Hey all,

Interesting point about foodwashing.  I would not necessarily say that Paleopeople washed their food, but that they may have stored it in cool streams--effectively refridgerating and washing of food at the same time.

Where I get this conclusion is from my experience at the USMC Mountain Warfare Training Center's Mountain Survival School, near Bridgeport, California, in the Sierra Nevadas.  We were instructed to take whatever kill we had and, after butchering, store the parts/carcass under a heavy pile of rocks at the bottom of a clear-running stream.  As said before, this provided refridgeration due to the cool (45-40F) mountain streams, but it also secured the meat (sometimes not, depending on how deep and how heavy the pile of rocks) from raccoons and bears. The odor from the meat was also quickly washed away making it harder for scavengers to smell it.

As far as the grit went, there was very little in the way of large grit sand and pebbles--this depended if your stream had a sandy bottom or not.  What I did notice was depite the lack of grit that there were finer particles of silicates as well as some ores.  My particular stream had a large amount of iron oxide silt, so all rocks and my kill had a fine coating of rust.  There was no telling what other ore partiulates settled onto my food, but there were probably others as well.

Could be that Paleoman did use this method for food storage, and so -washed- and -fortified-their foods.

LeRoy


On Monday, 31 January, William wrote:

Difficult to compare modern and paleo food preparation customs, but
condsidering that raccoons are said to wash their food, I don't see why
paleoman could not have done likewise.





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