What plants did ancient people eat? What did ancient people eat?

Our food changed along with us, and this lasted for thousands of years. Today, multi-ingredient recipes and complex culinary technologies do not surprise us - however, this was not always the case. In the distant past, cooking was not particularly sophisticated and required much more time than it does now.

If you've ever wondered what food tasted like in ancient times, then today you're in luck. We know the answer. We managed to preserve and restore the most ancient recipes - from the Sumerian era to the reign of Richard II. You can still prepare all these dishes today. Well, forward to the past?

"Methods of Cooking", 1390 AD. e.

If you have a piece of whale meat lying around in your freezer, you can easily prepare a dish from this manuscript

Cooking Methods is the oldest surviving English cookbook. Prepare one of the dishes described in it and enjoy the food that was served on the table in the 14th century. Moreover, they were served not to just anyone, but to King Richard II himself.

The book was compiled by the monarch's personal chefs and contains 190 recipes - from the most simple to the most outlandish. Here's an example of a simple dish: throw peeled garlic into a pot with water and vegetable oil, sprinkle saffron on top. For more complex dishes, you will have to get whale or porpoise meat.

You can taste some of these dishes at the Rylands cafe, located in the library of the University of Manchester. The chefs there tested some recipes on regulars and kept on the menu what was most in demand. Don't want to go to Manchester? Then try cooking the food yourself.

"Annals of the Caliph's Cuisine", 1000 AD. e.

Are you suffering from a hangover? Ancient Arabic roast will save your poor head!

The Annals of the Caliph's Cuisine is the oldest existing Arabic cookbook. It was written by a certain Al-Warraq and collected more than 600 recipes in it. Believe me, many of these dishes seem very unusual by modern standards. The book gives us a unique insight into the cooking methods of that time. For example, to prepare one of the sauces, the cook is recommended to leave the milk in the sun for as long as 50 days! Does anyone you know do this?

The Annals, among other things, contain notes on culture, rules of behavior and health. Here's some great advice on how to avoid a hangover. Before the feast, be sure to eat cabbage, and in the morning “after yesterday”, stew yourself a roast called “kishkiya”. It will calm headaches and abdominal discomfort.

"Apician Corpus", approximately 500 AD. e.

If you are the owner of a pig farm, immediately start feeding the pigs dried figs and mead. Over time, you will be able to taste a dish worthy of a Roman emperor.

If you want to find out what delicacies the Roman emperor ate, read The Apician Corpus. The authorship is attributed to the legendary Roman gourmet Marcus Gabius Apicius, although now there is no complete certainty about this. It is not known for certain when exactly the book was compiled, but it is at least one and a half thousand years old.

The dishes described in it were very advanced for their time. The "Corpus" contains some original discoveries in meat processing, some of which are truly mouth-watering. Take, for example, the recommendation for feeding pigs with dried figs and honey wine. The book contains more than 500 dishes, and at least 400 of them should be generously soaked in sauce.

"Luxury Life", 300 BC. e.

It turns out that people learned to ridicule idle luxury long before the birth of Christ.

The first three works on our list were created after the death of Christ. They are full-fledged cookbooks and are not much different from the collections of recipes we are used to. But “Luxury Life” appeared in very distant times, so there is little that is familiar in it.

“Luxury Life” was written for fun. She doesn't so much reveal the secrets of cooking as she parodies pompous epic poems. This book is written entirely in verse, and it is funny - at least that's what its researchers say. True, after 2300 years, few people are able to appreciate the joke about the “slightly rough ox tongue”, which is “a miracle how good it is in the summer in the vicinity of Chalkis.”

The “luxurious life”, apparently, was put on display during feasts: so that those eating the food could look at the book and laugh. The essay itself, alas, has not survived. It is known only thanks to the ancient Greek writer Athenaeus - he quotes “Luxurious Life” in his work “The Feast of the Wise,” written in 200 AD. e.

Garum, 600-800 BC. e.

Fish plus a sea of ​​salt plus nine months of waiting - this is how the oldest sauce is born

Garum is salty a fish dish. Incredibly salty. A dish that, according to some recipes, requires an amount of salt, equal to the number fish. That is, you put a pound of fish in a large tub and add a whole pound of salt to it. The result should be, in fact, a sauce.

Detailed records of this recipe have not survived. However, writer Laura Kelly, who specializes in ancient foods, did her best and found out a lot. She managed to find notes dating back to 600-800 BC. e., where garum is called “Carthaginian sauce”. Imagine how long it took to prepare it!

Kelly did a great job of trying to restore the recipe. The writer combined the oldest evidence found with her own natural instinct and compiled detailed instructions. Cook for your health. Just be patient: the recipe comes from a completely different era, when cooks used completely different technologies. In short, traditional garum requires nine months of fermentation to mature. That's why your neighbors will be happy with the aromas emanating from your apartment!

Beer "Midas Touch", 700 BC. e.

You've probably heard the legend of Midas: they say that everything he touched turned to gold. But did you know that King Midas was a real person? No, no, his hands didn’t turn anything into gold, but he really lived, and then he really died. And 2700 years later we discovered his burial.

There was no gold in the tomb - all the things buried with Midas were, oddly enough, bronze. But there was something very interesting there: the preserved remains of Midas beer.

Chemical analysis of this beer made it possible to restore its composition. It was then that it became clear: in ancient times, people drank something completely different from what we drink now. The drink was made from wine, beer and mead. You would probably only come up with such a cocktail if you were really desperate to get drunk, and you only had a couple of sips of each ingredient in the house.

However, to taste this drink, you don’t have to perform magic in the kitchen in person. The American brewing company Dogfish Head recreated the recipe and began selling beer around the world. Critics call it cloudy, tasteless and stale, but it’s still worth a try: to experience the taste of King Midas’ favorite alcoholic drink. So beloved that Midas took him with him even to the afterlife.

Babylonian tablets, 1700-1600 BC. e.

More than three thousand years ago, people had not yet cooked food in water, so even boiled meat, which is banal for us, was an exotic dish for them

Yale University owns tablets with writing that are at least 3,700 years old. They come from Babylon, and the most authentic recipes are carved on them. We are talking about very ancient dishes. In that era, it never occurred to people to cook food in liquid, so some of the recipes on these tablets are a real culinary breakthrough for their time.

The first person who had the opportunity to carefully study them was the French historian Jean Bottereau. He did not come to the most flattering opinion about Babylonian dishes and called them “a treat for the worst enemy.” The recipes, by all accounts, are simple: for example, a dish with the exotic name “Akkadia”, after translation, turned out to be a banal “meat boiled in water.”

However, many do not want to put up with such a negative assessment of Monsieur Bottero and go out of their way to refute it. For example, Brown University revised the interpretation of Jean Bottero and stated that the dishes from the plates can be prepared deliciously.

Mersu, earlier than 1600 BC. e.

If you believe ancient Sumerian recipes, the composition of the dish is simply divine! No wonder he was sacrificed to the gods

According to Jean Bottero, in the modern world there are only two complete recipes that are older than the Babylonian tablets. One of them is Mersu. Bottero calls the mersu tablet a “recipe for a sweet pie,” although the tablet only says that dates and pistachios were supplied to prepare a dish called mersu.

The rest is guesswork. They are based on the name of the dish and similar recipes. In a word, exactly how the mysterious pie was prepared (and was it even a pie?) is not really known. However, there are assumptions, and you may well use them.

