/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>Without specialized tools.
We would be extinct.

Before farming humans mainly ate leaves, berries, and mushrooms.

Any bush fruit for sure. I'd say acorns but we used tools even for those. Its actually funny to imagine humans without tools, five of them surrounding a wild pig and punching it to death.

scavenging meat

>>13129645
based retard poster

>>13129652
>I'd say acorns but we used tools even for those

all you need is a rock, hardly a tool.

>>13129650
Wrong. Humans mainly hunted.

>>13130018
I will argue to death that a rock is still a tool, no matter how crude it is

>>13130018
Definitely a tool, just not "specialized" like OP is asking.
>>13130120
The earliest humans were more likely scavengers. But the answer is basically the same - humans ate whatever they could find that wouldn't kill them.

>>13129615
>without farming and specialized tools?
Seems kind of arbitrary since you wouldn't call a sea otter's diet "unnatural", even though they regularly use tools.

>>13129615
You'd eat the big D you disgusting degenerate!

>>13129645
Dis nigga...

>>13129615
Theres a theory that the reason we started using tools is because we would scavenge what other animals couldnt get e.g. bone marrow by cracking the bones open or cooking them. That and anything else we could find like berries and nuts. We might have hunted small game but before we started getting spears and bows we probably didnt take down bigger animals.

>>13129652
Nah being apes we probably still wouldve beat it with rocks owing to our lack of sharp teeth, and we wouldve got an old or week one too most likely. To answer OP pretty much whatevers available, berries, greens, seeds etc. I read the other day the ancestors were possibly making bread before the advent of agriculture so who really knows

>>13130120
Cringe and retardpilled. With our sharp claws and brute strength? Even the idea of persistence hunting for early humans was sketch last I heard

>>13130157
Sure but OP specified specialized tools

>>13130250
Humans have been using tools for almost 2 million years, anything before that can barely be classified as human.
It's not surprising that someone would've made a sharp stick to poke stuff with in that time frame.

>>13130250
>>13130256
Anyway, my point is that humans mainly hunted in response to how humans gathered food before farming.
Agriculture is a recent development in comparison, only being a few thousand years old.
Of course hunting wasn't an option without tools, but as I said, we've had tools for a long fucking time.

probably anything raw and not totally rancid, but the change is so gradual that it makes the question meaningless

>>13130256
Humans have not existed for anywhere even close to two million years

>>13130317
He means humans as Homo not specifically Homo Sapiens

>>13130321
Still not two million years at all

>>13130262
hunting is much more time consuming and dangerous than just gather stuff from the ground and trees. I say only one meal of every 20 of the primitive man came from hunting, the rest were berries,seeds, roots and fruits.

>>13130325
Theologians agree that the world is roughly six thousand years old.

>>13130397
Why would the thoughts of insane people matter ever

>>13129645
this

Why is farming anymore unnatural than using tools?

>>13130345
then why do ancient cave paintings depict hunting and not gathering? if gathering was so important then you would think they would also depict it but they do not.

>>13130443
But they do?
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuevas_de_la_Araña
Im guessing you just heard someone say this and assumed it was true rather than actually vetting it. Even if it was true does that really mean anything other than they find hunting a more artistic depiction?

>>13130468
are you retarded?

>The Cuevas de la Araña (known in English as the Araña Caves or the Spider Caves) are a group of caves in the municipality of Bicorp in Valencia, eastern Spain. The caves are in the valley of the river Escalona and were used by prehistoric people who left rock art. They are known for painted images of a bow and arrow goat hunt and for a scene depicting a human figure.

>They are known for painted images of a bow and arrow goat hunt and for a scene depicting a human figure.

thanks for proving my point you fucking dunce

>>13131185
You're going to have to fully explain how that proves your point. First go back to what your point was, then apply that quote to it, and then describe how the evidence supports the claim.

>>13130443
Garbage pits indicate stone age people mostly ate shellfish. Hunting is dangerous, and cave man weapons weren't that good. They mainly had to get an animal bleeding and then run it down on endurance. If you broke a leg doing that, you were fucked. It was easier and safer to just dive down, scoop up a bunch of oysters, eat them, then use the shells as paint palettes.

