WHERE’S THE MEAT?
ANCIENT BIG GAME HUNTERS—“THE LIFE OF RILEY” vs “THE DELIGHTFUL LIFE”
PREHISTORIC HUNTERS HAD A GOOD LIFE
Hunter-gatherers have been with us for most of human history, and their life styles have been badly mischaracterized. Their lives were not brutish and difficult, but may have been the original “Life of Riley”, or as one anthropologist claimed—they were the: “original affluent society”. Rather than scraping out a bare existence until they became “smart enough to settle down” to take up growing maize or corn, hunter gatherers appear to have had a healtful, easy life with plenty of leisure. When their own populations were low—game was abundant and they lived the Life of Riley. When examined, the life of hunter gatherers, (and specifically the big game hunter, such as the mounted buffalo hunters of the Great Plains of North America) was characterized as one with a low work load, abundant and highly nutritious food, low incidence of disease, little conflict, gender and age equality, and groups which utilized sharing, and lived in small —probably family related —groups.
Hunter gatherers did not abandon their life style easily. It is likely that as human populations increased, competition sharpened for space and game animals. Pressures on herds of game drove populations to decline. Hunters were less successful and were forced by the threat of food scarcity to settle in one location and exploit a wider range of food sources to sustain their lives. This new settled life style required more work and produced fewer nutritious foods.
AN ANALYSIS :
A band of ancient hunter gatherers of about twenty, closely related individuals, send out a group of five (5) males to hunt. The five hunters spend one day stalking. killing and butchering a
2000 pound buffalo (Bison bison). Each hunter has expended about 2500 calories in the effort. (2500 x 5 = 12,500) Thus the sub group of 5 hunters expended 12,500 calories.
A pound of raw American Buffalo or Bison (Bison bison) meat produces almost 500 calories (or 496 cal), 68 grams of protein, and 34 grams of fat. It provides nearly 300% of vitamin B12 and high levels of niacin, as well a high levels of minerals, zinc, selenium, and iron. Bison meat has a rich nutrient profile and is an excellent food source. One could live on it without eating anything else.
The carcass of a bull, Great Plains Buffalo on the hoof may reach 6.5 feet at the shoulders, are nearly ten feet long and weigh on average about 2000 pounds. (Cows are somewhat shorter at the shoulders and weigh less, about 700 -800 pounds.)
If we ignore the skin, offal, organ meats, brain, subcutaneous fat, and intestinal fat, (all high in energy and all generally consumed by hunter gatherers) a Buffalo kill—minus the latter parts— could provide between 400-500 pounds of boneless edible meat. Hunter gatherers ate almost all of the carcass except bones and skin. They also consumed the fatty, nutritious marrow in the bones. Thus the following figures are a only minimum assessment. The calories from the offal, organ mets, brain, etc. may constitute another 50 to 100 pounds of high calorie fats and other tissues, which we ignore here. The food energy or calories (excluding the above parts of the carcass) from the muscle meat alone of one kill could provide (400 lbs x 496 calories/ lb. = 196,400 calories) or at least 200,000 calories of food energy per kill.
Thus our analysis indicated that the 5 man-hunter band expended 12,500 calories to access 200,000 calories of food energy. Or they invested 12,500 calories to generate 200,000 calories, or increased their investment in effort (200,000/ 12,500 = 16) sixteen (16)times. That can be stated as a 16 fold increase on their investment of labor.
If we accept a 2000 calories per day/per person caloric intake for an average person, and one Buffalo kill provides (200,000 calories per kill / 2000 calories per day = 100 days of survival per person, or one kill could provide adequate food energy for 100 people for one day, or five (5) days for a band of twenty people.
A band of 20 hunter gatherers (20 people x 2000 cal/day = 40,000 total calories/ day per band; 200,000 calories for one buffalo/40,000 calories = 5 days) or a band of twenty (20) could live off one buffalo kill for at least five days. The analysis indicates that one buffalo kill would result in an adequate food supply for five days. Result = five days of leisure for a band of 20 hunters expending effort for only one kill.
This simplification of caloric intake makes it clear what was attractive about hunting as a strategy for survival. Hunting for ones food, requires little effort, is efficient in terms of energy input relative to return, and produces results in a highly nutritious diet.
HOW DOES ANCIENT AGRICULTURE COMPARE?