The most ancient recipe, taken as a basis, came from the sacred Sumerian city of Nippur and, apparently, was a sacrifice to the gods. It was made from figs, raisins, chopped apples, garlic, vegetable oil, cheese, wine and syrup. Luxurious, right? Real jam!

You won’t be able to find a detailed and accurate recipe for such an ancient treat, but you can cook something similar!

Shashlik, 1700 BC. e.

By having a picnic with barbecue, you become involved in centuries-old history!

Yes, you most likely won’t be surprised by barbecue, let alone the previous dishes.

For those who don’t know, kebab is meat skewered. A very popular dish in different corners globe. However, that is not the point. Do you know how ancient the kebab recipe is? Indisputable evidence has been found that it was eaten in Greece back in the 17th century BC. Can you imagine? Eating Greek kebab, you feel the taste that people felt 4000 years ago!

It is believed that even the Chinese kebab, called chuan, is just a variation on the Greek dish. As if Greek kebab came to the Middle Kingdom about 2000 years ago, with European traders. The Chinese tried an unfamiliar dish, added spices to it according to their own tastes and declared them their own. The contents of Chinese tombs prove the presence of chuan on the menu of the inhabitants of 220 AD.

It turns out that while savoring barbecue anywhere in the world, you are digging into the history of 4 thousand years ago.

Sumerian beer, 1800 BC. e.

Bake beer bread, brew Sumerian beer and invite your friends over for a treat. Hurry up before it goes sour!

This incredibly ancient recipe is not a recipe at all. It was discovered in a poem dedicated to Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of beer. The poem is written in surprisingly detail. She sings praises to Ninkasi, listing in detail the actions of the goddess. “Oh you, baking bappir in huge ovens, / sorting out mountains of hulled grain” and everything in the same spirit. Such meticulousness of the author allowed our contemporaries to very accurately restore the recipe of the ancient Sumerian alcoholic drink.

The resulting beer is drunk through a straw and tastes very much like strong apple cider. However, unlike “The Midas Touch,” it cannot be put on mass sale. Beer must be consumed immediately after preparation, otherwise it will turn sour. So you can try it only by cooking it yourself.

Dishes from the table of Richard II, an ancient Arabic hangover cure, fig-fed pork, a rough ox tongue, incredibly salty fish sauce, boiled meat with a poetic name, a divine pie with cheese and fruit, kebab, King Midas cocktail or the beer of the ancient Sumerians...

Kitchen of primitive man [How food made man intelligent] Pavlovskaya Anna Valentinovna

8. What did people eat in ancient times? Meat

It is extremely difficult to reconstruct what and how ancient people cooked and ate, but it is possible. Archaeological evidence has been preserved, as well as anthropological and biological data; Modern analysis methods make it possible to reconstruct the nutritional system using preserved bones and teeth. There are also ethnological data that make it possible to correlate the feeding methods of tribes that until recently were exclusively engaged in hunting and gathering and did not even know clay products. But the approach to the latest evidence must be especially careful. The fact that certain peoples back in the 20th century lived in the most primitive conditions from the point of view of modern man does not mean that this is exactly how our distant ancestors lived. This is especially true for exotic, including island, peoples of the Southern Hemisphere, whose life researchers love to turn to in search of analogies with primitive life; we must remember that the environment and conditions of their living - climatic, geographical, cultural and historical - are noticeably different from those in which ancient hunters and gatherers lived.

Problems associated with ancient man's food consumption can be divided into three groups. The first, the simplest, is related to what primitive people ate. Here archeological data provide very specific material. The second and third are more complex - how are they prepared And How kept food. There is very little direct data here, and we can only talk about reconstruction based primarily on indirect sources.

Researchers have been arguing for centuries about who ancient man was: a predator forced to feed on plant-based gathering products during periods of hunting failure, or a peaceful herbivore who learned the taste of meat. At the same time, scientific concepts regarding ancient nutrition are often fueled by modern ideas about what is good and what is bad. Plant food is good, balanced in accordance with modern ideas, varied, including fish and seafood - even better, monotonous - bad, only meat - very bad, fatty - very unhealthy. Prehistoric man appears to be a sort of Adam from the Garden of Eden: for the first few million years he lived peacefully on fruits, leaves and grains, confirmation of his vegetarianism is found in the remains of teeth and some indirect evidence, for example, in the absence of large groups necessary for hunting. Then changes in climate (oh, this geographical-climatic factor, how easy it is to blame everything on it!) led to a reduction in plant foods, and man was forced to eat meat, which in the Paleolithic era formed the basis of his diet. And finally, climate change (again!) after the retreat of the last glacier has led to the fact that the human diet has diversified significantly - meat and plant foods have been supplemented with seafood, fish, various pleasant additives in the form of snails, bird eggs, etc. This is a brief summary fully corresponds to the majority, at least, Western concepts of nutrition of ancient man. In our country, such established concepts, with rare exceptions, are absent, and those that exist are very careful to specify and generalize information regarding the food of primitive people.

As often happens, there are also opposing points of view, although there are fewer of them: man was originally a predator, plant foods did not play a significant role, and it was the consumption of meat that ultimately made him “reasonable.” This concept is adhered to by those who are not afraid to challenge political correctness; it has a certain muscularity, since no one has yet tried to prove that women were engaged in hunting; in all works it remains a male prerogative.

Another hotly debated issue, quite recent, is whether early man was a predator or a scavenger, whether he hunted himself or picked up what was left of real predator-hunters.

Today it is very difficult to determine the ratio of meat and plant foods in the diet of ancient man; the remains of the latter are truly impossible to detect and count. However, there are also obvious points. Of course, ancient man consumed meat, and apparently a lot. Evidence of this is significant accumulations of animal bones throughout the habitat of ancient man. Moreover, these are not random collections, since researchers find traces on the bones stone tools; these bones were carefully processed, removing the meat, and often crushed - intramarrow, apparently, was very popular among our ancestors.

Moreover. Ethnographic data gives us evidence that quite recently there were peoples who ate exclusively monoproducts. Thus, the food system of a number of peoples of the Far North of Russia and North America was based on one type of product - the result of hunting. For some (for example, Nganasans, Nenets, Enets, Yukaghirs) it was a reindeer, for others an elk (among the Evenks, Khanty, Mansi), for the peoples of the sea coasts, such as the Eskimos, Inuit, coastal Chukchi, it was a whale, seal , walrus, some North American tribes subsisted exclusively on salmon. Objects of hunting were eaten completely; blood and fat were especially valued as sources of essential and necessary substances for the body. Part of the production was subjected to fermentation - a traditional and ancient method of preparing food, which also supplied the body with the necessary elements. In a word, one type of animal - sea or land - supplied these peoples with all the substances necessary to maintain life. Hunting was at times supplemented by collecting berries and plant roots, but this did not play a significant role. Later attempts to transition these peoples to a "balanced" and diverse European civilization diet had an extremely negative impact on their health.

These data indicate that the assumption that the ancient hunters exclusively consumed meat has a very real basis and that such food could be quite sufficient. If numerous peoples of the North could survive on one type of meat food, this means that ancient man could survive only on meat. The above-mentioned peoples, until recently and the almost violent change in their way of life, in many cases used the most primitive methods of hunting, but before the collision with “civilization” they rarely experienced famine years. Thus, the concept that gathering saved people from starvation in case of hunting failures may not be entirely correct.

