Putrid meat was quite likely on the menu

[Primum Sapienti]

https://www.academia.edu/76351480/2022_Speth_and_Morin_Putrid_Meat_in_the_Tropics_It_Wasnt_Just_for_Inuit_

Paleo Anthropology
2022:2: 327−383. https://doi.org/10.48738/2022.iss2.114

Putrid Meat in the Tropics: It Wasn’t Just for Inuit
John Speth; Eugene Morin

ABSTRACT
It is widely known that traditional northern
hunter–gatherers such as the Inuit included putrid meat,
fish, and fat in their diet, although the ubiquity and
dietary importance of decomposing animal foods seem
often to have been underappreciated. There is no evidence
that these arctic and subarctic foragers suffered from major
outbreaks of botulism (Clostridium botulinum), or from the
toxic metabolites of other pathogens such as Listeria
monocytogenes or Salmonella spp., until the 1970s and
1980s when Euroamericans introduced more "sanitary"
methods for putrefying native foods. While many ethnologists,
nutritionists, and public health officials working in these
high-latitude regions are generally aware of the importance
of putrefied foods among such peoples, most scholars,
regardless of discipline, would not expect similar practices
to have been commonplace in the tropics, especially in hot,
humid environments like the lowland rainforests of the Congo
Basin. And yet a "deep dive" into the ethnohistoric literature
of sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere in the tropics and
sub-tropics of the Old and New World, shows that both
hunter–gatherers and traditional small-scale rural farmers
commonly ate thoroughly putrefied meat, fish, and fat with
relative impunity, consuming some of it raw, frequently
cooking it, but often barely so. Not only did tropical peoples
regularly eat putrefied animal foods, these ethnohistoric
accounts make it clear that, at least in many regions, the
Indigenous populations generally preferred it that way.
Equally surprising, perhaps, is the fact that this preference
for putrid meat remained widespread in equatorial Africa
and in many other tropical and sub-tropical regions well into
the first quarter of the 20th century, only fading from view
around the time of WWI or thereabouts. Combining the
insights gained by looking at the consumption of putrid meat
in both northern and tropical environments, several
interesting implications become evident. First, it is clear that
the disgust response with regard to the taste, smell, and sight
of rotten meat and maggots is not a hardwired human
universal, but more likely a learned cultural response, one
that is closely linked to European colonization, Westernization,
urbanization, and industrialization. Second, the capacity for
both northern and tropical peoples to consume putrid meat with
impunity suggests that their ability to resist the toxic effects of
the metabolites of C. botulinum and other pathogens most likely
stems in large part from the environmental priming of their gut
floras and immune systems through early childhood exposure to
pathogens rather than from genetic factors. This conclusion fits
well with findings from recent microbiome studies, including
studies of the gut floras of monozygotic twins living in different
households. Third, putrefaction provides many of the same
benefits that one gets by cooking, because it effectively
"pre-digests" meat and fat prior to ingesting them. Moreover, in
tropical environments putrefaction occurs very rapidly and
automatically, and requires little investment of time and energy
on the part of the consumer. Finally, we suggest that, by eating
putrid meat and fat, early hominins could have acquired many of
the benefits of cooking, but at much lower cost, and quite likely
long before they gained control of fire.

[littor...@gmail.com]

Op woensdag 29 maart 2023 om 06:44:19 UTC+2 schreef Primum Sapienti:

> Putrid Meat in the Tropics: It Wasn’t Just for Inuit

No, also for kudu runners... :-DDD

[JTEM is so reasonable]

Primum Sapienti wrote:

> Putrid Meat in the Tropics: It Wasn’t Just for Inuit

There are some who claim that the Romans seemed to favor their beef either
putrid or "on the verge," so to speak. But do the Google: Sailors, the poor.. you
name it and they ate things that would cause you to vomit profusely.

Meat was expensive, and rare, for the poor and refrigerators haven't been
around for long, out of the more than 2 million year history of our genus.

"Putrid" meat was the norm!

...the great scene from the Battleship Potemkin where, was it the doctor?
Anyhow, the officer explains that it's "Just maggots" and then tells the sailors
to wash them off the meat with sea water. Hey! Why am I working from
memory here when I have Google:

https://youtu.be/7UWX0oFPJak

When you kill a game bird you're supposed to let it "Age" for one to three days.

Some say longer. Here:

https://www.gundogmag.com/editorial/why-you-should-age-game-birds/462439

We're not talking something that looks like a chicken in the fridge. This is the
bird. The plucking & gutting comes AFTER the aging... YUM!

But no matter what, they needed DHA to grow the large brains and they never
were going to get it from fresh, putrid or even freeze dried meats.




-- --

https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/713001423881797632