71–80 of 94 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree the situation in many stables is abhorrent. However. Online im able to get meat from "wild" cows who roam free in certain "nature" areas.
Imagine trying to scale this sort of thing so it can serve everyone instead of a narrow affluent slice of the most affluent societies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The remaining people practicing such a folkway live on marginal land, the harsh truth of human existence being that if it was rich enough for agriculture, or good for pastoralism, those lifestyles would have won out. That's a bit too harsh, and I spent a couple weeks living with the Hadza at one point. Even went honey-gathering with them up into a Baobab tree, although I was too scared to stick my hand in. They liv…
"If you're of European descent, for example, you share more with the Hadza than you do with those of East Asian descent -- as they also share more with the Hadza than they would with you." How? Hadza would be about 3/1000th Neanderthal while both Europens and East Asians are about 20/1000th. Because home sapiens mated with them after leaving Africa and there wasn't much gene flow back into Africa. Even if that weren'…
So if you're European, for example, nearly all the genes you have can also be found in the Subsaharan African population, but many of your genes can't be found in the East Asian population at all.
(I'm not considering Neanderthal genes at all, as those are a comparatively very small portion of genes.)
I'm not an expert in this and I don't have numbers here, but this is what I was taught in college anthropology at least regarding genetic variation worldwide.
"An archaeological interpretation of Irish Iron Age bog bodies (2013)" by EP Kelly
> "Scientific analysis of the chemical constituents of the hair and fingernails provided information on the diets of the two men in the months preceding their deaths. Clonycavan Man had a plant-based diet for four months prior to his death, suggesting that he may have died during the autumn before the onset of a meat-rich winter diet. By contrast, Oldcroghan Man may have died in the winter or early spring, as he ate a diet with a substantial meat component during the four months prior to his death."
Diets likely varied globally based on local conditions - seasonal variation was likely the dominant factor in food sources for people living in the mid-latitudes and polar areas (winter/summer) as well as in the tropics (wet/dry), and people near oceans would likely be eating ocean-sourced food.
This was likely true for both nomadic hunter-gatherer groups as well as simple subsistence farmers and herders.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Guns, Germs, and Steel is thoroughly discredited pop science. And even then you’re misrepresenting its claims. Look to David Reich and his students for actual evidence based science on human migrations. And of course there are virtually no impartial contemporary works on the Age of Exploration, because the politics of our day require vilifying those civilizations. The objective reality is that the colonial period was…
How about 1491? He straight up claims the arrival of manioc in Africa contributed to a population boom that presaged the slave trade. Agricultural societies can subjugate conquered lands so much faster than hunter gatherer and nomadic peoples. It takes far longer to adapt to native food sources than to bring in annual crops that not only take but a few years to establish, but also require removing the forests and pra…
Nomadic people are quite capable of conquering land, the most obvious example being Genghis Khan, who managed to build the Mongol empire into the largest in human history.
It is true there is a general trend in history of agricultural societies displacing hunter/gather societies, but that's simply because agriculture generates more calories per square kilometer than a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. As populations grow beyond the carrying capacity of the natural environment, hunter/gatherers either forced to adopt agriculture or get conquered by the larger armies of those people that have.
I've read similar missives like this before, and I've always felt that they are at least somewhat of a strawman. The primary feature I always have associated with paleo is no processed carbs. That is, no flour or sugar. But certainly things like fruit and root vegetables are always fine, and encouraged. Yes, some paleo adherents make it very meat heavy, and others combine paleo with low carb generally. But when I see…
Modern industrial food processing uses machines and mass production. Adds chemicals like sugar, starch, salt, spice, nitrates, phosphates ... Probably too much of this.
I've read similar missives like this before, and I've always felt that they are at least somewhat of a strawman. The primary feature I always have associated with paleo is no processed carbs. That is, no flour or sugar. But certainly things like fruit and root vegetables are always fine, and encouraged. Yes, some paleo adherents make it very meat heavy, and others combine paleo with low carb generally. But when I see…
Honey throws a huge wrench in the paleo argument: it's essentially a 100% processed/refined sugar of which the Hadza in particular consume huge amounts with no ill effect. Matter of fact seems to be that if you can use the calories, there is nothing wrong with getting them separate from nutrients. A highly active person might need twice as many calories as his sedentary twin but only 20-30% more nutrients to sustain…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We’ve forgotten how many cultures ate acorns when they were available. Acorns are about 40% carbs. Unlike apples and many other tree nuts, there’s not a lot of evidence they have been selectively bred for larger fruits. “Native” oaks produce a noteworthy amount of nuts. But the thing with nuts is that they have multi year cycles to break the foraging ladder. Every few years the whole forest produces five times as man…
I believe the paleo crowd doesn’t argue against nuts.
A modern walnut for instance is about 18g of fat, 4 of protein, and 4 of carbs per ounce. And while the size of the fruit would have been increased under cultivation, I'm not sure the mix of nutrients would have shifted all that far. A 'modern' acorn is 6.8:1.7:11.5. That is a starch.
The limiting factor with acorns is that if you eat them raw the tannins will get you. You have to soak it out before eating them. We've had pottery for at least twice as long as the time since the end of the Paleolithic era. If soaked in leather bags or nets, then much older than that. And since oak tannins are one of the older techniques for processing leather, I think it's safe to say we've been collecting them since the back end of forever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree the situation in many stables is abhorrent. However. Online im able to get meat from "wild" cows who roam free in certain "nature" areas.
Imagine trying to scale this sort of thing so it can serve everyone instead of a narrow affluent slice of the most affluent societies.
We probably need to increase the number of farms and farmers, and decentralize agriculture. Bonus side effect: it’s more resilient to shocks like Covid taking out a few meat packing plants or a natural disaster taking out the massive Smithfield facility in Virginia.
It is known there are many health benefits to fasting. Why is that? It is likely that, after tens of millions of years of surviving episodes of famine, our bodies simply leave certain vital tasks to moments of famine, and therefore if you don't inflict famine on yourself, your body is going without an important reset which used to imposed on us by outside circumstances.