Looks delicious, but from what I’ve read hunter-gatherer societies, except for special feasts, were more likely to boil or stew their meat, rather than letting all that gorgeous fat drip into the fire. Boiling preserved nutrients and tenderized tough game. The broth could be fed to the sick or elderly.
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Good point. That makes it easier not to waste anything. I guess they did a lot of butchering to get everything into a cauldron, though.
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Cauldron? We don’t need no stinking cauldron!
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You can dig with a stick.
Never underestimate Twig Technology™!
Empowering primates since, uh…, way back!
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I feel like the labor of digging a whole elephant-sized pit with sticks, and then needing to lure a mammoth into exactly that place to accomplish anything with it, is the sort of endeavor that humans would happily replace by just hitting the thing with javelins or pikes even if that’s riskier.
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I feel like acting smart and risk averse instead of silly and lazy might improve one’s chances to pass on one’s genes.
Hunter-gatherers had to be extremely efficient to survive, and this works best by being a close-knit, cooperative, protective social group. Risking injury or death of particularly skilled and capable members of the group makes little sense. Especially considering that there was game to hunt that was a lot less likely to kill the hunters.
I’m not saying that this sort of thing never happened at all, but I do say it was the occasional exception, either when a favourable opportunity presented itself or when times were really lean.
(Not to mention that practically all the popular images of muscular men in furs attacking Mammoths and whatnot with spears and whatnot while the women stayed back at the cave can be traced back to middle class guys from the 19th Century who had grown up in a patriarchal society and never had to get their own hands dirty in order to stay fed.)
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We know people like the Mbuti did hunt elephants with spears though. I assume that means there are smart ways to go about it, and it’s not actually such an unreasonable approach that people should have been desperate to try anything but. Also, contrary to those popular images, it’s not trophy hunting and you can still do the normal predator thing of going for the young or old or injured ones.
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Not to mention that if they had routinely used huge pits we would routinely find huge pits.
Nichts ist dauerhafter als ein ordentliches Loch, as Carl Schuchardt told Kaiser Wilhelm II.
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That is really cool!
On an unrelated note
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From my limited understanding of the subject a good explanation of the rams they had at the time and how they were used:
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[…]
This “virtual unrolling” technique starts by scanning the carbonized scroll in a particle accelerator at super-high resolution. Then, the complex structure of the scroll is analyzed and virtually flattened—but no text can yet be seen. At this point, the team trains ink detection AI models on the papyrus, based on distinct patterns that have been isolated through visual inspection.
[…]
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Sudan National Museum looted by the Rapid Support Forces.
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ETA:
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i just got off our regular friday night happy hour zoom chat with Dear Brother. i brought up the Mesopotamian recipe tablets and, of course, he was well aware of them and knew they were part of the Yale collection.
he has a friend and colleague that studies these “recipes” and has attempted to prepare some, himself. this person is publishing a book of these attempts, and on his next visit here, DB will be bringing some of these for us to attempt here in my own kitchen!
DB has also tried the “Midas Touch” ale that was researched and produced in collaboration with Dogfish Head Brewery by his Penn University colleague, Pat McGovern.
can’t wait to try it out!
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