[Vince Ferrer]

Good article. We project onto people in the past a lot of silly notions that say a lot more about us than them. For instance natives didn’t eat every part of a buffalo because they were hippie environmentalists. They did it because they were poor, and using every bit of the dead buffalo they already had was less effort than chasing another one.

[jjsheridan5]

Good article. We project onto people in the past a lot of silly notions that say a lot more about us than them. For instance natives didn’t eat every part of a buffalo because they were hippie environmentalists. They did it because they were poor, and using every bit of the dead buffalo they already had was less effort than chasing another one.

What in the world are you talking about? What "silly notions" are practitioners of the paleo diet projecting onto the past. Paleo is predicated on the idea that in many respects, people in the paleolithic era were healthier than their modern counterparts, and asks the question, "what did they eat"? Where in the world does the bit about hippie environmentalists fit into that???

[1010RD]

It’s worse than that. The Indians killed the American Bison indiscriminately. If they needed a horn, they’d kill one and just take the horns. They were so plentiful Indians didn’t need to worry. It’s the pre-Columbian version of the Tragedy of the Commons.