Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

In a e book about his travels in Africa printed in 1907, British explorer Arnold Henry Savage Landor recounted witnessing an impromptu meal that his companions relished however that he discovered unimaginably revolting.

As he coasted down a river within the Congo Basin with a number of native hunter-gatherers, a useless rodent floated close to their canoe. Its decomposing physique had bloated to the dimensions of a small pig.

Stench from the swollen corpse left Landor gasping for breath. Unable to talk, he tried to sign his companions to steer the canoe away from the fetid creature. As a substitute, they hauled the supersize rodent aboard and ate it.

“The odour after they dug their knives into it was sufficient to kill the strongest of males,” Landor wrote. “After I recovered, my admiration for the digestive powers of those individuals was intense. They have been smacking their lips and so they stated the [rodent] had offered most glorious consuming.”

Beginning within the 1500s, European after which later American explorers, merchants, missionaries, authorities officers and others who lived amongst Indigenous peoples in lots of components of the world wrote of comparable meals practices. Hunter-gatherers and small-scale farmers in all places generally ate putrid meat, fish and fatty components of a variety of animals. From arctic tundra to tropical rainforests, native populations consumed rotten stays, both uncooked, fermented or cooked simply sufficient to singe off fur and create a extra chewable texture. Many teams handled maggots as a meaty bonus.

Descriptions of those practices, which nonetheless happen in some present-day Indigenous teams and amongst northern Europeans who often eat fermented fish, aren’t prone to encourage any new Meals Community reveals or cookbooks from superstar cooks.

Living proof: Some Indigenous communities feasted on large decomposing beasts, together with hippos that had been trapped in dug-out pits in Africa and beached whales on Australia’s coast. Hunters in these teams sometimes smeared themselves with the fats of the animal earlier than gorging on greasy innards. After slicing open animals’ midsections, each adults and youngsters climbed into huge, rotting physique cavities to take away meat and fats.

Or take into account that Native Individuals in Missouri within the late 1800s made a prized soup from the greenish, decaying flesh of useless bison. Animal our bodies have been buried complete in winter and unearthed in spring after ripening sufficient to realize peak tastiness.

However such accounts present a useful window right into a lifestyle that existed lengthy earlier than Western industrialization and the struggle in opposition to germs went international, says anthropological archaeologist John Speth of the College of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Intriguingly, no experiences of botulism and different probably deadly reactions to microorganisms festering in rotting meat seem in writings about Indigenous teams earlier than the early 1900s. As a substitute, decayed flesh and fats represented valued and engaging components of a nutritious diet.

Many vacationers similar to Landor thought of such consuming habits to be “disgusting.” However “a gold mine of ethnohistorical accounts makes it clear that the revulsion Westerners really feel towards putrid meat and maggots is just not hardwired in our genome however is as an alternative culturally realized,” Speth says.

This dietary revelation additionally challenges an influential scientific concept that cooking originated amongst our historical kin as a strategy to make meat extra digestible, thus offering a wealthy calorie supply for mind progress within the Homo genus. It’s potential, Speth argues, that Stone Age hominids similar to Neandertals first used cooking for sure crops that, when heated, offered an energy-boosting, carbohydrate punch to the food plan. Animals held packets of fats and protein that, after decay set in, rounded out dietary wants while not having to be heated.

Putrid meals within the diets of Indigenous peoples

Speth’s curiosity a few human style for putrid meat was initially piqued by present-day hunter-gatherers in polar areas. North American Inuit, Siberians and different far-north populations nonetheless often eat fermented or rotten meat and fish.

Fermented fish heads, also referred to as “stinkhead,” are one well-liked munchy amongst northern teams. Chukchi herders within the Russian Far East, as an illustration, bury complete fish within the floor in early fall and let the our bodies naturally ferment during times of freezing and thawing. Fish heads the consistency of arduous ice cream are then unearthed and eaten complete.

Speth has suspected for a number of many years that consumption of fermented and putrid meat, fish, fats and inside organs has an extended and possibly historical historical past amongst northern Indigenous teams. Consulting primarily on-line sources similar to Google Scholar and universities’ digital library catalogs, he discovered many ethnohistorical descriptions of such conduct going again to the 1500s. Putrid walrus, seals, caribou, reindeer, musk oxen, polar bears, moose, arctic hares and ptarmigans had all been truthful recreation. Speth reported a lot of this proof in 2017 in PaleoAnthropology.

