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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

#81
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm picturing a guy hauling a roadkill deer in, tossing it on a table and yelling "meat's up!" I mean, sure, they didn't have cars back then, but it's better than letting trash-eating deer meat go to waste.

I dimly recall a New Yorker article about people who eat roadkill. They do have their limits though. It has to be fresh roadkill :)

New paleo motto: "Maggots is protein"

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

#82
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…

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.

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

#83

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…

> There are no contemporary examples of humans hunting that way. There are some examples [0], although admittedly they are isolated cases. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

This is an unusually poorly written Wikipedia article with a very weird style and a lot of unsourced statements. I would be very hesitant to trust it without extensively reading the sources.

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

#84
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might have been a good thing?

There does seem to be this notion that being "too hygienic" is a negative thing because it doesn't train your immune system. That's only kind of true. Exposing a healthy person to small amounts of weakened virus tends to build immunity. Exposing the healthy person to large amounts of the virus overwhelms the immune system and may not even lead to a strong viral immunity. If I had to guess, eating rotten meat is somet…

Especially in the last years, the hygiene hypothesis is not about a lack of immune training against harmful microbes, but a lack of encounter of so called old friends, harmless microbes.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1700688114

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

#86

As an aside, most industrial meat is exposed either intentionally or unintentionally to lactobacillus strains. Working in kitchens I've had the opportunity to taste spoiling meat that had high amounts of it. When prepared right it is actually quite good. Taste can be similar to dry-aged steak, but juicer and more flavorful. I've never gotten sick, but it certainly seems like a risk, however tasty it may be.

I eat lactobacillus all the time in my sourdough bread :)

It is what makes the sourdough bread taste so good too.

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

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

The other way around

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

#88
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…

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…

>If they had access to primitive weaponry, why would they waste energy running when they could instead ambush?

This is the main point why I don't believe in the endurance running hypothesis. Humans are lazy. Why would they opt to run for days over just waiting at the local watering hole for prey?

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

#89
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…

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…

What is here then https://youtu.be/826HMLoiE_o ? Was this debunked as fake or something ?

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

#90
I was unfortunate enough to eat some rotten meat at a restaurant in Tanzania when I was working there. The main part was not down, but it was hidden under some potatoes, and I only discovered it as I ate.

Took me months to recover from it. Up to that point in my life, I was totally "regular" as they say. It was probably a year before I got back to normal in that respect.

Don't mess with your gut flora if things are going well, imo.

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