Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Article  Rotten meat was a staple of indigenous diets prior to Western influence

#1
C C Offline
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/meat...eanderthal

EXCERPTS: . . . [...] These accounts undermine some of scientists’ food-related sacred cows, Speth says. For instance, European explorers and other travelers consistently wrote that traditional groups not only ate putrid meat raw or lightly cooked but suffered no ill aftereffects.

A protective gut microbiome may explain why, Speth suspects. Indigenous peoples encountered a variety of microorganisms from infancy on, unlike people today who grow up in sanitized settings. Early exposures to pathogens may have prompted the development of an array of gut microbes and immune responses that protected against potential harms of ingesting putrid meat. That idea requires further investigation...

[...] Starting in the 1500s, European and then later American explorers, traders, missionaries, government officials and others who lived among Indigenous peoples in many parts of the world wrote of similar food practices. Hunter-gatherers and small-scale farmers everywhere commonly ate putrid meat, fish and fatty parts of a wide range of animals. From arctic tundra to tropical rainforests, native populations consumed rotten remains, either raw, fermented or cooked just enough to singe off fur and create a more chewable texture. Many groups treated maggots as a meaty bonus.

Descriptions of these practices, which still occur in some present-day Indigenous groups and among northern Europeans who occasionally eat fermented fish, aren’t likely to inspire any new Food Network shows or cookbooks from celebrity chefs.

Case in point: Some Indigenous communities feasted on huge decomposing beasts, including hippos that had been trapped in dug-out pits in Africa and beached whales on Australia’s coast. Hunters in those groups typically smeared themselves with the fat of the animal before gorging on greasy innards. After slicing open animals’ midsections, both adults and children climbed into massive, rotting body cavities to remove meat and fat.

Or consider that Native Americans in Missouri in the late 1800s made a prized soup from the greenish, decaying flesh of dead bison. Animal bodies were buried whole in winter and unearthed in spring after ripening enough to achieve peak tastiness.

But such accounts provide a valuable window into a way of life that existed long before Western industrialization and the war against germs went global, says anthropological archaeologist John Speth of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Intriguingly, no reports of botulism and other potentially fatal reactions to microorganisms festering in rotting meat appear in writings about Indigenous groups before the early 1900s. Instead, decayed flesh and fat represented valued and tasty parts of a healthy diet.

Many travelers such as Landor considered such eating habits to be “disgusting.” But “a gold mine of ethnohistorical accounts makes it clear that the revulsion Westerners feel toward putrid meat and maggots is not hardwired in our genome but is instead culturally learned,” Speth says... (MORE - missing details)
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Silicon-based life, that staple of science fiction, may not be likely after all C C 0 131 Jun 14, 2020 12:36 AM
Last Post: C C
  Family tree of 400 million people shows genetics has limited influence on longevity C C 0 356 Nov 8, 2018 02:42 AM
Last Post: C C
  Gut microbiome may dwindle over generations of low fiber diets. elte 3 913 Jan 15, 2016 10:36 AM
Last Post: elte
  Non-genetic mutations + Dog origins twist + Poverty dampens IQ genetic influence + Fi C C 0 690 Dec 16, 2015 08:06 PM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)