In a single recorded incident from late-1800s Greenland, a well-intentioned hunter introduced what he had claimed upfront was glorious meals to a workforce led by American explorer Robert Peary. A stench crammed the air because the hunter approached Peary’s vessel carrying a rotting seal dripping with maggots. The Greenlander had discovered the seal the place a neighborhood group had buried it, probably a few years earlier, in order that the physique may attain a state of tasty decomposition. Peary ordered the person to maintain the reeking seal off his boat.

Miffed at this surprising rejection, the hunter “advised us that the extra decayed the seal the finer the consuming, and he couldn’t perceive why we should always object,” Peary’s spouse wrote of the encounter.

Even in temperate and tropical areas, the place animal our bodies decompose inside hours or days, Indigenous peoples have appreciated rot as a lot as Peary’s seal-delivery man did. Speth and anthropological archaeologist Eugène Morin of Trent College in Peterborough, Canada, described a few of these obscure ethnohistorical accounts final October in PaleoAnthropology.

Early hominids could have scavenged rotten meat

These accounts undermine a few of scientists’ food-related sacred cows, Speth says. As an illustration, European explorers and different vacationers persistently wrote that conventional teams not solely ate putrid meat uncooked or frivolously cooked however suffered no ailing aftereffects. A protecting intestine microbiome could clarify why, Speth suspects. Indigenous peoples encountered a wide range of microorganisms from infancy on, in contrast to individuals right this moment who develop up in sanitized settings. Early exposures to pathogens could have prompted the event of an array of intestine microbes and immune responses that protected in opposition to potential harms of ingesting putrid meat.

That concept requires additional investigation; little is thought in regards to the bacterial make-up of rotten meat eaten by conventional teams or of their intestine microbiomes. However research carried out over the previous couple of many years do point out that putrefaction, the method of decay, affords lots of cooking’s dietary advantages with far much less effort. Putrefaction predigests meat and fish, softening the flesh and chemically breaking down proteins and fat so they’re extra simply absorbed and transformed to power by the physique.

Given the ethnohistorical proof, hominids residing 3 million years in the past or extra may have scavenged meat from decomposing carcasses, even with out stone instruments for looking or butchery, and eaten their uncooked haul safely lengthy earlier than hearth was used for cooking, Speth contends. If easy stone instruments appeared as early as 3.4 million years in the past, as some researchers have controversially advised, these implements could have been made by hominids searching for uncooked meat and marrow (SN: 9/11/10, p. 8). Researchers suspect common use of fireplace for cooking, mild and heat emerged no sooner than round 400,000 years in the past (SN: 5/5/12, p. 18).

“Recognizing that consuming rotten meat is feasible, even with out hearth, highlights how simple it could have been to include scavenged meals into the food plan lengthy earlier than our ancestors realized to hunt or course of [meat] with stone instruments,” says paleoanthropologist Jessica Thompson of Yale College.

Thompson and colleagues advised in Present Anthropology in 2019 that earlier than about 2 million years in the past, hominids have been primarily scavengers who used rocks to smash open animal bones and eat nutritious, fat-rich marrow and brains. That conclusion, stemming from a evaluation of fossil and archaeological proof, challenged a typical assumption that early hominids — whether or not as hunters or scavengers — primarily ate meat off the bone.

Definitely, historical hominids have been consuming extra than simply the meaty steaks we consider right this moment, says archaeologist Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo of Rice College in Houston. In East Africa’s Olduvai Gorge, butchered animal bones at websites relationship to almost 2 million years in the past point out that hominids ate most components of carcasses, together with brains and inside organs.

“However Speth’s argument about consuming putrid carcasses may be very speculative and untestable,” Domínguez-Rodrigo says.

Untangling whether or not historical hominids really had a style for rot would require analysis that spans many fields, together with microbiology, genetics and meals science, Speth says.

But when his rivalry holds up, it means that historical cooks weren’t turning out meat dishes. As a substitute, Speth speculates, cooking’s major worth at first lay in making starchy and oily crops softer, extra chewable and simply digestible. Edible crops include carbohydrates, sugar molecules that may be transformed to power within the physique. Heating over a fireplace converts starch in tubers and different crops to glucose, a significant power supply for the physique and mind. Crushing or grinding of crops might need yielded no less than a few of these power advantages to hungry hominids who lacked the power to mild fires.

Whether or not hominids managed hearth nicely sufficient to prepare dinner crops or some other meals often earlier than round 400,000 to 300,000 years in the past is unknown.

Neandertals could have hunted animals for fats

Regardless of their dietary advantages, crops usually get seen as secondary menu objects for Stone Age people. It doesn’t assist that crops protect poorly at archaeological websites.