In first Century AD Rome a North African (Morocco) family of six people needed to cultivate 3 hectares (7.4 acres) of land by hand to meet minimal caloric intake food requirements ( See: Agriculture in Ancient Rome) Wikipedia, DL 4-11-21 ). I interpret this to mean that to generate the roughly (6 x 2000 = 12,000 calories) twelve thousand (12,000 ) calories per day (or 4.4 million calories per year) for a family of six, the adults —here we assume there are three (3) —had to devote at least six months of their daily labor to produce the yearly supply of grain. Thus, 3 x 2000 cal/day = 6,000 x 365.25/2= 1.1 million calories or an investment of 1 million calories to produce 4 million. That is a four fold increase in investment of labor. Compare with the 16 fold increase in input for big game hunters noted above.
The big game hunter’s return on investment was a least four times,or four hundred percent, (400%) greater than the return gained from agriculture.
Even today in modern day France with modern labor saving machinery, it takes 25 hours of human labor to produce one bushel (60 pounds) of wheat. Converting that to calories we assume 25 hours = @2 two days (2 x 2000 cal per day = 4,000) 4000 calories to produce one bushel (60 lbs) or @ 65,000 wheat calories. Thus four thousand (4000} human calories (plus untold oil or electric sources of energy) produces @ 65,000 calories of food energy. That is a 1 to 16 ratio or a 16 fold increase of human effort for return.
Thus in some places in the world today, even with oil fired machinery, farming continues to be a labor intensive life style with caloric investment no better than that of the prehistoric big game hunter. Though it should be noted here that whilst buffalo meat is a perfect complete food, —wheat (Triticum ) —even whole wheat is not a complete food . A farmer would need to supplement wheat bread with other sources for a complete diet.
This analysis of the labor of farming tends to undermine the popular notion of farming as a more “advanced”. or desirable food strategy. Perhaps such judgements or biased ideas are very ancient for these concepts on agriculture were promoted long ago by Roman Republic author, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BCE to 43 BCE) who considered farming the “delightful life”. Cicero states in his treatise “On Duties” that “of all the pursuits in which gain is secured, none is better than agriculture, none is more profitable.... and none more becoming to a free man.”
Cicero of course knew only the life of the gentleman farmer and nothing much of the efforts of the North African man and woman (above) who toiled ceaselessly in the hot sun, digging, planting and harvesting on their 3 hectare plot to provide food for a family. He also knew nothing at all of the big game hunters of the past such as the Neanderthals , or of the mounted buffalo hunters of the Great Plains of the New World. The latter are a unique example of how settled farmers abandoned the “advanced” food strategy of agriculture to become mounted big game hunters.
PLAINS INDIANS ABANDON FARMING FOR BIG GAME HUNTING
It is interesting to note that farming demanded so much hard labor that many early Amerindian tribes of the Great Plains, who had “settled” down to an agricultural life actually abandoned that life for the big game hunter when the opportunity arose.
By about 700 CE, the Great Plains tribes which then occupied a vast swath of North America east of the Rocky Mountains from Mexico to western Canada, had adopted a settled life style. They lived in large villages located along river courses where they grew corn (maize), squash and beans, crops that were adopted from Mesoamerican sources.
These foods were supplemented with hunting small game, deer, antelope, and the occasional and desirable huge buffalo of the Plains.
For these tribes of the Great Plains in the eighth century of the Christian era, buffalo hunting was fraught with danger for hunters on foot, armed only with their light weapons such as the long bow and arrow. Buffalo were huge, unpredictable and difficult to kill. Hunting success was limited. A dangerous stratagem used by some Plains tribes was to prepare cloaks of the head and skins of wolves. Dressed in this camouflage, hunters could crawl up close to a feeding herd to a point where they might rise up and discharge their arrows. The technique was a dangerous one, for their weaponry was not capable of an outright kill and a wounded bull or cow could easily chase and trample a hunter or precipitate a stampede—a perilous situation on foot in the treeless plain. Some buffalo were exploited but other grazing ungulates were more safely and commonly taken, such as pronghorn antelope, elk and deer.
That all changed in the late 15th and 16th centuries when Spanish explorers introduced horses to the New World. Spanish mid 16th Century explorers such as Narvaez, DeSoto and Coronado brought huge herds of horses to the New World. Many of these died on the long and slow ocean passage from Spain, especially though the zones of calm winds—the doldrums— where sailing vessels were becalmed for days or weeks, and limited water and bulky forage combined with a longer than expected voyage—caused these large animals in confined spaces to die. The dead animals were hoisted off the deck and dumped overboard where they floated for many weeks. The floating carcasses gave these zones of calm winds the maritime term: “Horse Latitudes”.
