Dark Nutrition

[Politesse]

I tried to read the NYT article to my son and husband but they were so grossed out, the made me stop.

I also figured she wouldn't live too long if she kept eating road kill, raw eggs, raw milk etc. but this seems to be a food cult, so will they all die young or will they survive this weird, disgusting, imo, diet? Maybe all that extra bacteria will make them more resistant to infection and will boost their immune systems, assuming those in the cult are young and healthy. Who the fuck knows?

Well, it wasn't all that many years ago when our ancestors did all that (and more), before cooking was even a gleam in anyone's eye. The way we eat food now (safe food prep practices, cooking, pasteurizing, etc) is a big blip and an anomaly on the grand scale of our existence.

This is sort of true, though for those ancestors, meat would have been a rarity, not a part of the everyday diet. Hunting technology and fire technology developed together. You see some of our primate cousins hunt small game, but usually only in extremis of hunger. It was likely the same, if not more so, for our scrawny foremothers who lacked the easy capacity of a chimp or baboon to rend an animal apart by hand.

Our food has also been made more dangerous by our livestock husbandry habit.

 

[Tharmas]

It was likely the same, if not more so, for our scrawny foremothers who lacked the easy capacity of a chimp or baboon to rend an animal apart by hand.

From DuckDuckGo AI:

The earliest known handaxe-like large cutting tools date to about 1.75 million years ago, with early examples found at Konso-Gardula in Ethiopia and Kokiselei in Kenya. The more typical Acheulean handaxe appears later, around 1.6 million years ago.< citation src="9">

I have no idea what 'src="9"' refers to.

Essentially those dates, if accurate, indicate that from Homo erectus on we have been rendering food. Not to contradict you, but to add some perspective.

 

[Politesse]

It was likely the same, if not more so, for our scrawny foremothers who lacked the easy capacity of a chimp or baboon to rend an animal apart by hand.

From DuckDuckGo AI:

The earliest known handaxe-like large cutting tools date to about 1.75 million years ago, with early examples found at Konso-Gardula in Ethiopia and Kokiselei in Kenya. The more typical Acheulean handaxe appears later, around 1.6 million years ago.< citation src="9">

I have no idea what 'src="9"' refers to.

Just so. Well, if you think you can slay an antelope with an Acheulean hand axe, I'd love to watch your attempt. But I was the one who brought up hunting. There are other ways to acquire meat. It is likely, if not certain, that we were using tools like the classic hand axe to process scavenged carcasses much like RFK Jr does now.

I do think that hunting almost certainly increased our meat intake considerably, and possibly paved the way for some of the massive lifestyle changes that characterize archaic Homo sapiens as distinct from the other hominins. With this, on timing, you have an awkward situation. The first truly definitive evidence of human hunting is the famous assemblage of spears from Schöningen, about 300,000 years old. Our first definitive evidence of intentional firemaking is the Barnham hearth, which is about 400,000 years. But nearly all paleoanthropologists will tell you that both phenomena are almost certainly older, maybe much older. We just lack an actual site that can give us clarity.

 

[Elixir]

if you think you can slay an antelope with an Acheulean hand axe, I'd love to watch your attempt.

I don’t think I could do that, but my Great^30,000 Uncle Thag was a wiz with a hand ax! I’d love to watch him too but alas, he has passed.