Neandertals, particularly, have a long-standing status as plant shunners. Well-liked opinion views Neandertals as burly, shaggy people who huddled round fires chomping on mammoth steaks.

That’s not removed from an influential scientific view of what Neandertals ate. Elevated ranges of a diet-related type of nitrogen in Neandertal bones and tooth trace that they have been dedicated carnivores, consuming massive quantities of protein-rich lean meat, a number of analysis groups have concluded over almost the final 30 years.

However consuming that a lot protein from meat, particularly from cuts above the entrance and hind limbs now known as steaks, would have been a recipe for dietary catastrophe, Speth argues. Meat from wild, hoofed animals and smaller creatures similar to rabbits accommodates virtually no fats, or marbling, in contrast to meat from trendy home animals, he says. Ethnohistorical accounts, particularly for northern hunters together with the Inuit, embody warnings about weight reduction, ailing well being and even loss of life that may end result from consuming an excessive amount of lean meat.

This type of malnutrition is called rabbit hunger. Proof signifies that individuals can safely eat between about 25 and 35 p.c of day by day energy as protein, Speth says. Above that threshold, a number of investigations have indicated that the liver turns into unable to interrupt down chemical wastes from ingested proteins, which then accumulate within the blood and contribute to rabbit hunger. Limits to the quantity of day by day protein that may be safely consumed meant that historical looking teams, like these right this moment, wanted animal fat and carbohydrates from crops to meet day by day calorie and different dietary wants.

Trendy “Paleo diets” emphasize consuming lean meats, fruit and veggies. However that omits what previous and current Indigenous peoples most wished from animal carcasses. Accounts describe Inuit individuals consuming a lot bigger quantities of fatty physique components than lean meat, Speth says. Over the previous couple of centuries, they’ve favored tongue, fats deposits, brisket, ribs, fatty tissue round intestines and inside organs, and marrow. Inner organs, particularly adrenal glands, have offered vitamin C — almost absent in lean muscle — that prevented anemia and different signs of scurvy.

Western explorers famous that the Inuit additionally ate chyme, the abdomen contents of reindeer and different plant-eating animals. Chyme offered no less than a facet course of plant carbohydrates. Likewise, Neandertals in Ice Age Europe in all probability subsisted on a fat- and chyme-supplemented food plan (SN On-line: 10/11/13), Speth contends.

Massive numbers of animal bones discovered at northern European Neandertal websites — usually seen because the residue of ravenous meat eaters — could as an alternative mirror overhunting of animals to acquire sufficient fats to fulfill day by day calorie wants. As a result of wild recreation sometimes has a small share of physique fats, northern looking teams right this moment and over the previous couple of centuries continuously killed prey in massive numbers, both discarding most lean meat from carcasses or feeding it to their canines, ethnographic research present.

If Neandertals adopted that playbook, consuming putrid meals may clarify why their bones carry a carnivore-like nitrogen signature, Speth suggests. An unpublished research of decomposing human our bodies saved at a College of Tennessee analysis facility in Knoxville known as the Physique Farm examined that risk. Organic anthropologist Melanie Beasley, now at Purdue College in West Lafayette, Ind., discovered reasonably elevated tissue nitrogen ranges in 10 deceased our bodies sampled often for about six months. Tissue from these our bodies served as a stand-in for animal meat consumed by Neandertals. Human flesh is an imperfect substitute for, say, reindeer or elephant carcasses. However Beasley’s findings counsel that decomposition’s results on a spread of animals must be studied. Intriguingly, she additionally discovered that maggots within the decaying tissue displayed extraordinarily elevated nitrogen ranges.

Like arctic hunters did a couple of hundred years in the past, Neandertals could have eaten putrid meat and fish studded with maggots, Speth says. That might clarify elevated nitrogen ranges in Neandertal fossils.

However Neandertal eating habits are poorly understood. Unusually in depth proof of Neandertal big-game consumption has come from a brand new evaluation of fossil stays at a roughly 125,000-year-old website in northern Germany known as Neumark-Nord. There, Neandertals periodically hunted straight-tusked elephants weighing as much as 13 metric tons, say archaeologist Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser of Johannes Gutenberg College of Mainz in Germany and colleagues.

