Peru’s Wilamaya Patjxa archaeological site provided human remains showing that the diets of early people of the Andes were primarily composed of plant materials.Photograph: Randy Haas
Peru’s Wilamaya Patjxa archaeological site provided human remains showing that the diets of early people of the Andes were primarily composed of plant materials.Photograph: Randy Haas
Gathering is a lot easier than hunting.
If you can kill it you can eat it
Hunter mainly gathers this plant:
I used to love watching “Survivorman” with Les Stroud. He made it very clear in his episodes (surviving 7 days alone) that it was very difficult to hunt and kill something, and one’s time is better spent harvesting the easy stuff.
Of course it depends on the climate and location. Trying to live off of plant life in a northern forest is a lot different than South America.
BS
“The evidence, from the remains of 24 individuals from two burial sites in the Peruvian Andes”
The Peruvian Andes are high altitude, they have very few protein/meat sources which is why they raise and keep Guinea Pigs (”cuy”) running around their places of living to eat.
This special situation of high altitude is hardly normative for humans in general of this era
So this one site PROVES what was happening everywhere in the world, eh?
Boy science is really creditable lately.
Gather your bugs, and eat hearty!
Seems like there was a smaller variety of animules in South America compared to Africa.
What about bugs?
During the Ice Age, how much plants could you forage in an Artic-like environment?
Eskimos eat berries and a few roots, when in season, but the rest of their diet is meat and fish, because that’s all there is.
No potato plants or grass grains above the Artic circle, nor 200 miles of the ice wall in the pre-Holocene.
This was not long after the Younger Dryas extinction event. Most the of megafauna that was previously available was probably gone.
Isotope studies have also found evidence that ancient humans were hypercarnivores. A lot of what you eat depends on where you are and the culture you live in. Study the Inuit and you will think humans are hypercarnivores. Study India and you might think we are herbivores.
A couple sites in the Andes only prove people in that time and place depended on gathering. The real question for me is who is healthier: the hunters, the gatherers, or some diet in between?
Some of these reports sound suspiciously junior high.
One study, one site, and they’re telling us what ancient humans were all about.
They hunted where they could — those delicious wild ruminants, those mammoths...
They gathered when the gathering was good, and it’s a great way to keep the kids busy doing something useful...
They fished, of course, anywhere they found a fishing hole, or a sea. That too is a good way to get through a day with children.
Also, they trapped, which is rather like gathering, and you can learn it from a spider.
Even with big game around, not everyone is cut out for hunting. The lighter members of the bunch, women, children, elders — weren’t sitting around waiting for dinner to be delivered.
and meat...
Mostly gatherers...
That makes sense.
Any human who has ever hunted knows that 100% of the surviving animal kingdom is 100% committed to the goal of staying alive.
Fishing, spearing, and netting is probably the most efficient human method for acquiring animal protein.
They extrapolate two individuals to the world and an entire era? What if these two elected to be vegetarian or were terrible hunters.
Hunting is hard. Gathering is a lot easier. A key element is cooking, which frees up a lot of nutrition in both meat and vegetables.
A famous hunter-gatherer was art vandalous. He was more of a hunter than a gather but his girlfriend tried to talk him into emphasizing the gathering more than the hunting.
