I hate to be the amateur doubting the claims of an entire field, but you aren't the first I've queried on this, and I've never been assured that yes, someone specific counted caloric input over a year, for a diverse set of tribes. Or something like that. So I have to wonder, and what you do remember is vague enough to make my point:
Bushmen bring home meat one day in four? Bushmen living in the Kalahari, one of the driest places on Earth? That seems pretty good -- and what does "meat" mean? A handful of lizards to flavor the stew, or a big deer or boar? 30 people living on meat for four days would eat 120-240 kilograms, I figure, which as big game goes isn't that big. If you brought animals like that home you wouldn't need to hunt more than one day in four. Or 8, because I had them eating nothing but meat.
I didn't know the Inuit got any plant matter other than what they found in the stomachs of their kills, or in seaweed. But William Calvin pointed out that in northern winters in general, hunting might provide most of the calories for a few cold months even if it didn't for the year overall, making it important for niche stability. And even not so extreme seeming places like grasslands might support hunting more easily than gathering, depending on the ease of finding -- what, roots? -- vs. hunting the animals who can eat the human-edible biomass of grass.
I know gathering was neglected; what I fear is backlash the other way. As I noted, "most" is rather vague; one could take the claim as implying that the contribution of the male half the tribe doesn't really matter much, which seems as implausible as the earlier neglect of the women. 90% calories from gathering would get you there, while 60% would suggest more that the tribe is dependent on everyone's efforts.
To complicate gender issues, women might well be bringing back animal products as eggs and even small game killed in the field, and in the Mbuti women and chldren help with net hunting -- everybody's there, some holding the nets and clubbing and others driving game into the nets.
*tries to do a bit of own research*
This abstract (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=11965522) claims about 65% animal dependence, in a couple of studies looking at many societies. Also this (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=10702160), with "Paleolithic diet" Loren Cordain as lead author. This one (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=10466159) says "the archeological record is insufficient to determine whether plants or animals predominated". And this abstract (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=15294479&query_hl=10&itool=pubmed_docsum) at least mentions various methods used to probe the nature of past diets.
This PDF (http://www.unm.edu/~kimhill/papers/hill1989a.pdf) talks about studies by the author, and claims the Ache of Paraguay, in forest mode, get 56% from calories, 18% from honey, and "plant and insects" 26%. It's got some interesting stuff on comparative hours worked and infant mortality rates and causes (and ditto for adult death).
And if I believe this random Usenet post (http://www.vegsource.com/talk/athletes/messages/60389.html), some of all this might go back to Richard Lee's quoted and re-quoted _Man the Hunter_, saying 35% came from hunted animal foods, with the 65% of gathered calories including various animal sources (including fish), an oft-overlooked detail.
Final conclusion: I don't know, except that there may be no "typical" H-G society averaged over ecologies, and I'd bet hunting/animals has tended to be important -- 35% isn't small change.
How is this such a crucial detail for your worldbuilding, anyway, if you can say?
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yati
no subject
Date: 2006-12-31 11:50 pm (UTC)Bushmen bring home meat one day in four? Bushmen living in the Kalahari, one of the driest places on Earth? That seems pretty good -- and what does "meat" mean? A handful of lizards to flavor the stew, or a big deer or boar? 30 people living on meat for four days would eat 120-240 kilograms, I figure, which as big game goes isn't that big. If you brought animals like that home you wouldn't need to hunt more than one day in four. Or 8, because I had them eating nothing but meat.
I didn't know the Inuit got any plant matter other than what they found in the stomachs of their kills, or in seaweed. But William Calvin pointed out that in northern winters in general, hunting might provide most of the calories for a few cold months even if it didn't for the year overall, making it important for niche stability. And even not so extreme seeming places like grasslands might support hunting more easily than gathering, depending on the ease of finding -- what, roots? -- vs. hunting the animals who can eat the human-edible biomass of grass.
I know gathering was neglected; what I fear is backlash the other way. As I noted, "most" is rather vague; one could take the claim as implying that the contribution of the male half the tribe doesn't really matter much, which seems as implausible as the earlier neglect of the women. 90% calories from gathering would get you there, while 60% would suggest more that the tribe is dependent on everyone's efforts.
To complicate gender issues, women might well be bringing back animal products as eggs and even small game killed in the field, and in the Mbuti women and chldren help with net hunting -- everybody's there, some holding the nets and clubbing and others driving game into the nets.
*tries to do a bit of own research*
This abstract (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=11965522) claims about 65% animal dependence, in a couple of studies looking at many societies. Also this (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=10702160), with "Paleolithic diet" Loren Cordain as lead author. This one (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=10466159) says "the archeological record is insufficient to determine whether plants or animals predominated". And this abstract (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=15294479&query_hl=10&itool=pubmed_docsum) at least mentions various methods used to probe the nature of past diets.
This PDF (http://www.unm.edu/~kimhill/papers/hill1989a.pdf) talks about studies by the author, and claims the Ache of Paraguay, in forest mode, get 56% from calories, 18% from honey, and "plant and insects" 26%. It's got some interesting stuff on comparative hours worked and infant mortality rates and causes (and ditto for adult death).
And if I believe this random Usenet post (http://www.vegsource.com/talk/athletes/messages/60389.html), some of all this might go back to Richard Lee's quoted and re-quoted _Man the Hunter_, saying 35% came from hunted animal foods, with the 65% of gathered calories including various animal sources (including fish), an oft-overlooked detail.
Final conclusion: I don't know, except that there may be no "typical" H-G society averaged over ecologies, and I'd bet hunting/animals has tended to be important -- 35% isn't small change.
How is this such a crucial detail for your worldbuilding, anyway, if you can say?