In a research reported February 1 in Science Advances, her group analyzed patterns of stone-tool incisions on bones of no less than 57 elephants from 27 spots close to an historical lake basin the place Neandertals lit campfires and constructed shelters (SN: 1/29/22, p. 8). Proof means that Neandertal butchers — very like Inuit hunters — eliminated fats deposits underneath the pores and skin and fatty physique components such because the tongue, inside organs, mind and thick layers of fats within the toes. Lean meat from elephants would have been eaten in smaller portions to keep away from rabbit hunger, the researchers argue.

Additional analysis wants to look at whether or not the Neandertals cooked elephant meat or boiled the bones to extract nutritious grease, Speth says. Mealtime choices would have expanded for hominids who couldn’t solely eat putrid meat and fats but additionally warmth animal components over fires, he suspects.

Neandertals who hunted elephants should even have eaten a wide range of crops to fulfill their appreciable power necessities, says Gaudzinski-Windheuser. However up to now, solely fragments of burned hazelnuts, acorns and blackthorn plums have been discovered at Neumark-Nord.

Neandertals in all probability carb-loaded

Higher proof of Neandertals’ plant preferences comes from websites in heat Mediterranean and Center Jap settings. At a website in coastal Spain, Neandertals in all probability ate fruits, nuts and seeds of a wide range of crops (SN: 3/27/21, p. 32).

Neandertals in a spread of environments will need to have consumed a lot of starchy crops, argues archaeologist Karen Hardy of the College of Glasgow in Scotland. Even Stone Age northern European and Asian areas included crops with starch-rich appendages that grew underground, similar to tubers.

Neandertals may even have obtained starchy carbs from the edible, interior bark of many timber and from seaweed alongside coastlines. Cooking, as advised by Speth, would have vastly elevated the dietary worth of crops, Hardy says. Not so for rotten meat and fats, although Neandertals similar to these at Neumark-Nord could have cooked what they gleaned from recent elephant stays.

There may be direct proof that Neandertals munched on crops. Microscopic remnants of edible and medicinal crops have been discovered within the tartar on Neandertal tooth (SN: 4/1/17, p. 16), Hardy says.

Carbohydrate-fueled power helped to take care of massive brains, allow strenuous bodily exercise and guarantee wholesome pregnancies for each Neandertals and historical Homo sapiens, Hardy concludes within the January 2022 Journal of Human Evolution. (Researchers disagree over whether or not Neandertals, which lived from round 400,000 to 40,000 years in the past, have been a variant of H. sapiens or a separate species.)

Paleo delicacies was tasty

Like Hardy, Speth suspects that crops offered a big share of the power and vitamins Stone Age people wanted. Vegetation represented a extra predictable, available meals supply than hunted or scavenged meat and fats, he contends.

Vegetation additionally supplied Neandertals and historical H. sapiens — whose diets in all probability didn’t differ dramatically from Neandertals’, Hardy says — an opportunity to stretch their style buds and prepare dinner up tangy meals.

Paleolithic plant cooking included preplanned steps geared toward including dashes of particular flavors to fundamental dishes, a latest investigation suggests. In no less than some locations, Stone Age individuals apparently cooked to expertise pleasing tastes and never simply to fill their stomachs. Charred plant meals fragments from Shanidar Collapse Iraqi Kurdistan and Franchthi Collapse Greece consisted of crushed pulse seeds, probably from starchy pea species, mixed with wild crops that will have offered a pungent, considerably bitter style, microscopic analyses present.

Added components included wild mustard, wild almonds, wild pistachio and fruits similar to hackberry, archaeobotanist Ceren Kabukcu of the College of Liverpool in England and colleagues reported final November in Antiquity.

4 Shanidar meals bits date to about 40,000 years in the past or extra and originated in sediment that included stone instruments attributed to H. sapiens. One other meals fragment, probably from a cooked Neandertal meal, dates to between 70,000 and 75,000 years in the past. Neandertal fossils present in Shanidar Cave are additionally about 70,000 years outdated. So it seems that Shanidar Neandertals spiced up cooked plant meals earlier than Shanidar H. sapiens did, Kabukcu says.

Franchthi meals stays date to between 13,100 and 11,400 years in the past, when H. sapiens lived there. Wild pulses in meals from each caves show microscopic indicators of getting been soaked, a strategy to dilute poisons in seeds and reasonable their bitterness.

These new findings “counsel that delicacies, or the mixture of various components for pleasure, has a really lengthy historical past certainly,” says Hardy, who was not a part of Kabukcu’s workforce.

There’s a hefty dollop of irony within the risk that unique Paleo diets combined what individuals in lots of societies right this moment regard as gross-sounding parts of putrid meat and fats with vegetarian dishes that also appear interesting.