Another thing is that, perhaps, for quite a long time, ancient man quite consciously diversified his food, supplementing the basic meat with vegetable. And gradually this plant food could win its place in the stomach and taste. That is, the combination of meat and plant products was a completely conscious choice of man, one of the milestones on the path of his gastronomic and civilizational development. Yes, a number of peoples, finding themselves in certain cultural and geographical conditions, retained their loyalty to simple and monotonous meat food. However, the majority in the Neolithic era included cereals in their diet, which was prepared by the previous period. At the same time, meat and plant foods played the same roles, had equal importance, and did not replace one another during periods of famine.

I would like to immediately note an important point: we're talking about already about a person close to the modern type. It is known that he not only built houses (which animals also do), but also created various tools, works of art, decorated his life, that is, he had at least the rudiments of aesthetics, as well as some beliefs, as evidenced by the found burials. All this leads to the idea that in matters of nutrition, ancient man was not as monotonous as is most often imagined. He probably had taste preferences, which animals also have, but, unlike animals, he diversified his diet. His food was not monotonous and boring, aimed solely at satisfying hunger, as is sometimes believed.

Interesting archaeological evidence: at sites of the Late Paleolithic era, skeletons of arctic foxes are found, the bones of which lie in anatomical order. This suggests that people needed skins, not meat, which means they did not have an urgent need for any type of food. Moreover, hunting for large animals was apparently also selective: bones of young animals are found in settlements more often than old ones. This means that ancient man could afford to choose. Why not then assume that he already knew a lot about cooking? By the way, this is indirect evidence that it is impossible to fully and unambiguously judge primitive man based on the hunting tribes of the recent past. In some so-called backward tribes, to this day nothing edible is thrown away and they eat everything, including birds of prey and animals.

With meat food everything was more or less clear. The situation depended on a simple factor: what animals were found at a particular moment in a particular area. True, sometimes the hunting tribes of antiquity had a “specialization” and even followed moving herds, such as reindeer. But most often, people followed the laws of logic and practice - they killed and ate what was around. It is also known that people tried to settle near places of convenient prey, for example, near watering places where herds of animals gathered. There is a lot of evidence about what kind of meat ancient people ate. In excavated settlements of the Paleolithic era, not only numerous animal bones are found, but also their images in the form of small figurines, drawings on bones, as well as rock paintings.

The meat “menu” of ancient man depended on the area and time of residence. In Central and Western Europe during the Paleolithic era, they hunted the inhabitants of the tundra - mammoth and reindeer, cave bear, wolf, wild bull. In Northern Italy for red deer. On the upper Danube, the now extinct species of horse, deer, mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave bears and hyenas. In the highlands of Europe, the main objects of hunting were wild goat and chamois. In Spain, half of the bone remains belong to a large bull, the rest to a red deer and a wild horse. In the Crimea, they hunted almost exclusively wild donkey and saiga; in the Caucasus, specialized hunting is clearly visible, for example, in the Vorontsov Cave, 98.8 percent of the bones belong to the cave bear; at the Ilskaya site, up to 87 percent are bison bones. People who lived at the Molodova site (Ukraine) hunted mainly mammoth, as well as horse, bison and reindeer. In Hungary, the object of the spring hunt was mainly the cave bear, and the summer hunt was horses and hippos. On the territory of modern Russia, large herds of deer and musk oxen grazed in the periglacial zone. To the south was the kingdom of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros... There were many other animals: horses, bulls, deer, antelopes, wolves, arctic foxes, hares. They formed the basis of the meat diet of ancient man of the pre-glacial period.

With the beginning of the melting of the glacier, which finally retreated in the 10th millennium BC. e., partial changes occurred in the meat diet of ancient man. The climate becomes softer, and where the glacier has retreated, new forests and lush vegetation appear. The animal world is also changing. Large animals of previous eras are disappearing - the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, some species of musk oxen, saber-toothed cats, and the cave bear. At the same time, hunting tribes begin to move, leaving their habitable places in search of better grounds. The search for new forms of management and subsistence begins. At the end of the Paleolithic, horses, bulls, saiga, donkeys were hunted in the steppes, and elk, deer, bears, wild boars, wolves, foxes and other animals were hunted in the forests.

Ancient people also hunted birds, mainly waterfowl, which were more accessible prey, but the evidence here is scarce; most likely, such hunting was of an auxiliary nature. The same applies to fishing, which, although it existed, did not play a big role in human nutrition.

In accordance with modern taste preferences and dietary concepts, researchers sometimes wonder why there are no remains of fishing traces dating back to the Paleolithic and even later periods on the shores of seas and lakes. British archaeologist, describing a settlement in northeast Britain dating back to the 9th millennium BC. e., is surprised to note the complete absence of any hint of fishing activity, despite the presence of a lake and sea nearby. Trying to find an explanation for this phenomenon (and really, why isn’t there such a useful thing, like a fish?), he refers to the same notorious climatic conditions: they say, it could have been cold and there were simply no fish there (which is quite strange, given the fact that certain species of fish live in cold seas, including the ice). Another assumption is that the remains of fish and fishing gear were not preserved (although much else was preserved at this site). The idea that fish simply wasn't popular in the Paleolithic or even later periods is dismissed - probably on the grounds that everyone knows how healthy it is!

There is no reliable evidence of animal domestication during this period, although it may have occurred in individual cases. We only know about a dog that was domesticated, according to generally accepted data, around 14–10 thousand years BC. e., although some researchers believe that this happened much earlier. However, everything suggests that the dog was originally tamed as a protector, an assistant in hunting and farming, and not as a supplier of meat.

Noteworthy is the abundance and diversity of animals that ancient man hunted. On the territory of Europe, within the same site, animals from a wide variety of natural-geographical zones can be found: these are animals of the polar tundra, and steppes, and forest zones, and in mountainous or heavily rugged areas there are also mountain animals. Researchers suggest that in glacier-free areas, natural belts were shifted to the south and, most likely, generally had a different character than they do now. In the relatively small space between the glacier's border and the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, they were, as it were, compressed, brought together and had no clear divisions. Small forests alternated with steppe, steppe with tundra, and so on. This resulted in an extraordinary diversity and abundance of fauna gathered in a small area of ​​land.

However, despite the abundance and variety of meat foods, by the end of the Paleolithic the first “food” differentiation and associated features of the socio-cultural development of ancient people took shape. This moment is especially important for the subsequent history of human nutrition. Firstly, it clearly shows the relationship between the food consumed and the lifestyle, culture and, in some respects, the social organization of the human collective. Secondly, differentiation indicates the presence of preferences, a certain choice, and not just a simple dependence on circumstances. There is a widespread tendency in history to reduce all the actions of ancient people, and this also applies to later eras, until recently, to purely pragmatic reasons - dependence on climatic conditions, protection from predatory animals, and so on; that is, humanity is practically denied such a thing as taste - the meaning of choice, preference, both physiological and aesthetic.

The well-known expression “there is no dispute about tastes” speaks of the impossibility of universal taste, but there is individual taste. This is the taste that the German philosopher I. Kant defined as “the ability to judge the beautiful,” relying not on reason, but on a feeling of pleasure or displeasure, the determining basis of which is not objective, but subjective. “Consequently, taste is the ability to socially evaluate external objects in the imagination. Here the soul feels its freedom in the play of imagination (hence, in sensuality), for communication with other people presupposes freedom: and this feeling is pleasure.” It is this taste-pleasure, taste-choice, that, as a rule, was denied to ancient man, reducing all his actions to purely rational reasons.

