Pedro forwarded an amazing story of strength, determination and courage: The Lamalera Whale hunters of Indonesia. These traditional fisher-people weave thier sails from palm fronds, fashion boats without nails and lances which typify technology nearly 200 thousand years old. One thing I find intersting is the physiques on these hunters. They are not “big” in a bloated bodybuilding sense, but they look like they could handle themselves in a scrap pretty well.
One of the common misconceptions/counter arguments about the paleo diet is that our ancestors “just didn’t eat much meat…animals run away…plants are easier”. At first blush this kinda makes sense, until you trek across ANY open landscape and imagine fueling your life with the vegetation available under foot. Work your way to northern latitudes and the likelihood dwindles further. Anthropologists and archaeologists are fully aware of our ancestors’ prowess as hunters, whether the vegetarians want to buy this proposition or not. This debate becomes something akin to a tennis volley or a little kid’s argument “Yes it is!, No it’s not!!” I guess you can dismiss the obvious like the archaeological record, but there are other arguments that border on first order, foundational notions. Here are a few papers to consider:
Physical Activity, energy expenditure and fitness. This is an analysis of contemporary hunter gatherers and extrapolations from archaeological data. The take-home is our ancestors were VERY active and burned a lot of K-cals in that activity. From this we consider the next paper:
Plant to Animal Subsistence Ratios. This is an analysis of over 200 hunter gatherer groups and what they ate. Two interesting things emerge: A-more than 50% of cals came from animal sources. B-It is thermodynamically IMPOSSIBLE to feed the activity level of our ancestors on the plants available to our paleolithic ancestors. You either need a fermentive gut and must spend all day grazing like a cow or a gorilla, or you need to kill something. As a side note: There was never a vegetarian hunter gatherer group..or perhaps there was and they died off, but they left no descendants. You do not find vegetarianims until the advent of agriculture.
Exercise and Gene expression. The Frank Booth classic makes the point: If we are not exercising like our ancestors we are broken. Validation from the human genome project: We are wired to live a highly active existence. If this is the case, there is only one way we fed this activity: Large amount of meat from our VERY successful hunting forays.
This whole thing becomes pretty straight forward when you start with the basics and work your way through the thought process. Oddly enough, you even have coroborating evidence from multiple disciplines, thermodynamic validation and predictive value. The vegetarian spin on this offers NONE of this. Not trying to pick a fight, just making a point. In the face of this point however folks like T. Colin Campbel simply dismiss evolution as a driver in health and wellness! Ah, the best way to win a fight is simply don’t show up.
Book Update: Working on chapter 2. Like I mentioned before, I have dedicated deadlines. The introduction was the toughest part…it has always been that way when I do articles. I’m a build it from the ground-up person so that initial hashing out of my work can be like threading large gauge wire through my nostrils. I’m pretty pumped to finally get moving forward on the book but I will be VERY glad when it is done. I have a load of blog ideas and I really find this more fun than the organization of a book. Think productive thoughts for me!
chris says
What it do nephew!
This post, some other posts, and during the nutrition cert you brought up some bad points about vegans and veggies. After watching a peta debate on tv and spending some time on google (as first directed by you) im finding it hard to dig through crap sites and uneducated ramblings to find worth while material on this subject of vegan/veggies. I know you dont want to start anything, but what links, sources, books etc could you point me towards regarding the subject? I can’t find anything really that isnt inflated with hate or propaganda.
Also we should talk to Steve Jobs about some how figuring out a way to just plug in your brain and download it as an application or something…..and then put an adult filter on it…….I think we all know why….
I think the T. Colin Campbell foundation is possible a “good” source for “wrong” information. Seems like a remarkable waste of time…
The Adult filter sounds great!! All adult content, all the time!! oot, oot!
ec says
robb! i dont know where ive been… but catching up with the new site. love it! thanks for the awesome posts as always.
Right on Hottness! I’ll se ya when we head out Boston way in the fall!
Alex says
Very cool pictures, thanks. Those guys do indeed have impressive physiques, but I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions about their diets based on the the fact that we’re looking at pictures of them hunting whales. In fact, most Indonesians (except the rich ones) look like that (for instance, see this guy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12486193@N00/3084417097/) and they get probably 70% of their calories from rice, even if they do occasionally bag a whale. The superb conditioning probably comes from constant physical work and not overeating rather than lots of meat in the diet.
Scott Jones says
RE: Alex,
So, does this mean the literature he cited is wrong? I think the pictures were an example of what this situation might look like, not the best Robb has in the way of evidence. Did you read the references?
Reading his post, it sounded to me like the only conclusion Robb drew from the picture was that H/G cultures work exceedingly hard.
I think it would be interesting to compare this people, if you are indeed correct about 70% of their cal.s coming from rice, to their pre-agrarian ancestors.
I wouldn’t draw too many historical conclusions about the physical attributes/prowess of any current culture when considering the post/pre grain dateline.
These folks still get the bulk of their cals from fishing. Look to the kitava studies for grain free/high carb horticulturalists who display no insulin resistance with ageing…until they adopt grains!
chris says
I found this article linked to one of my favorite bands; its a good reminder that we dont have it so bad. some people are forced to live paleo, we have terrible alternative options =) I would like to hunt down some additional information on the health of these people overall.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/09/rural.alaska.villages/index.html
Yeesh, rough stuff. it would be in interesting counter point the vegetarians always throw around about improved health during rationing in WW2. This would be a shift to meat and fish instead of Victory Gardens. But then it will just be hung oon increased exercise that was the only thing saving these people from their high fat diet!
Mike OD - IF Life says
I’ve never met a vegetarian that I was afraid of.
jen says
Robb,
Get cranking on that book! I can’t wait! Good stuff bro.
Jen
Fixed Gear says
I thought the same thing about the physiques of the surfers in the 1966 surf movie “The endless summer” The 60s certainly wasn’t a paleo diet, but it contained a lot less junk than today. It’s remarkable how lean these guys were. Not skinny-fat lean, RIPPED. Like those whale hunters you show.
Robb Wolf says
lipid based. Clearly.