Of those horses that did make it to the New World, some escaped into the wild to become feral bands. These wild herds found a near perfect environment of vast grasslands for grazing, plenty of water and few predators large enough to threaten them. As is with many introduced species —they thrived and their populations exploded.
The Plains Indians who had been introduced in the mid-16th century to what they termed the “big dogs” of the Spanish by explorers Desoto and Coronado realized their value as beasts of burden, but more importantly, as a way to exploit the seemingly innumerable herds of desirable buffalo, their meat, fat and skins. A single mounted hunter could (relatively) safely ride up close to to the huge beasts within range of their weapons. They often rode along with a stampeding herd, using a newly developed short but powerful bow—designed specifically for use while mounted. With this weapon they could easily and safely kill several stampeding animals as they rode along side with arrows directed to the lethal point just behind the shoulder. (In the mid 18th c when firearms were available as trade items they shunned them for they could not reload while mounted and could kill more buffalo with the lethal short bow.)
Soon horses were in such demand that the Plains tribes were making regular raids into Mexico to steal horses from the Spanish estates. By the 18th Century almost all of the southern Great Plains tribes had horses and had become exquisite “caballeros”. The horse completely altered the lives of the tribes who adopted them for hunting the buffalo. They abandoned irksome, tedious hard work of agriculture and returned to the way of the big game hunter. Some tribes that did not give up agriculture such as the Mandan, did not achieve the physical stature of the mounted buffalo hunter tribes such as the Sioux, Dakota, Cherokee. Big game hunting provided abundant and highly nutritious food. The Mandan had to trade with the hunting tribes for dried buffalo meat and buffalo fat to supplement their diets.
Notes.
George Caitlin, a mid 19th Century, attorney, artist and explorer of the Great Plains describes the Lakota Sioux below:
The personal appearances of these people is very fine and prepossessing; their persons tall and straight, and their movements elastic and graceful, Their stature is considerably above that of the Mandanns and Ricarees, or Blackfeet; but about equal to the Crows, Assineboines and Minartarees, furnishing at least one half of their warriors of at least six feet or more in height.
Illustrations of Manners customs and Costumes of North American Indians, George Caitlin 1846, Vol 1: On the The Sioux (Dakota) Plains Indians . Page 326
NOTE;
Mandans a settled agrarian culture, traders. villages along the upper Missouri River
Ricarees: (Aricara) related to Mandans primarily settled agrarian culture Corn main crop. Raised dogs for use as sentries and best of burden (travois0 as traders of upper Missouri River.
Blackfeet: Buffalo hunters of far north Great Plains
Crow: Nomadic hunters
Julius Caesar remarks on the huge size and health of mostly meat eating German barbarians of First Century BCE
Julius Caesar Commenatrii on Bello Gallico, Julius Caesar, @ 57 BCE In which Julius Caesar comments on the fact that the German invaders in Gallico were meat eaters. consuming only meat from a early age. They ate meat from cattle and game and milk and very little, if any, vegetable foods. To the Germans the Italian troops were “puny” at probably only 5.5’ or 5.8” while the Germans often were six foot tall or taller. The meat consuming German troops were very tall, wore only animals skins or very little clothing and fought fiercely.
Note on Advantage os meat easting American troops over British.
During the Revolutionary War It is widely reported that American troops were on average about 172.8cm or about 5’8”. That was about two inches taller than their British opponents who were on average about twelve centimeters shorter—or 160.8 or 5’.3” . Some claim the disparity was a factor in the outcome of the war. But its cause is not disputed. It was well known that Americans were better fed, and were raised on more nutritious food.
Colonial Americans on average had greater access to food and more meat than the typical British soldiers did. In North America game animals were still plentiful. Many recruits and volunteers came from a farm background where meat, beef, mutton, chicken, as well as game meats, eggs and milk were more available than in England or Europe.
NOTES
Marshall Sahlins 1988, “the original affluent society” (time allocation studies) hunters gathers spend less time on work than agriculturalists. —main strategy of hunter gatherers is to accept low low production gols and and optimize the distribution and use of resources. No hirearchy—equality prevails. Leveling practices limit growth off inequality—sharing and demand sharing
Gambling may be inherent mans of leveling procedures helps in redistribution of good and eliminates hoarding....though meat rots and can not be hoarded. gambling by Hadza use arrows hunter carries arrows of other hunters in quiver—meat killed with hunters arrow gives arrow maker ability to demand portion of meat. “ Insulting the meat” a leveling strategy (Lee 2004) which prevents successful hunters from boasting and exploiting luck to dominate others.
Multi-relational
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