A funny illustration from recent history. Archaeologists and ethnographers often turn to the lifestyle of the Tasmanians to identify the characteristics of the behavior and lifestyle of ancient people. This people, who lived completely isolated on their island until its discovery in the 17th century, and in reality until British colonization at the end of the 18th century and, alas, had already become extinct, was traditionally considered the most backward of all the peoples “discovered” in the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries. Why did the maximum backwardness have to correspond primitive people- a question related to the same topic of historical snobbery. Interesting in in this case other. Tasmanians who lived on the sea coast willingly ate shellfish, crayfish and sea animals, but categorically did not eat any fish, having a sincere aversion to it. Researchers are trying to explain this phenomenon by the lack of nets, hooks and general fishing devices among the aborigines. Otherwise, we will have to admit that the Tasmanians simply did not like (due to ancient historical and cultural reasons that shaped their taste preferences) fish, although it was found in abundance around them.

Differentiation in food preferences made hunting more successful and efficient, since hunters who “specialized” in a particular animal knew its habits and behavior thoroughly (and could pass on this knowledge by inheritance), and were better equipped in relation to the object of their hunt. Here we are talking not just about taste, but about completely practical aspects, showing that people were no longer just concerned with filling their stomachs, but did it rationally and based on certain, including taste, preferences. Naturally, such specialization did not exclude hunting and consumption of other animals - we are talking about the ratio.

Thus, given the existing abundance and diversity of animals hunted by humans, certain groups of people can be traced in the Late Paleolithic era, selectively hunting certain types of animals. And this despite the fact that different species coexisted in the same territory for a relatively long period of time. Certain types of hunters are formed according to the type of object being hunted. On the one hand, this is a type of hunter of mammoths and other large animals of antiquity, on the other hand, hunters of reindeer and other nomadic herd animals. The former, apparently, led a more sedentary lifestyle, the latter - nomadic, seasonal, since deer are migratory animals. These groups had different types of dwellings, certain differences in tools of labor and hunting (this can be traced from archaeological data), relationships within the group, lifestyle, methods of preparing and preserving food, and probably used different methods of farming. A special type of economy was the coastal zones, where seafood - various types of shellfish - became more important, for example, in the south of Italy. There is no doubt that the products of plant foraging were more numerous and varied in southern Europe, where the climate was warm and humid and plants were more diverse than in periglacial zones.

The remains of mammoths are found everywhere throughout the vast expanses of Eurasia until the 10th–9th millennia BC. e., gradually, as it warms, moving north. It is believed that mammoths were one of the most important sources of food for ancient man, and even their disappearance was “owed” to human greed, which destroyed them and upset the balance in nature. One American archaeologist calculated that the meat of one elephant could feed a group of 200 people (Paleolithic hunting groups were unlikely to be larger) for six days, and mammoths were twice as large! Such a large walking source of meat (according to scientists’ calculations, mammoths weighed up to 12 tons) was a very tempting prey. Considering the fact that hunting in that period was mainly driven, the mammoth seems to be a very real object. The places where mammoths were butchered have also been preserved, as well as numerous buildings made from the bones of these animals. At some sites there are remains of hundreds of mammoths, which indicates extremely successful hunting for them. However, there is no direct evidence of mass extermination of mammoths by humans. At the same time, other giant animals of antiquity disappeared; Thus, the cause of this phenomenon is perhaps not related to “human” factors, but to natural factors.

In terms of nutrition, the mammoth attracted humans with its mass of meat and fat; the latter was most likely indispensable for ancient man. A special treat was “ a large number of brain and bone fat: undoubtedly, for this purpose, heavy multi-pound parts of limbs and a huge mammoth head were brought to the camp sites. They always get caught in split condition. Large stones used for this purpose are a frequent find during excavations of Paleolithic sites."

Among the peoples of Siberia and Alaska, various legends about the mammoth have been preserved. According to traditional beliefs, he lives underground (less often in water). He is a participant in the myths about the beginning of the universe as a powerful being who transformed the appearance of the earth. In the legends of the Samoyeds (Samoyeds, as they are now called), when the earth was created by Num, the supreme deity, “the mammoth Kalaga began to walk on the earth and poison it; in one place, digging with his horns, he heaped mountains and made ravines, as a result of which his broken horns are still found in such places; in another place, with its weight, it pressed the earth, as a result of which water came out, forming rivers and lakes. Finally, having angered Numa, the mammoth drowned in the lake and now lives underground.”

In the mythology of the Komi (as well as the Nenets and Ob Ugrians), the mammoth, which is sometimes called the “earth deer” or “earth elk,” “lived in the initial times of creation.” He was so heavy that he sank into the ground up to his chest - where he walked, riverbeds and streams appeared. There is also a mythological version of the disappearance of mammoths: “the Komi, who knew the biblical legend of the flood, say that the mammoth wanted to escape in Noah’s Ark, but could not fit there: he began to swim through the waters, but the birds began to land on his “horns” (tusks) ), and the beast drowned. After that, all the mammoths disappeared."

It seems important that many peoples of the North identify the mammoth with the usual objects of hunting (and food) - deer, elk, sometimes bear and whale. This may indicate that they retained some memory of the time when the mammoth was the main source of food for their ancestors.

Ancient Chinese sources of the 6th–7th centuries contain information about the allegedly ongoing hunt for mammoths in Yakutia: “Found in the area of ​​Yakutsk (Yateku), near the sea, in the extreme northeast. The body is the size of an elephant, weighing 1000 gins. If wind appears in the place where he walks (where he lives), then he dies. They were always found in the ground on the river bank. The nature of the bones is soft, pure white, similar to an elephant tusk. Those people use this bone to make cups, dishes, combs and things like that. The meat is frozen. When eaten, it can be easily fried. This country is very cold, reaching Beihai (ocean). For only one month the day is long and the night is short..."

Legends that mammoths live in hard-to-reach areas of the earth (option: underground, under water) have survived to this day and are still a reason for pseudo-scientific speculation. There are also stories that modern residents of Siberia have more than once tried mammoth meat preserved in the natural refrigerator of permafrost. Thus, the Norilsk Museum of Local Lore refers to documents that contain information about how one day a team of construction prisoners dug up a well-preserved mammoth carcass in the permafrost, whose meat they fried over a fire and ate.

Another assumption arises. Perhaps the identification of the mammoth with the whale in northern myths is not accidental. The peoples who pursued mammoths to the coast of the Arctic Ocean, after their extinction, could switch to another large hunting object discovered in a new place - whales and other sea animals. In terms of mass, these sea giants are superior to mammoths; whale meat and fat in their nutritional qualities are sufficient for the traditional diet of peoples accustomed to a predominant meat diet. Moreover, these peoples were engaged in hunting, despite living on the ocean; fishing was unknown to them and appeared only recently. Much in the traditions and customs of hunters of sea animals (and with the decline in the whale population, hunting for smaller animals - walrus, seal, seal) has become rooted in antiquity: hunting tools, rituals, methods of cutting and eating food.

So, the Eskimos hunted whales before mid-19th centuries with spears and harpoons with stone and bone tips; they ate exclusively meat, entrails and fat of sea animals, without adding other products to their diet; whale oil was used to heat and illuminate the home, the bones were used to make tools, weapons, utensils during the construction of homes, the skins were used to cover homes, clothing, shoes, etc. The meat was boiled, stored for future use for the winter: they were fermented in pits and ate with fat. Some of the meat was dried or cured. The meat was consumed raw or frozen, sometimes boiled. A favorite delicacy was fresh, raw whale blubber with a layer of cartilaginous skin, without any seasoning.

IN Late Paleolithic Reindeer is beginning to play an increasingly important role in human nutrition. Towards the end of this period, groups of people appear who hunt mainly for it.

