I was going to say that people used to store meat packed in butter or lard. Placed in a deep container and covered in lard or butter, meat will last indefinitely in an anaerobic environment. It’s not a common storage method today, but was used for centuries before refrigeration. The top layer of fat may go rancid, but the rest will be fine.
This won’t work in very hot environments as the fat has to solidify, and you don’t want meat floating in the grease.
Covering meats in fat may not be common as a storage method, but call it by the French name “confit”, and it’s considered gourmet cooking: http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/01/ask-the-food-lab-what-the-heck-is-confit.html
I have a cookbook by Michael Ruhlman that had pretty much half the book dedicated to confits.