"prior to the advent of detailed nutritional knowledge
and the ability to grow a wide variety of plant foods, required
that we kill other animals in order to survive. There is some evidence
to suggest that we have not always eaten meat, or at least, not
to such a degree as people today seem to desire. Indigenous peoples
have either needed to eat meat in order to maintain adequate
nutrition, or have continued to eat meat as a cultural throwback
to a time when there was a need."
When was there such a need? Amongst marginalized peoples not in touch with
fertile land where all sorts of fruit and nut trees grew, where melons and
tubers and seeds and grains grew in abundance?
Hunting seems to have begun as a human practice anywhere from 100,000 to
50,000 years ago, accompanied by great anxiety attested to by the great
proliferation of ritual forms and forms of apologies to the animals, etc.
We have much to learn from everybody.
Yet.
Ideology is still ideology.
It's ok if I kill you if I "reverence your life" and "apologize" to you and
"thank" you? Does the animal even understand this? It's really easy to throw
death around. Maybe there are better ways of living on the earth.
The Mbuti have myths about a time before hunting, a time they wish they could
return to. Anyone who hunts is considered "unclean". Perhaps we are part of a
movement reinventing that "before" time ....
Here is a possible timeline / genesis :
About 200 to 150,000 years ago, people began integrating more cooked foods
into their diet, as fire had been around for quite some time. Cooked foods
exaggerate menstrual cycles and discharge. Due to this, menstrual rituals
began (as well described in Judy Grahn's book), which became one of the first
important cultural rites. These blood rituals created perhaps an imbalance
however slight in the band, and so the men sought to create their own blood
rituals, thus hunting. At the advent of hunting we see an explosion of
cultural activity, which is normal for a time of anxiety.
Now let us be clear : we're talking about regular, well-organized game
hunting, of large mammals.
Prior to this, people probably grabbed the occasional lizard, bird, rodent,
certainly collected insects in masse (in fact, if we ARE carnivores, we are in
the main insectivores), and scavenged eggs,etc. There's evidence to indicate
that we were Scavenging meat from other carnivores' kills for a while.
There is also an indication that through this activity we learned the
sacredness of the skill of Tracking, of following animals to learn about them
and be in their presence / way. I believe that this was originally a
"religious" practice if you will and only after the "hunting revolution"
became part of the hunt, as ancient skills and perspectives got integrated
into the new hunting regime.
It is likely that around this time a "cult of the carnivore" arose ... wolves
and cats having much to teach us ... it is indeed possible, given that
leopards used to feed on us, that in the tradition of people becoming their
oppressor in anxious situations, we "became" the cats ...
Hunting was originally a religious and social activity primarily, not a
nutritional one. That may sound odd to most people, but it is only to the
economically-oriented, Neolithically-biased mind that sees everything in
"bottom line" terms. To this day, hunting remains a social activity, meat
being shared, becoming a "communion", a social sacred body that ties the
social body together in festivals or "carne"vals.
It's conceivable that the custom could have begun amongst people impacted by
climactic shifts, and diffused from there.
We do have evidence of chimpanzees living under modern, stressed ecological
conditions under certain circumstances and only in certain tribes, engaged in
some form of organized hunting. But the analysis of these facts is tricky, as
it also seems to be associated with higher aggression, etc, and thus could
just as easily be a symptom of social stress than nutritional stress. It could
also be that in areas where the ecological balance has been upset,
soil/mineral balances are lessened in certain plants, and an occasional
craving for mammal meat takes place, just as people who are pregnant
experience unusual cravings. However, none of this is institutionalized. Once
it becomes reified, institutionalized, it becomes something completely
different.
Due to the oppressivesness of the Neolithic Revolution, when we examine
hunter-gatherers, we are looking at people who have survived after being
pushed off the best and most fertile land, but having migrated to preserve
their way of life, sometimes in very harsh environments. I can't envision a
nutritional need for meat in the lushness of preNeolithic wilderness, a
permacultural paradise to say the very least ...
... Unfortunately, most people we have discovered are survivors of the Hunting
Revolution, and we haven't really met any peoples who survive from the
previous era ... thus to completely set in stone those who already went
through the first revolution (or devolution depending on your perspective)
shouldn't bias us against previous possibilities and inventive possibilities
for the present ...
... it is not racist to ask questions, to encourage the asking of questions,
to raise consciousness about suffering, and then to let people decide...