The mammoth attracted hunters due to its body mass. Reindeer had another advantage - it formed large herds and at one time, for example, while crossing a herd across a river, 30–40 individuals could be killed (this data is provided by ethnographic materials of the 18th century). Roe deer, elk are solitary animals, red deer and wild boars gather in small groups. Hunting for reindeer, taking into account knowledge of its habits - for example, seasonal migration twice a year, as well as the fact that the herd always follows the leader and always goes to water in the same places - provided stable and significant food in volume .

A study of the sites of ancient people suggests that reindeer hunting was carried out everywhere and on a large scale. Thus, in the alpine region (Schussenried site) the remains of 400–500 animals were found, approximately the same number in the Late Paleolithic settlement of Malta, near Lake Baikal.

Perhaps these hunters had previously hunted wild horses, which also gathered in large herds (a large species disappeared somewhere at the same time as mammoths; a smaller one survived until the 19th century in the form of a wild horse that lived in Mongolia and was known as the “Przewalski’s horse”). . Cases of changing one object of hunting for another when the first one disappears have been recorded historically. Yes, in more later eras Some tribes of wild deer hunters "switched" to elk after their disappearance, and thus deer and elk hunting (and mythology) often merge. In the same way, many residents of Europe, reindeer hunters, after his retreat to the north due to the melting of the glacier, did not follow him, but took up mainly hunting the so-called red deer.

However, there were peoples who remained faithful to the reindeer and followed him to the north of the Eurasian continent. The question of whether these hunters, who back in the 18th and 19th centuries led a semi-wild lifestyle in complete unity with the nature that surrounded them, were descendants of ancient Paleolithic hunters, remains open. But it is obvious that most of the population of northern Eurasia until recently was inextricably linked with wild deer. Some peoples later became reindeer herders.

A number of researchers believe that the culture of livestock breeding was brought to the North by migrant pastoralists from South Asia. The Italian anthropologist Renato Biasutti dwells on this in detail: “The northern inhabited zone of Eurasia has entirely its own history; this is the area that hosted reindeer and mammoth hunters as they followed the retreating ice and subpolar fauna. These people brought with them ancient examples of their primitive culture to the far north... One of the later developments of this era was the raising of livestock,” which “derived from the agrarian culture of South Asia, which made its way to the north.” Biasutti adheres to the version that “the Laplanders were the first to domesticate the reindeer. Then the new practice spread eastward, but as we moved eastward, the care of animals became less and less skillful.” And he further notes: “In these places, reindeer ran wild and were hunted. This is still true in our time for the Kamchadals, Eskimos and Athapaskan Indians."

The domestication of reindeer is a relative phenomenon. “Domestic” deer, like wild ones, migrate twice a year, forcing reindeer herders to move. He lives freely. The only thing, unlike wild ones, he is not afraid of people, accepts help from them, such as salt, and allows himself to be marked, thus becoming the property of the owner.

However, hunters of wild reindeer, who in principle were not involved in reindeer husbandry, survived until recently. There is a lot of evidence of the existence of hunting peoples, whose life was inextricably linked with reindeer, and they come from antiquity. The father of history, Herodotus (5th century BC), mentions the mysterious tribes inhabiting the Far North, where “there is an unbearable cold for eight months” and it is impossible to penetrate “because of flying feathers” - tribes that live by catching wild animals. At the beginning of the new era, Tacitus wrote about the “fennians,” savage hunters who inhabited the very north of Europe, dressed in skins, slept on the ground, did not know iron and obtained their food by hunting. With surprise, Tacitus notes that “they consider this a happier destiny than exhausting themselves with work in the field and toiling to build houses and tirelessly thinking, moving from hope to despair, about their own and other people’s property: careless in relation to people, careless in relation to to the deities, they achieved the most difficult thing - not to feel the need even for desires.” True, he does not mention deer.

Chinese sources from the 6th–7th centuries tell about the people living south of Lake Baikal: “Their men are courageous and strong, they all know how to hunt. There is a lot of snow in the country, [therefore] they constantly use wood (skis) instead of horses, they chase deer in the snow... If they go down the slope, they run, chasing the fleeing deer. If they walk through the snow out of the blue, they stick a stick into the ground and run like a ship. Also, when a fleeing deer climbs a slope, they hold on to [the stick] with their hands and climb up. Every time they get a deer during a hunt, they set up a dwelling [in the same place] and eat it [the deer], after which they change their location again.”

The Benedictine monk Paul the Deacon (8th century) writes about the “Scritobins” living in northern Europe, who “even in summer time there is snow and who, not differing in anything from wild animals, do not eat anything other than the raw meat of wild animals, from the undressed skins of which they make clothes for themselves.” They are hunters of wild animals, of which the main one is “an animal not devoid of resemblance to an elk, from whose wool... I saw a robe like a tunic reaching to the knees...”.

The Norwegian Ottar boasted to the English king Alfred (9th century) with his wealth, which he obtained from the “Finns” in the very north of Scandinavia: “He was very rich in what wealth consists of for them, that is, in wild animals. Moreover, as he answered the king, he owned six hundred tamed deer, which he did not buy. They call these deer “khrana”; There were also six “steelkhrans” - they are very valuable among the Finns, since with their help they lure wild deer.” It is interesting that deer are called wild, although tamed: the deer habits were already so well known to hunters that they used them for their own purposes.

The Laurentian Chronicle mentions the Samoyed hunters in 1096. The 12th century Italian traveler Plano Carpini writes about them: “...These people, as they say, live only by hunting; their tents and clothes are also made only from the skins of animals,” that is, most likely, deer.

Another Italian, priest Francesco Negri, who traveled through Scandinavia in the middle of the 17th century, left a rather strange description of the deer hunting procedure: the Laplanders make noise, the animal gets scared and turns its head towards the noise. “In doing so, he forgets to lift his legs high enough and plant them with enough force to maintain movement on the ice. As a result, he slips and falls... The fallen animal tries to get up, but cannot.” This is where he is attacked. A natural question arises - has he ever seen a reindeer? The funny thing is that later authors quite seriously quote the description of this strange method of hunting.

The Frenchman Pierre-Martin de Lamartiniere, a doctor who was part of a naval expedition organized by the Danish Trading Society in 1653 to the north of Europe, tried reindeer meat offered by the Laplanders - “an animal found only in these latitudes: in Lapland, Borandai, Samosesia, Siberia, the Urals and other wild countries that we do not know...” In turn, members of the expedition treated the northern hunters with their provisions, which consisted of crackers and corned beef, “but they didn’t like our food, just like we didn’t like theirs.” The Frenchman was surprised by the very close relationship between the Laplanders and the reindeer they tamed, which seemed to understand each other: “Having prepared everything for departure, the owner to whom all the reindeer belonged whispered a few words into the ear of each of them, telling them, as I believe, where we need to be taken - and they rushed off with such speed that we thought we were flying on devils...”

The Englishman John Perry, who was in Russian service during the era of Peter the Great, wrote about Samoyeds: “They feed mainly on deer, bears and other wild animals, game, dried fish and turnips, which replace their bread.” “This country abounds in deer, a special kind of moss that grows on the ground and on trees in the forests; from this food they get very fat in winter. This special breed of deer, which God and nature have adapted to this cold country, to the inhabitants of which they provide such many-sided services...” Perry was extremely sympathetic to the poverty and squalor in which, according to his observations, savage tribes reside, forced to eat “the most obscene food” - animal entrails (note that they have always been the main delicacy of hunting tribes). And following Tacitus he was surprised: “Despite this, these people are very happy with their way of life, and many of the natives who were in Russia, when asked to stay there, responded that they preferred to return to the place of their birth in order to live and die there. Thus, God gave the ability to every people to be satisfied with their fate."

