I just finished reading Paul Shepard's The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game (1973). There are a lot of interesting ideas in it, but I was dissapointed with his conclusions and visions for the future. The ideas in the beginning of the book don't seem to lead to the ideas at the end. The basis of the book is the idea that humans evolved as hunter-gathers, and then goes on to show how that has effected our biology and mental / physical development. He shows how culture based on agriculture goes against our biology and recommends a tribal hunter-gatherer (emphasis on the Hunter) culture, or cynegetic culture as he calls it. At the end of the book where he descibes his vision of what this might look like, he ignores the issues of high population as inevitible and goes on to describe high density cities of people eating factory produced microbe based foods grown on petroluem (Huh?), thus leaving the greater parts of the interiors of islands and continents unpopulated and reserved for forays by gatherers (women) and of course the spiritual / psyche building, male bonding Hunt. He some how managed not to worry about the source of all of the material and energy necessary for the infrastructure of population dense cities. Not to mention that with many of the males off for months at a time in the wilderness, who would be running all of the infrastructure. He seemed to make an attempt to give women some important role in the governing of social life, but failed to tie it all together. It seemed ironic that with the hunter gatherer structure being so important that both hunting and gathering would be so separate from daily life. Instead the actual needs of the people would be met by a high tech infrastructure that he barely mentioned. Still, there was much food for thought. The desriptions of humans as a species evolved to hunt and gather in the savanna, was quite good. Also, I like the correlations between agriculture and a culture based on it, and hunter-gathering and its culture. I was struck by the number of similarities to Daniel Quinn's books (Ishmeal, etc.) right down to the use of certain words and explainations. I assume Shepard's book came first, but he had a very extensive bibliography which may account for some of the same information. Overall, it's worth reading. Eric Storm
