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This is incredibly obvious if you've ever foraged before. Plants are everywhere and stay still while animals are rare to see and constantly run around. You can

This is incredibly obvious if you've ever foraged before. Plants are everywhere and stay still while animals are rare to see and constantly run around. You can also get a lot of calories from nuts and grains, so it's not as if you're going to starve if you go a week without catching an animal.

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NotGMan 3y ago
One large animal can feed a family for many months if the meat is preserved/dried. There were no grains before agricultural revolution.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  People were making products like acorn flour and breads from that for millennia. Even in societies that never cultivated wheat.
- RoyalHenOil 3y ago
  "Grain" refers to small, hard, edible seeds. They include not only cereals, but also peas, beans, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, mustard seeds, buckwheat seeds, chia seeds, etc., etc. Grains can come from a huge variety of both wild and domesticated plants. While grains are less important to hunter-gatherering societies than they are to farming societies, grains nevertheless have been a part of the human diet since long before agriculture. The big difference here is that most hunter-gatherers ate extremely diverse diets. Their diets were not dominated by a couple species of cereal grains, like later diets were. Instead, they were eating a huge array of different grains, nuts, fruit, tubers, mushrooms, fish, insects, etc., on a seasonal and regional basis.
- brnt 3y ago
  It is not likely meat was preserved for any length of time back then. There were no methods to do so. Look at how predators work now: they eat what they can and the rest is lost.
  - huytersd 3y ago
    Smoked/dried meat keeps for a long time. Months sometimes. Anecdotally I know salted dried shrimp and fish keeps for several years.
  - Modified3019 3y ago
    In addition to simple drying/smoking already mentioned, it’s possible to preserve food in different ways depending on conditions and food type, with different types of burying. In some cases this is done to keep things dry, in others it’s to result in fermentation.
  - Fricken 3y ago
    Prairie natives had pemmiccan, which could be stored for a couple years.
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    I can't imagine what you could mean by that - smoking meat for preservation has been practiced since Paleolithic times, likely about as long as humans have been cooking with fire at all.
rufus_foreman 3y ago
>> Plants are everywhere and stay still while animals are rare to see and constantly run around This is true in some places and not true in others. People living north of the Arctic circle did not have a diet "composed of 80% plant matter and 20% meat". They ate primarily meat and fish with a few plants during the short season that plants were available.

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NotGMan 3y ago

One large animal can feed a family for many months if the meat is preserved/dried. There were no grains before agricultural revolution.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
People were making products like acorn flour and breads from that for millennia. Even in societies that never cultivated wheat.
RoyalHenOil 3y ago
"Grain" refers to small, hard, edible seeds. They include not only cereals, but also peas, beans, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, mustard seeds, buckwheat seeds, chia seeds, etc., etc. Grains can come from a huge variety of both wild and domesticated plants. While grains are less important to hunter-gatherering societies than they are to farming societies, grains nevertheless have been a part of the human diet since long before agriculture. The big difference here is that most hunter-gatherers ate extremely diverse diets. Their diets were not dominated by a couple species of cereal grains, like later diets were. Instead, they were eating a huge array of different grains, nuts, fruit, tubers, mushrooms, fish, insects, etc., on a seasonal and regional basis.
brnt 3y ago
It is not likely meat was preserved for any length of time back then. There were no methods to do so. Look at how predators work now: they eat what they can and the rest is lost.
- huytersd 3y ago
  Smoked/dried meat keeps for a long time. Months sometimes. Anecdotally I know salted dried shrimp and fish keeps for several years.
- Modified3019 3y ago
  In addition to simple drying/smoking already mentioned, it’s possible to preserve food in different ways depending on conditions and food type, with different types of burying. In some cases this is done to keep things dry, in others it’s to result in fermentation.
- Fricken 3y ago
  Prairie natives had pemmiccan, which could be stored for a couple years.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  I can't imagine what you could mean by that - smoking meat for preservation has been practiced since Paleolithic times, likely about as long as humans have been cooking with fire at all.

rufus_foreman 3y ago

>> Plants are everywhere and stay still while animals are rare to see and constantly run around This is true in some places and not true in others. People living north of the Arctic circle did not have a diet "composed of 80% plant matter and 20% meat". They ate primarily meat and fish with a few plants during the short season that plants were available.