Hunter-Gatherers: Where do they get their calories?

Factual Questions
1

This is a continuation of a debate on a purely factual point raised in this Pit thread about hunting:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=11692662&posted=1#post11692662

The issue is this: several posters have alleged that hunter-gatherers obtain, present day, and have obtained in the past, most of their calories from gathering. This contradicts my understanding that the majority of present-day hunter-gatherers (and presumably those in the past) obtained most of their calories from hunting - that is, from meat and fish.

An article was offered which appears to prove the latter point:

Is there evidence that contradicts this, or otherwise demonstrates where hunter-gatheres get, and got, their calories from?

2

Well, for one thing, there is/was typically a gender distinction in HG societies: the men hunted, and the women gathered. So if half of your adults are gathering food that just sits there, while the other is hunting food that typically runs away, it’s not surprising that more than half the diet come from plants.

3

The fact that gathering was a more reliable source of calories than hunting was used as the basis for theories that early societies were Matriarchal. I don’t think such theories are well thought of by modern anthropologists, however.

4

Gathering isn’t always a very good way of getting enough food to eat in many environments, because plant products actually edible by people tend to be relatively scarce and seasonal, and there are lots of things competing for those that exist.

5

Possibility: it may have been alternately one or the other for the same given population, depending on season and location (for nomadic typyes).

Just thinking out loud. I have no factual answer.

6

Your quoted article says that the P:A ratio varies a lot, and depends on the environment. That shouldn’t be too big a surprise.

Also, as is pointed out in your article, comparing the relative healthiness of an H/G diet to a modern, western diet is very problematic since the healthiness of the food varies. You can’t compare wild game with farm raised animals. Not sure if that’s relevant to what you’re trying to understand, but that does come up a lot. In fact, even comparing food from 100 years ago to today is problematic.

7

No, I’m making no argument about the health implications. I’m more concerned with the alleged gender work split. The argument I’ve seen is that since women do most of the gathering and men most of the hunting, woman’s work was far more important than that of men in hunter-gatherer societies ‘…because they in fact derived most of their calories from gathering’.

8

Isn’t that gonna depend on what’s hunted/gathered? I mean if the women are bringing home the equivalent of wild cucumbers, well, they’re tasty, but they won’t do much to meet your caloric needs. OTOH if they’re bringing home bushels of fat-rich nuts and sugar-rich berries, give 'em a big hug.

Likewise, if the guys are exhausting themselves chasing after garter snakes and raccoons, that’s not real helpful. But if a team effort managed to bring down a dozen bison for the tribe in an afternoon, hey, it’s party time.

9

I think asking whose work is more important oversimplifies the situation. Good nutrition is more than just counting up the calories. Some of the sentiment about woman’s work being more important is (IMO) a reaction to the many years when Man the Hunter was the center of attention. But I won’t take that any further since we are in GQ, not GD here.

10

Oh, I think you are quite correct: my contention (or rather, my assumption) is that the reaction has led to the apparently factually incorrect assertion that gathering was actually more significant calorie-wise (never mind nutritional content) - thus, that “humanity” was/is more gatherer than hunter - as a reaction to the notion of “Man” the Hunter, the importance of males and their work trumping that of females, etc.

Of course this is based on the notion that human hunter-gatherers actually derived more sustenance from “gathering” being factually incorrect.

11

Exactly. I think there are far too many variables to ever be able to come up with a one-size-fits-all answer.

The comparative availability and accessibility of these different categories of foods varies widely from one region to another - sometimes on a seasonal basis, sometimes on a permanent one.

12

Hypothetically, if male hunting were a big ol’ waste of time, then wouldn’t those cultures that were smart enough to have men gather as well as women have out-competed the sexist dullards in the tribe across the valley?

13

Presumably, such cultures would not learn hunting skills (that is, the use of weapons). I can see where this could be a problem with "out competing’ the sexist dullards across the valley. :wink:

14

There are certainly going to be variables - an Innuit has a different diet from a !Kung san, and that diet differs from summer to winter.

But overall, at least according to the link, most hunter-gatherers derive the majority of calories from meat (the author claims 73% of groups surveyed gain greater than 50% of calories from meat).

Great username for this topic, btw … :wink:

15

Are invertebrates included in ‘meat’? Because they’re animals, but in general, they’re gathered rather than hunted.

