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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

#121

Post by bernawil »

mklepaczewski wrote: post #103
bernawil wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this somehow always comes up when anybody mentions human sweating or how good we are walking large distances. But whoever thinks it's feasible to hunt any animal worth its calories just jogging behind it has never chased a playful dog. A furry mammal with no sweat glands has way more endurance than any fit man and let's not talk about top speed. You'd never catch it.

On short distances all dogs outpace humans. After an hour of running most dogs will just quit. On several occasions I had very hard time convincing various dogs to get off the ground after an 8-10km run.

my point is, can a human reasonably stay within viewing distance from a dog that is running away from him? the dog can just run at top speed, gain some distance, take a little rest and maintain that distance at a comfortable pace.

I used to believe in the endurance hunting thing until I realized playing with my dog it didn't make sense. They DO get tired, but they take a 1 minute break and it's like they are back square 0.

For the record, I'm in shape and with a pretty light frame (181cm/70kg) and go for 10km/1 hour jogs regularly.

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

#123

Post by dendrite9 »

eternalban wrote: post #117
dendrite9 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also kiviaq: "a dish made by packing 300 to 500 whole dovekies—beaks, feathers, and all—into the hollowed-out carcass of a seal, snitching it up and sealing it with fat, then burying it under rocks for a few months to ferment. Once it’s dug up and opened, people skin and eat the birds one at a time." Here is one of the articles I found that wasn't too focused on how gross it is that these people eat this and…

am ~ashamed that that description immediately made me wonder how gross it must be :} https://modernfarmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/fermente... But seriously, the extraordinary power of hunger and culture are on full display with the items discussed in this thread.

Don't be! I think that's a completely normal response to something like this. But you aren't writing about it. And I think why and how it became a thing is far more interesting than just "Look at this gross food. And here is why it is gross"

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

#124

Post by mklepaczewski »

bernawil wrote: post #121
mklepaczewski wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On short distances all dogs outpace humans. After an hour of running most dogs will just quit. On several occasions I had very hard time convincing various dogs to get off the ground after an 8-10km run.

my point is, can a human reasonably stay within viewing distance from a dog that is running away from him? the dog can just run at top speed, gain some distance, take a little rest and maintain that distance at a comfortable pace. I used to believe in the endurance hunting thing until I realized playing with my dog it didn't make sense. They DO get tired, but they take a 1 minute break and it's like they are back squ…

On a steppe? I think so, I don't see why not. An animal running at or close to top speed might only speed up its exhaustion - it's much easier to run 1km at a steady pace than to do 10x100m intervals.

Try to play with your dog for an hour at high intensity. If your dog belongs to a large or very large breed it'll get tired much more quickly than you - assuming you're in somewhat good shape.

I'm not advocating in favor of endurance hunting, I'm only stating that we can out-endure some large-ish animals.

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

#125

Post by jodrellblank »

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.…

(Off topic)

“despite or perhaps because of, sucks” - https://idlewords.com/2003/04/despite_or_perhaps_because_of_...

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

#126

Post by heyjon »

fwlr wrote: post #96

I recall reading, a long time ago, of a person who was eating just meat and only meat for his diet. He was struggling for a while with it, until he intentionally allowed a small amount of meat to rot for a bit, consumed that, and from then on he did much better on that diet. The principle I believe was in play was that the rotting meat contained a lot of bacteria that was very good at breaking down that meat (it woul…

Are you referring to this guy?: https://www.vice.com/en/article/nnqw3q/this-guy-has-eaten-no...

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

#127

Post by PhasmaFelis »

bernawil wrote: post #82
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…

this somehow always comes up when anybody mentions human sweating or how good we are walking large distances. But whoever thinks it's feasible to hunt any animal worth its calories just jogging behind it has never chased a playful dog. A furry mammal with no sweat glands has way more endurance than any fit man and let's not talk about top speed. You'd never catch it.

https://youtu.be/826HMLoiE_o

I think you're misunderstanding how endurance hunting works. There is no land-dweller on Earth that can outpace a fit, prepared human in a hot, dry environment indefinitely. Not even a horse; Google it. We're slow in the sprint, but we're monsters of endurance.

(By "fit" I mean "makes a living this way," not "jogs and hits the gym regularly.")

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

#128

Post by kirrent »

bernawil wrote: post #119
pegasus wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/health/27well.html "But when it comes to long distances, humans can outrun almost any animal. Because we cool by sweating rather than panting, we can stay cool at speeds and distances that would overheat other animals. On a hot day, the two scientists wrote, a human could even outrun a horse in a 26.2-mile marathon."

> distances that would overheat other animals what other animals? I used the dog example because it fits perfectly here: they don't sweat yet it's impossible to catch up to them if they are running away. Even if they overheat they don't just drop dead, they slow down to a human's walking pace. And what about running animals that do sweat like horses? makes no sense. What makes more sense is to approach from multiple…

You seem very confident that a human can't catch a dog on a hot day. I hate to be that person, but do you have a source for that?

I've gone running with plenty of different dogs in temperatures of above 30 degrees over the years. Smaller or stockier dogs (like a staffy) fade very fast. Within a couple of kms. Working breeds (retrievers/poodles/kelpies/collies) will leave you in their dust but this is why the endurance hunting hypothesis relies on efficient tracking while running. If they're running on the lead, especially when it's a bit hotter, they seem to lose it after about 10kms. On a cooler day these same dogs would leave me dead.

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

#129

Post by nkrisc »

hyperthesis wrote: post #98
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…

What's the advantage to not being able to tolerate rotten meat? Perhaps it's costly to tolerate it. Apparently the advantage of losing body hair is fewer problems with lice (consider how much time other primates devote to grooming)

There may be no advantage at all to not being able to tolerate. It may simply be there is no longer any advantage to being able to tolerate it, and thus no longer any pressure to select for the trait.

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

#130

Post by grumple »

heyjon wrote: post #126
fwlr wrote: post #96

I recall reading, a long time ago, of a person who was eating just meat and only meat for his diet. He was struggling for a while with it, until he intentionally allowed a small amount of meat to rot for a bit, consumed that, and from then on he did much better on that diet. The principle I believe was in play was that the rotting meat contained a lot of bacteria that was very good at breaking down that meat (it woul…

Are you referring to this guy?: https://www.vice.com/en/article/nnqw3q/this-guy-has-eaten-no...

Oh boy, that guy was definitely a crazy though: https://www.wkyt.com/2021/04/08/lexington-man-arrested-for-v...
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