the anthropologic accounts of individual explorers and scientists living among traditional, mostly untouched peoples still following the old ways before the wagons arrived. There’s the Lewis and Clark journal (available free online), in which our intrepid explorers write of “plains Covd. with game” and witness “immence quantities of game in every direction around us…consisting of herds of Buffaloe, Elk, and Antelopes with some deer and wolves” – game so plentiful “that two good hunters could conveniently supply a regiment with provisions” and so “gentle that the men frequently throw sticks and stones at them in order to drive them out of the way.” These weren’t the skittish, sparse herds that populate civilized America today and have to dodge cars and hunters; no, the America known by historic hunter-gatherers was populated by reams of walking, running, nibbling, grazing, and brazen sacks of living meat willing and liable to walk right up to you. Their native guides would go for a light stroll and come back bearing several elks, a buck or two, and an antelope, almost by accident. Travel accounts and skeletal records from the precolonial era (or, at least, pre-reservation era) reveal that the native peoples of the North American plains tribes were taller than their colonizer counterparts, as well as stronger, fitter, and healthier (except when faced with guns and foreign diseases, of course). Richard Steckel, from the Ohio State University Anthropology department, published a paper called “Tallest in the World: Native Americans of the Great Plains in the Nineteenth Century” that asserts the Plains nomads were actually “tallest in the world during the mid-nineteenth century” as confirmed by “travelers’ accounts and by the skeletal record.” He compared 9,000 individual fossil records from 51 different Native American groups ranging from North to South America, and the horse-riding, buffalo-eating Plains tribes were the tallest and most robust. They were also among the most physically active – and physically impressive – groups, and they obtained a significant portion of their caloric intake from animal fat and protein. Their neighbors to the south, like the Southern Cheyenne, were more sedentary and ate a more agrarian diet. They were also “less considerable in stature.” I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I think it’s obvious that activity level and macronutrient ratio plays a huge role in hunter-gatherer body composition. The more activity they get, the more hunting they do, the more calories they derive from animal foods, the more physically impressive they are – the more typically “ripped” they appear. Kinda like what you’d expect from modern humans following a meat-and-animal-fat-heavy diet and strength-training regimen versus a vegetarian diet and yoga regimen (nothing against yoga!). The animal eater and heavy-thing lifter is going to have more muscle and less fat, on average (I know, I know, bring on the “entirely representative” pictures of crazy vegan bodybuilders).
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:39:56 +0000
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