>>13131513
cringe

>>13131571
yes, all of those oysters tha

>>13129615
everything with some things being easier to digest than others.

>>13130317
Homo-erectus dates back 2 million years.

>>13131571
you expect me to believe that the entirety of the human population subsited entirely of oysters, you're clearly sub 50iq. go into the forest and try to ingest more calories than you burn, the only way they survived was from hunting animals and eating some plant material. there is no way a human gains enough calories from gathering wild plants to sustain themselves nevermind an entire tribe.

>>13129615
berries, honey, meat, bone marrow, fish, eggs
raw
starchy tubers, harder cuts of meat and bones
cooked

>>13129650
I'm sure that even before we got any good at hunting we ate stuff like eggs, mussels and clams, and maybe hunny.
Catching fishes goes back a long-ass time as well.

>>13130162
>humans ate whatever they could find that wouldn't kill them.
Still true for the modern Chinaman.

>>13130443
It's so easy to think of them as primitive, but when you really get into thinking about having to invent the bow from scratch it starts to look pretty fucking impressive.
Especially a bow that will actually kill a deer or something like it.

>>13131643
No dipshit. Obviously they hunted, that's why they painted pictures of hunting. They foraged too. But from the evidence left behind, oysters were the staple protein source for coastal-dwelling cave men, wild game was a luxury item, and probably had some ritual significance, i.e. they didn't do it every day.

>>13131749
>especially a bow that will actually kill a deer
Invention of the bow was a massive leap forward, but the earliest ones probably weren't one-shot kill weapons. Most likely, cave men shot a bunch of arrows into the animal, got it bleeding and running, then chased it down and finished it off.with flint knives/ axes. Human beings can outlast almost any animal in an endurance footrace, thanks to upright posture and giant lungs.

>>13131749
>>13131801
Pretty certain that humans most commonly used ranged weapon for majority of our history has been pic related.
The bow is a fairly recent development and arrows aren't exactly easy to fabricate a ton of.

>>13131825
I really liked how they used these in The Quest for Fire. It's like the only thing resembling a realistic caveman movie.

>>13131801
The wolf would like to challenge you to that endurance race.

>>13131825
Interestingly, the frame of a homo sapiens is better suited to throwing things at a long distance than is that of a neanderthal. That's how the weak, frail, less intelligent but more bloodthirsty and greedy homos were able to drive the superior hominid to extinction.

>>13131825
My brother and I made a crude one of those when we were teens. It's downright frightening how much more force you can put into the missile compared to throwing.
I don't know when bows were first invented. I just think it's fascinating that they seem to get invented all over the place independently. Even the North Sentinelese have bows. And apparently can kill a man with them.

>>13131801
That is almost certainly true. Not the clean kills I'm getting with my recurve.
It's still impressive to think they had to first invent the string, then figure out that the springy wood can propel a stick, then figure out to put wanes on the stick to stabilise it in flight, then knap a flint tip for it and attach it with resin and sinew.
And on top of that you need to develop decent technique and aim as well.
Imagine going through all that bullshit without the knowledge that bows actually work. I'm amazed they bothered.

>>13129615
KFC

>>13131888
Its more likely also because the average neanderthal required like 6000 calories per day.

>>13131889
Bows are like 20,000 years old I think, but spears are like 400,000 years old.

>>13129615

Well both specialized hunting tools and cooking literally predate homo sapiens so that's kind of a retarded question

But if you want to make an exception for fire and pointy sticks, human diet has generally always been extremely heavy on starches and meat, with scavenged fruits and greens thrown in.

In contrast, neanderthals ate a primarily meat diet, with cooked vegetables on the side.

>>13131910
>neanderthals required 6000 calories a day
what a shame, the perfect race for natty gains, wiped out before we had access to modern farming

>>13129615
Totally and completely dependent on location.

Coastal Native Americans like the Chumash for example ate a great deal of mussels and shellfish. Also a lot of acorns.

Hunting was important but not nearly as reliable as trapping. For most early humans eating rabbit and squirrel would be quite common and often supplemented by ungulate meat when the hunters were successful. Fish was a huge part of many early human diets as well.

