Oooh, good idea!
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
Posted on 06/10/2023 9:52:36 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Fish soup. Salmon tartare with mango salsa. Sea bream a la plancha.
The human genus has been eating fish since the dawn of time. Almost 2 million years ago, hominins in Kenya deboned a catfish. Around 800,000 years ago, hominins in Israel grilled a giant carp. Evidence of shellfish consumption also abounds, and it’s even been proposed that coastal Neanderthals dived for clams.
It is therefore unsurprising that freshwater fish were critical resources for inland prehistoric peoples in North America, not to mention modern ones. It is surprising that archaeologists investigating their predecessors – the earliest people in Beringia (the land bridge between Asia and North America) around 15,000 to 14,000 years ago – found no evidence of fish consumption until 13,000 years ago.
For the first thousand years or so, first Beringians confined hunting to bison and elk and other large animals, the reports indicate.
Could the absence of fish be due to differential preservation: big animal bones preserved; frail fishbones not? Maybe it was an artifact of the study method? Did they really not eat fish for a thousand years or more – and if so, why did they then change habit? Maybe they just didn’t like fish?
Fish first appears in eastern Beringian human contexts 12,900 years ago, at a site called Mead, and 11,800 years ago at a site called Upward Sun River, they write.
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
Given the scientists mention around 13,000 years ago, that would be about the time of the great northern hemisphere bolide strike(s). It is suggested this hastened the extinction of the very large land mammals, like mammoths, etc. Loss of the large mammals would force the remaining humans to eat smaller items like fish, rabbits, deer, etc. Also if many humans were also killed the survivors might have formed much small bands not able to easily kill the remaining large animals such as bisons.
Time to show the Firestone book.
If I had the choice between eating caribou or salmon, cut me off a hunk of red meat!
Oooh, good idea!
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
Yup, and people will eat whatever they can find to eat, period.
Of course. But if we have our druthers we prefer fatty, cooked, sweet and salted.
Fish might have been regarded the same way edible bugs are regarded. Sure you COULD eat them but unless you are starving why would you?
It’s probably a matter of the scale of the fishing.
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