In the era of Peter the Great, the traveler and artist Dutchman Cornelius de Bruin (1652–1727), who arrived in Russia through Arkhangelsk and traveled across the whole country to Astrakhan, gave a detailed painting to various tribes of hunters living in Siberia: “The Samoyeds are common in Siberia before main rivers it, somehow: the Ob, Yenisei, Lena and Amur, flowing into the Great Ocean. The last river forms the border of the outermost possessions of the Moscow Tsar on the Chinese side, so that the said inhabitants no longer cross beyond it. Between the Lena and Amur rivers live the Yakuts, who are a special type of Tatars, and the Lamuts, who eat deer, like the Samoyeds: their number extends to 30,000; they are brave and warlike. There is another people near the sea coast, called the Yukaghirs, or Yugra. These already look like Samoyeds in their clothes and live in deserts (in the steppes). Like dogs, they eat intestines and other innards for raw materials. All these peoples speak different languages. There is also a fourth people here, the Koryaks, so called from the country in which they live, and they live in exactly the same way as the Samoyeds. To these latter we can add another people, called the Chukchi." The biggest test for the Dutchman was the meeting with Tsar Peter I near Voronezh, which almost cost the traveler his life: the extensive Russian hospitality turned out to be a difficult test for his health.

Since the 18th century, a systematic and closer to life description of hunters began, including habits, life, relationships with deer and food traditions. Moreover, both in the notes of foreign travelers and in the descriptions of expeditions specially equipped by the Russian government, the main purpose of which was to study and describe the geography and population of Siberia and the Far North. All of them testify to the existence of tribes whose basis of nutrition and general existence was the reindeer. Moreover, in remote regions hunting for wild deer continued, while a number of peoples, most often under the influence of pastoralists migrating to the north of Siberia from the southern Asian regions, switched to reindeer husbandry.

Peoples considered to be descendants of Paleolithic reindeer herding tribes still live today. These are the Yukaghirs and Nganasans, the Chukchi, the Koryaks, the Evenks and the Evens and many others - the oldest population of Siberia. It should be noted that there is great confusion in the names of the various peoples of Siberia and the Far North: they have changed over the centuries, do not correspond to their self-names, were conditionally united by the Russian and then Soviet governments into certain groups, and therefore it can be difficult to understand them. However, it is obvious that by the time more or less serious and systematic descriptions of their life and way of life were compiled, they were all divided into three large groups according to their occupation: wild deer hunters, reindeer herders and sea animal hunters; Moreover, often the division into these three groups took place within one tribal association: for example, the coastal Chukchi are known to be engaged in sea fishing, reindeer, who wandered behind herds of semi-domesticated deer, and foot soldiers, the basis of whose existence was hunting wild deer.

These peoples most often hunted using ancient methods, among which the most common was seasonal hunting of migrating deer crossing the river in strictly defined places - the so-called “pokolki” or “punctures” (both terms are found in the literature). Hunters guarding a herd of deer at the crossing used well-aimed blows from long spears, on which sharp stone or bone tips were mounted, to hit the animals in the heart or other vital organs. They hunted, as a rule, in spring and autumn, killing such a significant number of animals that there was enough meat for a long time. Most likely, this type of hunting was widespread in the Stone Age: it has been preserved famous image deer surrounded by fish (one of the rarest cases of their depiction in antiquity), stored in France in the Saint-Germain Museum. Most likely, the ancient artist thus depicted the crossing of deer across the river, an important moment in the hunting life of the tribe.

The founder of polar archeology, Captain G. A. Sarychev, in his detailed description of North-Eastern Siberia and the coast of the Arctic Ocean at the end of the 18th century, captured the “reindeer swim” that occurs twice a year - in May, when deer move from the forests to the sea, and in the fall , when they return back to the forests: “...There are great numbers of them being stabbed on the water, so that one person can kill up to sixty deer or more per day.” The Yukaghirs also knew another important property of a reindeer herd: it always follows the “advanced deer.” Until the leader swims to the other side, you cannot attack the animals: if the leader gets scared and returns, all the deer will follow him. But if he has already swam to the other side of the river, the deer will definitely continue crossing after the main one, despite any threats and dangers. G. A. Sarychev writes that local residents “tear deer meat into thin slices and dry it. The brain and tongues of deer are considered the best piece."

At the same time, fishing, as in the case of Paleolithic hunters, according to most researchers, was not familiar to the tribes of northern Eurasia in the past. Including those who hunted sea animals, despite living on the shores of the ocean and Siberian rivers and lakes, abundant in fish. The fact that in the past they did not have this fishery is evidenced by the underdevelopment of tools and the poor equipment of fishing equipment. However, from the 18th century, fishing began to play an increasingly important role, which was extremely useful for the northern peoples, given the rapid decline in the number of wild deer in the 19th and 20th centuries.

A number of traditions of ancient hunters were transferred to the reindeer herding way of life that emerged later. Thus, according to the beliefs of the Koryaks of Kamchatka, a deer that is destined to die must die free; a person should not touch the animal so as not to desecrate it and himself. The deer was held in place with a special lasso and killed with a quick short blow from a long spear. This ritual was preserved for centuries and clearly indicates that the reindeer herders of the North were originally hunters and imitated killing while hunting with a tamed deer. However, in the 20th century, this tradition had to be abandoned: under the conditions of the Soviet planned economy and the mass slaughter of animals for delivery to the state, observing such, as a modern researcher writes, “(rather, sacred) relationships between man and deer became impossible... What kind of lassos and spears are there? and “death on the loose” - wheezing deer driven into a corral were simply grabbed by the antlers and their throats were cut with knives. This procedure was so contrary to all traditions that the reindeer herders began the “planned slaughter” only after clouding their brains with a hefty dose of vodka: otherwise it was impossible to force themselves to step over the centuries-old relationship between man and the animal that gives him food.”

The ancient principles of dividing meat among all residents of the community were also preserved; concealing the obtained meat from fellow tribesmen, even during a period of famine, was considered a great sin. The principles of division often remained incomprehensible to “civilized” observers. The Russian traveler and explorer of the peoples of Eastern Siberia Jacob Lindenau described the hunting habits and lifestyle of the Evenki, who at the time of his travels, in the 18th century, were called Tungus, including a number of other tribes in this name. Regarding the eating habits of the Tungus, he wrote: “... From wild animals they eat the meat of elk, bear, and wild deer. The contents of a deer's stomach are considered a delicacy. The liver, kidneys, bone and brain marrow of animals, birds and fish are eaten raw.” Like many other tribes of ancient hunters, the Tungus believed that “wild deer has better meat than tame deer.” At the same time, “whoever kills a wild deer, elk or bear, whether married or single, has no right to his prey, and everything is distributed among everyone. The Tungus consider it a disgrace to keep what they have hunted, and everyone thinks so.”

I.-G. wrote about the preference of the Lapps for the meat of wild reindeer. Georgi: “Of all the animals, they consider wild deer, staggering in great numbers, to be the most useful, and bears to be the most delicious.” At the same time, “they borrow their food more from reindeer cattle breeding,” and its basis consists of “reindeer meat, sausages stuffed with blood, which, either alone or mixed with wild berries, is passed into a deer stomach and boiled..”