>>13130120
>Humans mainly hunted.

Far too vague of a statement.

>>13130250

>Cringe

Cringe indeed. Vastly more animal protein was obtained via traps and nets than hunting for the majority of human history.

Passive techniques almost always were more successful long term. You can set up dozens of snares or fish funnels in a few hours with a minimal caloric commitment.

>>13130443
Those were the special occasions. That cave painting was the highlight reel.

>>13130468
>The dating of such art is controversial, but the famous honey-gathering painting is believed to be epipaleolithic and is estimated to be around 8000 years old.[1]
Damn reading is f***ing HARD!

>>13131643
>go into the forest and try to ingest more calories than you burn

By running down a 120 lb deer filled with ultra lean meat? Sure occasionally

Far more common was using snares, pits, and traps.

I imagine we'd be a lot like chimps in that regard. I think we'd forage for whatever was edible. We'd kill and eat other animals, including other chimps. We'd steal and pillage from bees and birds and whatever else we find that ends up being edible.

>>13131880
Endurance or speed? Pretty much no other land animal can go the distances we can in the time we can.

>>13132284
120lb deer and lets say 20lb of inedible bone that leaves 100lb of lean meat, 4 calories per gram = 181.436 calories.

yeah, such a bad investment, why would they possibly want to hunt down deer when they could spend hours gathering berries for 200 calories. dumb fuck. you are a fucking retarded.

>>13129615
A giant farmer god would give us free food in the Yellow Valley!

>>13132316
>We'd kill and eat other animals, including other chimps.
Then why is cannibalism not as wide spread as murder if they're ethically on the same level?
Chimps kill/cannibalize each other out of necessity, but humans are somehow not so much open to the idea of cannibalism as they are with murder.
I mean, there's of course some people out there still practicing cannibalism, but it's mostly out of desperation rather than gleefully cracking apart another person's arm.

Tldr: hominids that created social hunting groups survived longer compared to the gathering type.

Those who were willing to travel, same thing.
The Neanderthals went extinct because they were stubborn assholes who didnt like to branch off, see Neanderthals in British isles.

Bottom line, those who were bold enough to hunt mammoth and shit, or settle to cultivate grain obviously survived and passed on their genetics.

>>13132510
>but humans are somehow not so much open to the idea of cannibalism as they are with murder.
that's because humans now live in times of abundance. there are plenty of instances in the not so distant past of humans resorting to cannibalism, suich as ww2 when there are multiple reports of humans eating their own offspring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cannibalism#Modern_era

>>13132540
>decisive tang victory

>>13130018
>>13130162
>microliths
>not specialized tools

I mean, those are specifically worked and shaped rocks, formed with specialized tools, with differences in shape based on function. Sharp stone tools allowed us to add big game,(ie, red meat) to our diets and gave us the protein necessary to support big brains. Humans are defined by, and evolved alongside, tool use, and asking what we ate "before" that is about like asking what chimps ate at the end of the last ice age.

The other problem is that we're really, really generalist. Humans, historically, will fucking eat anything and what that "anything" is is defined a lot by local culture, climate, and how desperate the individuals involved are. A lot of those early diets weren't strictly healthy either- Otzi the Ice man (a neolithic frozen dude we found in the alps) had huge artery blockages from too much fat and meat, despite his active lifestyle. This is why you should completely disregard paelo meme-diets, we don't know what they were and there's no guarantee they were healthy at all.

>>13132510
Idk, cracking arms for the marrow in an oso buco style braise always seemed less wasteful and more flavorful.

>>13132510
>Chimps kill/cannibalize each other out of necessity

Not necessarily true. They don't discriminate when it comes to killing and eating. A chimp's own uncle is fair game on the menu if the clan decides to take him out. Chimps are kinda brutal like that.

>>13129615
It is natural for humans to use tools and specialise them so your question is incongruous.

>>13129615
Depends "which" natural human diet. Even before the agricultural revolution Homo S. had a couple thousand years of development and already inhabited a staggeringly wide geographical area with every tribe adapting to its surroundings.

