the Paleo diet was both
> higher in fat and higher in saturated fat than the typical diet
> proposed by Eaton et al.  Drawing on the collection Ice Age
> Hunters of the Rocky Mountains, they list a number of animals
> that were hunted, and say that many of them are fatty animals.

It seems to me that taking N American Ice Age Hunters as a basis for a
generalised Palaeolithic diet is risky.  Humans probably didn't arrive in
the Americas more than 14,000 years ago (though arrival before 30,000
cannot entirely be ruled out), and these were people adapting to a new
environment, in which there were animals which had never been hunted
before.  They thus represent a relatively recent adaptation and it is
quite possible that their diet was different to that of their ancestors
and cousins in the Old World.

> However, two animals that they cite as fatty (bison and beaver)
> are listed by Eaton et al. as having fat content of only 3.8%
> and 5.1% respectively. However, Fallon/Enig also refer to the
> cave mans preference for the fatty portions of his kill.  The
> fat contents cited by Eaton et al. refer to portion of fat in
> muscle meat.  But other portions (organs, brains, tongue,
> marrow) are prized by many 20thC HGers, and these are usually
> higher in fat content.

Marrow was consumed by ancient h-gs, as evidence by the many bones split
for acccess to the marrow, some parts of the kill would also be neglected
as they were of little value, and they would be left at the kill site
rahter than transported to the "home base" (this is known as the schlepp
effect).

> So, have Eaton et al. understated the role of fat in the Paleo
> diet?  It seems that may be so with respect to people living in
> Europe and No. America, and perhaps the colder regions of Asia.
> Plant foods were less abundant in these regions, so animal foods
> played a larger role than indicated by the typical diet in the
> PP.  And it makes sense that people in cold climates would want
> to get as much calorie-dense fat as possible. For Paleo people
> in other regions who lived in a less cold climate, perhaps the
> role of fat suggested in the PP is closer to the truth?

It is very difficult to know the vegetable/meat ratio fron preserved
remains as we usually ony have the animal bones, but it should be possible
to deduce whether the marrow and other fatty portions were being utilised
from bone fracture patterns.  I know little of the non-European data, so I
can't comment on that.

Andrew

 =========================================================================
 Dr. Andrew Millard                              [log in to unmask]
 Department of Archaeology, University of Durham,   Tel: +44 191 374 4757
 South Road, Durham. DH1 3LE. United Kingdom.       Fax: +44 191 374 3619
                      http://www.dur.ac.uk/~drk0arm/
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