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Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

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Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#61

Post by AlbertCory »

zikduruqe wrote: post #7
zadler wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might have been a good thing?

Just look up the Hadza tribe's gut microbiome. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36238714/ https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4654 That's probably as close as you are going to get to truly paleo diets... not paleo-bros that eat only bacon, butter and meats.

I was going to post about "paleo" diets, but you beat me to it.

The Paleo Cafe would get closed down by the Health Department real fast if it actually served paleo foods.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#62

Post by precompute »

dmm wrote: post #42
ravenstine wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why subscribe to the endurance running hypothesis, though? There are no contemporary examples of humans hunting that way, and hominids were already making tools by the time they had developed to subsist on meat. The endurance/persistence hypothesis doesn't even make sense without tools like spears, knives, or arrows, because humans don't kill their prey by biting into them. If they had access to primitive weaponry, w…

In her book "The Old Way", Elizabeth Marshall Thomas describes the Kalahari San who she lived with in the 1950s. Despite having bows and arrows some members of that group would persistence hunt. Dmitriy Lykov(1940-1981) of the Lykov family living an isolated life in Siberia developed a method of persistence hunting, despite or perhaps because of, the absence of any sort of hunting culture in his tiny, isolated group.…

Some tribes in Africa also drink milk mixed with animal blood. Not enough water to go around.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#63

Post by senko »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #59
ravenstine wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why subscribe to the endurance running hypothesis, though? There are no contemporary examples of humans hunting that way, and hominids were already making tools by the time they had developed to subsist on meat. The endurance/persistence hypothesis doesn't even make sense without tools like spears, knives, or arrows, because humans don't kill their prey by biting into them. If they had access to primitive weaponry, w…

[flagged]

Good GPT.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#66

Post by ravenstine »

senko wrote: post #63
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Good GPT.

Certainly seems like it.

Whether it's GPT or a human, this is wrong:

> Finally, while it is true that the low pH of our stomach acid suggests that our ancestors were not relying on rotten meat as a primary food source, it is important to remember that scavenging for meat was likely an important part of their diet. It is also possible that the ability to run long distances gave our ancestors an advantage in scavenging for meat, as they could cover greater distances in search of carrion.

The point I was making was that our ancestors were relying on scavenged, and probably spoiled meat.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#67

Post by OJFord »

chrisco255 wrote: post #60
detuur wrote: post #2

I don't see how that's surprising, at least if you subscribe to the Endurance Running Hypothesis (and I do). Any prey humans used to hunt using what we now know as persistence hunting would have been large game. Especially in the hot, tropic climates early humans seemed to have thrived in, such meat would have started to spoil, even if hunted fresh, before any such hunter would have had the time to bring it back to t…

I would disagree that meat had a short shelf life. It is almost trivial to dry meat out and make jerky that will last a very long time. Doesn't even require advanced tools. That being said, still agree with the premise. When you're truly hungry, food is food.

That is a 'controlled decomposition' preservation technique like GP described though.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#69

Post by throwway120385 »

foobarian wrote: post #29
giraffe_lady wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep other than a couple notable exceptions like salmonella, this is the norm for food poisoning. It's intoxication from metabolic byproducts, not infection. Remains one of the biggest lay misunderstandings of food safety though. "Just cook it out" plus "your nose can tell" (it can't, spoilage microbes aren't usually illness microbes) are false beliefs that still get people killed.

Curious about sources for this. I see some indication that botulism toxin can be destroyed by cooking, though the bar is pretty high - needs to be boiled over 5 minutes. So lesser temperature methods such as grilling the meat may not be sufficient, but something like stewing over many hours seems like would work fine.

USDA indicates that boiling for 10 minutes can prevent botulism: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/202...

Although the boiling doesn't destroy the toxin itself, only the bacterial spores.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#70

Post by protastus »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #17
leereeves wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dogs don't seem to mind [spoiled meat] I've recently seen proof of that. A dead horse was left on a trail I frequently hike, and I saw dogs eating it a week later. I don't even want to imagine how awful that meat was after sitting in the sun for a week.

That said, all the pets I've had throw up way more than I do. I think we're ignoring the very real possibility that ancient people were constantly living with some level of gastrointestinal problems.

Pets have diet sensitivities too, which can upset their stomachs. My cat used to occasionally throw up but with her current food she has gone for more than a year without any events.

By eating spoiled and contaminated food, ancient people were certainly getting internal parasites too (also something that a big fraction of pets have).

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