Basically, extreme omnivores. Scavenging, foraging, hunting, trapping, fishing, collecting seafood, driving away predators from their kills etc. Its also interesting to note how extremely diverse hunting techniques were. The meme endurance hunting was a trick in africa, yes. Digging pit traps, isolating lone large mammals and then bleeding them out, trapping waterfowl with hoops, driving herds into ravines etc.

My all time favorite one is when african tribesmen created weirs out of small springs, got ungulates accustomed to it and when the dry season came they kept chasing them away from it until they died of thirst and overheating then collected their meat.

Humans were just obscenely creative and adaptive, thats why we came out on the top of all hominids.

>>13131801
>Human beings can outlast almost any animal in an endurance footrace, thanks to upright posture and giant lungs.
I thought it was because we had the ability to sweat

going back to ape diet is like going out in -15c without clothes after our protective body hair has evolved out of us
Our brains require lots of energy dense food from farming

>>13131889

Early bows likely used tendons before string, and the idea for string came after

>>13129615
You guys know Middle Earth existed, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigir_Idol

The Shigir Sculpture, or Shigir Idol (Russian: Шигиpcкий идoл), is the oldest known wooden sculpture in the world,[1][2] made during the Mesolithic period, shortly after the end of the last Ice Age.[3] The wood it was carved from is approximately 11,500 years old.

The current world is fake. The Ice Age destroyed the Age of Gods.

Everyone used to have an elf girlfriend 12 thousand years ago.

>>13132273
The cringe continues. Apparently you missed the part where the OP said without tools. Of course that didn't stop you from being a tool despite his request.

How the hell did they eat 1500+ calories of berries and whatever the fuck they can scavenge

>>13133713
They didnt really
People were shorter in the past thus spending less energy and they did spend most of their free time looking for food.
Fire, farming and meat allowed humans to grow larger while allowing less time being spend on looking for food.

>>13133713

Hunting and cooking pre-dates humanity by several hundred thousand years. Cooked grains are rediculously high in calories and piss easy to forage; humans evolved on them and we evolved to fucking love them. It's not a coincidence we built our civilizations on grains.

>>13129615
everyone in this thread is stupid but me

>>13133151
Sweating lets us shed heat far more efficiently than panting/whatever else other animals use. That's a major part of it. Bipedalism is another. We literally move using controlled falls which is more efficient than quadrupeds walking at the expense of stability and speed.

>>13133215
How the fuck did you get "Middle Earth existed" out of an ancient carving that's fairly simple albeit large?

I'm going to slow this down and make this real simple for you idiots.

1. Humans aren't carnivores

2. We cheat and eat meat anyway because we can cook it

3. Without tools, we have no fire, so there's no cooking, so we can't digest raw meat

get it through your thick fucking skulls already, it's not fucking hard to understand you dumb pieces of shit

>>13134121
Because I have something called an imagination. Maybe you've heard of it. Dumbass zoomer.

>>13129615
Natural human diet uses tools, rock and bigger anvil rock is what we did when we were monkeys

>>13134140
>1. Humans aren't carnivores
No one with an IQ above 60 has ever claimed this.
>Humans can't digest raw meat
We most certainly fucking can?

>>13134151
i went slow and made it simple

but the idiots refused to understand

>>13134140
You're right humans are omnivores
We eat meat because its nutrient dense, cooking makes all foods more bioavailable. Most plants become easier to or possible to digest thanks to being boiled.
You can digest raw meat.

the natural diet is that which we spent some time evolving with. so, stone tools and fire are part of our legacy with food, cooked food is acceptable, weve eaten it for half a million years. so any food that was developed over 20,000 years ago is fair game. foods more recent, look to preparation tricks by traditional cultures which may have boosted digestibility: sprouting, fermenting, for various grains and dairy, which have allergens, chemicals which are toxic to humans, and lactose. so sprout your whole grains, ferment your cruciferous veggies and yogurt. that and cooking and looking at how much of the risky foods we eat: not so much grain/sugar, those are more available from the agricultural revolution and industrial revolution. also likely less wild foods not good for us.