16

I’ll repeat my last post in the other thread:

"your cite contradicts nothing. As I stated, the fossil record shows that our ancestors went from almost a pure vegetable diet to an omnivorous diet. That modern humans have continued to evolve, even to the point where eskimos may eat little plant matter hardly does anything to dispute this fact.

I’m not sure why you would find the notion “evolved to eat” ridiculous. It’s pretty basic and there’s countless examples. Bees evolved to eat pollen, ruminants evolved to eat cellulostic plant matter, Pandas evolved to eat bamboo.

You put a panda on the diet a horse evolved to eat and you get a dead panda.

Vultures evolved to eat carrion, and developed a much higher concentration of stomach acid to do so. You would not do well on a vulture’s diet because you have not evolved to eat it.

Finding something ridiculous is not a counterargument. It’s a statement of opinion. And, your opinion is demonstrably wrong.

If your point is that nowadays indigenous humans have a wide variety of diets ranging from almost exclusively meat to almost exclusively plant matter, and that not in all those tribes are woman the gatherers, than yes, I would agree.

An interesting footnote is that our evolution into persistence hunters has left us very specialized. In most sports a person becomes competitive somewhere around age 19. They may continue to improve for a years but eventually they peak and begin to regress. Somewhere around age 27 they recross the competitive line to the downside.

In ultrarunning only, among all physical sports this is wildly different. Again, you become competitive somewhere around age 19, but guess how old you are when you recross that threshold to the downside…

Born to Run is my cite. The author also cites this in the video for the book on Amazon.

Now, I don’t have these figures exact, but at one of the toughest ultramarathons, the Leadville 100 only about 1 out of three people who start the race actually finish it. But, and this is the interesting part 90% of women who start, finish.

Unique among sports in another way, there isn’t really much a battle of the sexes. Women win these things outright. Women are equally competitive with men in ultramarathons (the longer the race the more equal it is.)
The implications are pretty clear. When our homo erectus ancestors were out persistence hunting, the women didn’t stay home and gather nuts."

17

I have to say that I have no idea what that post is supposed to add to answer the question. And the last sentence is an opinion, not a fact. We have little if any evidence of what H. erectus females did with their time.

18

Here’s the point. Let us take the gathering of acorns vs the hunting of deer. More calories likely can be “gathered” with acorns than “hunted” from deer. But the acorns give low quality and incomplete proteins, and acorns have to be processed*- which takes mucho energy. It lacks certain fats and some vitamins.

Venison is very high quality protein, has complete fats (EFAs), and in the organ meat is rich is some hard to get vitamins. It needs very little processing.

  • ground, soaked 2-3 times, then cooked.
19

Nearly all of the vegetation that can be gathered has a very short window of availability. Berries are only available for a month or so, nuts, the same, tree fruits, ditto, so unless you live in the tropics, you’re pretty much left with roots and cactus leaves. There is very little vegetation available from September through May. No crops as we know them existed in the wild. And, of course, there were no crops because they were hunter-gatherers, not agriculturalists.

The cited article is fairly out of date. The idea that meats were less fatty in the past is not only impossible to argue one way or another, it’s a moot point. Some Eskimos subsist almost entirely on fatty meats, and heart disease among them is almost unknown. Also, it’s now known that eating cholesterol doesn’t affect the level of cholesterol in the blood. And suggesting that humans can’t tolerate a diet of more than 35 - 40 % protein “based on historical evidence” is nonsense.
As far as mostly-meat diets go, they offer sufficient calories, protein, vitamins, minerals and fats. Aforementioned Eskimos have no vitamin and mineral deficiencies. All necessary vitamins and minerals are present in the meat consumed. Meat can be dried and kept for times when game isn’t available, and is easily available year-round.

20

Nah, that’s not really true. Nearly all of the vegetation that can be gathered is tropical and subtropical. It tends to take the form of tubers, stems and hard seeds, and tends to be mostly available year round.

That is either a tautology or completely incorrect.

If by crop you mean “plant ecosystem that doesn’t exist in the wild” then you are correct, but it’s also a tautology.

If by`crop you mean “plant that is completely indistinguishable from plants in cultivation”, then you are dead wrong.

No, it’s very easy to argue with a plethora of evidence.