It is interesting that such taste preferences have been preserved among the reindeer herders of the North to this day, and this despite the long period of forced imposition of the system of “correct” all-Russian nutrition. IN modern research of the peoples of Kamchatka, the opinion of one of the local residents, recorded in 2001, is given: “Reindeer herders have a very developed gastronomic feeling for meat. They can taste the meat of a vazhenka, castrato or calf. Therefore, the meat of hunted wild animals is a delicacy for many peoples of the North, especially some parts of the killed animal. The liver, tongue, heart, and the bear's paws are highly valued. Living among reindeer herders for months, the author witnessed such situations when the yurt had a sufficient amount of various products, from reindeer meat to imported delicacies. But reindeer herders still hunted wild animals if a suitable opportunity presented itself... Reindeer herders have repeatedly expressed their attitude towards the meat of “savages” as a product with higher taste qualities than the meat of domestic reindeer.”

Political rights, meat and sacrifices In its dependence on politics, slaughter in Greece, on the one hand, contributed to the flourishing of dialectics, on the other, to a greater extent, weights and measures. Since there are two methods of butchering a sacrificial animal, one is

author Wilson David M

From the book Nero Wolfe's Cookbook by Stout Rex

From the book The Civilization of Classical China author Eliseeff Vadim

From the book Hand in Hand with the Teacher author Collection of master classes

Ancient philosophers Founders of Chinese philosophy Inscriptions on bones or bronze, gradually deciphered thanks to the development of philology, proved the existence from the most ancient times of those concepts that never disappeared from the Chinese intellectual

From the book A Real Lady. Rules of good manners and style author Vos Elena

V.G. Nioradze “All people are good... All people are bad...” or “The one who affirms is rich. The one who denies is poor” Author - Valeria Givievna Nioradze, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor, Academician of the Academy of Pedagogical and Social Sciences, Knight of the Humane

From the book Serious Fun by Whitehead John

Meat Due to the variety of meat dishes, etiquette rules suggest different methods of consumption, appropriate to the type of meat. If a dish is served from a whole piece of meat, then it is necessary to cut it into small pieces, holding the cut piece with a fork. Meat is not

From the book St. Petersburg Neighborhoods. Life and customs of the early twentieth century author Glezerov Sergey Evgenievich

From the book The Origin of the Fork. The history of proper food author Rebora Giovanni

Provincial antiquities “There is an acute need to know the Motherland” Studying “ small homeland", local historians today often turn to the experience of their predecessors - to that period in our history, which researchers call the "golden decade" of the Russian

From the book The Kitchen of Primitive Man [How food made man intelligent] author Pavlovskaya Anna Valentinovna

From the author's book

10. What did people eat in ancient times? Plant food If the situation with the meat food of ancient man is more or less clear, at least due to the preserved bones of the animals that made up his diet, then in matters of plant food one can only make assumptions based on

Intellectual project partner

Recently, many publications have begun to appear on the diet of ancient man. Many of them are based on an innovative technique for analyzing plaque on the teeth of people discovered in ancient burials. Throughout life, particles of food consumed remain on the teeth in the form of plaque. After human death, they decompose to inorganic residues containing stable isotopes of carbon (13 C) and nitrogen (15 N). Since different types of food contain nitrogen and carbon different ratios, then it becomes possible to establish the diet of ancient people. We have previously talked about nutritional features.

The role of food in human evolution

Anthropologists have noted that differences in diet were important hallmark in the evolution of primates. Thus, vegetarian species such asParanthropus Beuys(zinjanthropus) and paranthropus robustus , were distinguished by more massive skulls and turned out to be dead-end branches of evolution, losing the evolutionary competition to omnivorous australopithecines and early Homo. Although Beuys' paranthropus is known in popular science literature as the "Nutcracker", examination of his teeth by Matt Sponheimer and Peter Ungar showed that he did not eat nuts, as scientists had previously assumed, or soft fruits, like modern chimpanzees, but dense ones. leaves of sedge and other herbs that grew in river valleys. The authors came to this conclusion based on an analysis of the depressions and scratches in dentin that such food left. This study makes it impossible to assume that Beuys' paranthropus could have been the ancestor of chimpanzees. Apparently, the increasing massiveness of the skull, necessary for eating coarse plant food, became the reason that Paranthropus became extinct. Their earlier work by these scientists demonstrated that the seasonal nature of the Australopithecus diet and the gradual transition to soft plants and meat-eating provided greater variability in feeding behavior, and therefore better adaptability of the population to changing natural conditions.

The way of eating of the Dmanisi man, who belongs to the early homos, is controversial: some researchers already consider him a meat eater - a vegetarian. This question is of great importance for clarifying its place in human evolution. Traditionally in anthropology it is believed that it was the omnivorous nature of Australopithecines and Homo that served as the main source of evolution, since they formed different traditions eating behavior and allowed modern man to spread throughout the Earth. The significant wear of the teeth of the Dmanisi man allowed anthropologists to assume that he ate coarse plant food, like the massive Paranthropus. In this case, it may have been a dead-end species that originated at the edge of the distribution range of Homo erectus. All three European human species - Antecessor, Heidelberg man and Neanderthal man were omnivores, omnivores, according to anthropologists, there were other known local variantsHomoerectus, and its predecessor -Homohabiliseven noted in the history of science as a funny curiosity: in the parking lothabiliswere discovered paranthropus bones , which led to the conclusion that carnivorous ancient people ate their vegetarian “brothers.”

Diet as the reason for the victory of the Cro-Magnon man over the Neanderthal man?

An illustration of the migratory behavior of the Paleolithic population of Europe can be found in a site excavated in Cumbria (England). Human and animal bones (moose, wild horse and dog) discovered here have been dated by zooarchaeologist Dave Wilkinson to the last Paleolithic warming period - Allerød (XIII- XIIthousand BC). Since moose appeared in England only during periods of warming, this allows us to describe the feeding behavior of the first inhabitants of Britain, who migrated from the more southern regions of Europe following the spread of moose. This is the northernmost Paleolithic site. Earlier, in the caves of Sommerset, camps of wild horse hunters of the same time were discovered. Archaeologists have noted analogies between the cults of these two groups. However, the site in Cumbria demonstrates a warmer phase of Allerød, in which moose were able to move further north.

Published by Lisa Bond on the scientific portal "HeritageDaily“The study raises the question of the relationship between sex roles in hunting. Based on the fact that the bones of Paleolithic men often show signs of trauma that are absent on the bones of women, it is generally believed that hunting was an exclusively male activity. Burials of women with hunting attributes, such as the woman with a spear found at the Sungir site, are much less common. An example of women's participation in hunting is the Indians of North America. Collective hunting for pronghorn, in which both men and women took part, is known among the Indians of the western United States.

Hunters wore buffalo skins , imitated the behavior of a leader bison and directed the herd to a steep cliff.

Ethnographers have recorded among the prairie Indians the presence of a special class of buffalo hunters who, putting on a buffalo skin, imitated the behavior of the leader buffalo and directed the herd to a steep cliff. After appropriate tests and rituals, both women and men were allowed to be such hunters. Among a number of Indian tribes, female hunters were classified as “berdache” (“two-spirited”), that is, those in whose body both a male and a female soul live. Archaeologists believe that such hunts, called “buffalo jumps,” were also practiced in the Upper Paleolithic Clovis culture (30,000?-11,000 BC), since many accumulations of buffalo bones have been found, which are located at the bottom of a cliff or cape. Evidence of such hunting in the European Paleolithic is known from Cro-Magnon sites in Eastern Europe(Pushkari and Kostenki), and in Western Europe they belong to the Neanderthal time (le Pradelle, Moran, la Cote de Saint-Brelade). Thus, the identification of hunting as a purely male activity should be attributed to Mesolithic innovations.