>>13134154
I understand everything you said, most of it is just plain wrong.

>>13134155
>>13134164
they just can't get it through their thick skulls

>>13134140
All animals can digest meat, what do think happens when they eat bugs? Horses eat bird chicks out of nests. Orangutans eat other orangutan babies

>>13134176
then go bite a cow

just bite it

it's fine, you can eat raw meat

What kind of humans? until agriculture streamlined western diets every tribe of human had slightly different foods they favored. Some might of not hunted at all and just scavenged and vice versa.
There is literally NO way to know though - romanticizing humans being some kind of warrior hunter gatherers is retarded - we have a large for a reason and we didn't gain it from hunting we got it from not hunting and lazing and waiting about most the day and letting other animals do the work for us

Masai still do this method to this day

>>13134193
It's going to be horribly unappetizing with all that hair and skin but yes, you most certainly can.

>>13134193
have you tried balut?

>>13134206
go do it

bite a cow

I want to see you do it

>>13134210
no, I assume that's raw meat of some sort, so I can't eat that because I'm a human who cannot digest it

>>13134211
Its time to stop.

>>13134211
Animal cruelty is a federal offense now, anon.

>>13134221
it's time for you to fulfill your promises and bite a cow

unless you'd rather admit you were wrong about humans digestion abilities

>>13134193
>what is mett
>what is steak tartare
>what is sashimi
>what is yukhoe
>what is ossenworst
Shall I continue?

>>13134240
it's very simply to show me that I am wrong. Just go bite a cow and tear a chunk of it's flesh off and eat it

>>13134205
>evolved into the greatest persistence hunter of the last 2 million years with a combination of traits no other creature has
"lol they totally sat around all day not hunting"

natural diet doesnt matter its an unnatural world brother

@13134233
@13134244

>implying that humans didn't evolve from other species that were perfectly capable of tool creation and use and so they evolved to lose the ability to kill prey without tools because tool use was so useful and negating the need for any other method

I guess you must be mentally deficient because if you had a normal human brain you'd realize that being unable to bite into a cow and eat its raw flesh doesn't completely negate the use of tools as integral to human evolution

>>13134265
just admit you were wrong

just say it

Just say:

>I'm sorry, I was wrong and stupid, of course humans can't digest raw meat, that's a well known fact.

I won't say that because it is incorrect. Humans can digest raw meat.

>>13134240
C'mon man, are you serious right now? The rules were no tools. Sushi? You got no fishing rod. You got no knife, even if you caught it with your hands, you'd have to bite through the scales.

And steak? Good luck biting through the hide of a cow. Several obscure dishes made possible with technology doesn't prove anything.

>>13134360
Have you not seen the vid of the guy descaling a fish with his hands? You can clean a fish with your hands easy

>>13129615
either humans are a part of the natural world or we aren't
if we are, everything we eat is natural because it comes from this world
if we aren't, nothing we've ever eaten is natural because our presence there is unnatural, so the acquisition of the food is unnatural, leading to unnatural food

>>13134244
>cow
too hard
we could almost definitely bite through chicken or fish

does it have to be a cow or are you just being necessarily obtuse?

>>13134377
>Have you not seen the vid of the guy descaling a fish with his hands

have you ever seen a pair of tits

>>13134390
you could but there isn't much point since you can't digest raw meat and you'll just get sick.

>>13134399
people used to do this just to show that they could
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_show

>>13134360
I never agreed to these rules, humanity is defined by tool use.

>>13130397
Theologians have no useful knowledge to contribute to anything ever, so who the fuck cares what they agree on?

There is no such thing, evolution is fucking messy and environments ever changing. You think the ice age Europeans had remotely the same diets as the ones before/after? It's all a fucking mess, made worse by the fact that we live far beyond reproductive age now.

What's the optimal diet to live a long and healthy life? We have no fucking clue and it certainly isn't the exact same as what we ate at some point in our messy evolution ...

>>13130018
If you want to get sick. Prehistoric people had to process acorns to make them edible, you need to strain out the tanins with a fibrous mesh and running water to make them safe to eat.

>>13131513
Retard

>>13129615
milk