Zooarchaeologists Witzke Prummel and Charlotte Leduc studied the traditions of hunting large ungulates in the Mesolithic culture of Maglemose (X-VII millennium BC). This culture was widespread in Northern Europe from England to Lithuania. The subject of the study was the bones of elk, deer, wild boar and bison discovered at the Lundby Mos site (Denmark). The soil ensured good preservation of the bones, which allows us to draw conclusions with a significant degree of accuracy. The first thing the hunters did was cut off the head of the animal and remove its skin. The skin was used to make a bag for carrying prey. There, at the site of production, they ate paws and split tubular bones to extract bone marrow. Since no traces of fire were found on the bones, the researchers assume that the meat was consumed raw. Having satisfied their hunger, the hunters trimmed and boned the carcass so that it would be convenient to transport it to the village - they removed the horns and large bones. Some bones (for example, humerus and scapula) were brought to the village and tools (knives for cutting fish) were made from them. Bones and other waste were wrapped in skins and, after some ritual, thrown into the lake. Historians Keld Møller Hansen and Christopher Buck Pedersen find in this ritual direct analogies with the Eskimo beliefs about the union between people and animals, which requires people to perform rituals to resurrect the animals they eat. The front teeth are almost completely absent at the settlement, which indicates that they served as a source of special pride for the hunter. As Marcel Niekus from the University of Groningen notes, such customs were common 45 thousand years ago among Neanderthals. According to Fernando Ramirez Rossi, another example of respect for the teeth of a hunted animal is a necklace found in the burial of a Neanderthal child. This may indicate the continuity of hunting traditions between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons.

Neolithic innovations and ancient traditions in the food system of the peoples of Europe

The cultural layer of the Westphalian cave Blätterhöhle (“cave of leaves”) is represented by various layers from Upper Paleolithic until the Neolithic, when it was used for burials. Comprehensive research carried out by Ruth Bolongino, Olaf Nechlich, Mike Richards, Jörg Orschidt, Joachim Burger yielded unexpected results. Analysis of the teeth of the skeletons buried in the cave identified three main groups: Mesolithic Westphalians, whose food was wild animals and plants, Neolithic farmers, who ate the meat of domestic animals, and Neolithic fishermen. Mitochondrial DNA research determined that these fishermen belonged to the same haplogroups as Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, but did not eat fish, and therefore the foremothers of this Neolithic group were women from the Westphalian Mesolithic tribes, while Neolithic farmers were represented both local and Middle Eastern haplogroups.

Researchers note that Mesolithic and Neolithic tribes lived for a long time in the same territory and did not mix with each other, preserving cultural identity. However, the data obtained can significantly change our understanding of Neolithic Europe. Jörg Orschidt notes that joint burials of different tribes in one burial complex are impossible, and, therefore, the fact that the cave was used for burial by both fishermen and farmers indicates that both food and cultural traditions coexisted within the same tribe, at the same time, the fishermen retained some purity of blood. On the other hand, this demonstrates a change in food priorities among Mesolithic tribes under the influence of Neolithic migrants: deforestation and clearing of meadows for arable land led to a reduction in large animals, and hunters were forced to change their diet and switch to fishing. The time period in which fishermen were incorporated into Neolithic society is unknown, but it can be assumed that it belongs to the earliest stage of the Neolithization of the Rhine Valley.

Male farmers could take wives from female fishermen, but male fishermen could not take female farmers.

The presence of Mesolithic genes in the blood of farmers in the absence of farmer haplogroups in fishermen indicates that fishermen, although incorporated into Neolithic society, occupied a subordinate or non-prestigious position: male farmers could take wives from among female fishermen, but male fishermen could not hire women farmers. Archaeologists believe that the Neolithic skulls from the "cave of leaves" belonged to the Wartberg culture (3500-2800 BC), which is characterized by gallery megalithic tombs, quite rare in Germany, but having analogues in Ireland and France (Seine culture -Oise-Marne). Typically, deceased members of the same clan were buried in such tombs (for example, about 250 people were buried in the Altendorf tomb, there were more significant burials), however, the reasons why the tribes of the Wartberg culture, in addition to traditional tombs, used the “cave of leaves” for burials are unknown.

Although the issue of contacts between Mesolithic and Neolithic tribes living in the same territory or neighboring ones has been discussed for a long time, it is far from resolved. Finds of cow and bull bones in Mesolithic contexts in Ireland have usually been interpreted as a single importation of meat rather than live cattle, and certainly cannot be evidence of domestic animal breeding by Mesolithic tribes. An important factor in this debate may be a unique genetic study conducted by German and Scottish zooarchaeologists led by Ben Krause-Kjora from the University of Kiel. For a long time it was believed that the pig bones found at the settlements of the Mesolithic Ertebølle culture belonged to wild boar. However, osteological analysis of these bones showed that they actually belonged to a domestic pig. Since zooarchaeologists did not find sufficient evidence of pig domestication in the Ertebølle culture, it was necessary to find out the origin of the pig.

The study was based on mitochondrial and Y chromosome genomes isolated from the bones of 63 pigs found at 17 Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in Germany and dating back to 5500-4200 BC. The German Neolithic is represented by three cultures synchronous with Ertebølle: the Linear Band Ware culture (5700-4900 BC), the Pinnacle Ware culture (4900-4500 BC) and the Rössen culture (4500-4200 BC). . BC.). After 4200 BC the Rössen culture assimilates Ertebølle and on their basis the Funnel Beaker culture arises (4200-2800 BC). The study demonstrated a wide variety of pig genotypes among both Neolithic and Mesolithic tribes, suggesting that the Ertebølle not only traded pigs with Neolithic tribes, but also bred them themselves. Tribes of linear-band ceramics appeared in Germany as a result of migration from the Danube Valley and initially, like the tribes of the “Danube Neolithic”, focused on breeding small cattle.

Goats and sheep were not acclimatized to northern latitudes, but pigs interbred with wild boars and gave the offspring resistance to cold.

The shift in emphasis to pig production in these cultures was influenced by climate: goats and sheep were not sufficiently acclimatized to northern latitudes, and pigs interbred with wild boars of the northern forests and gave the offspring resistance to cold. Evidence of this crossing is enlarged molars. It should be noted that the adoption of pig farming from the Linear Band Ware tribes means a significant change in eating behavior and indicates a demographic crisis in Ertebøll: the area occupied by the culture could not feed the population living here. Researchers also note other Neolithic borrowings in the Ertebølle culture, in particular “Danube” houses of frame-and-daub construction, amphibolite axes, as well as characteristic shapes and ornamental motifs of ceramics.

A "United Europe", based on trade or exchange contacts between tribes, was formed in the Chalcolithic-Bronze Age.

This study raises the question of the degree to which ancient societies were closed/open to innovation: for example, the Final Paleolithic tribes were unable to master fishing and seafood gathering, but Ertebølle’s long-term contacts with Neolithic tribes led to a significant change in diet. It is likely that Ertebølle's seafaring skills were in demand by the Atlantic Neolithic tribes. The only valuable commodity known in the Ertebølle settlement area that could have been in demand by Neolithic tribes was Baltic amber, and pigs were apparently traded for it. More than 70 years ago, Vere Gordon Childe, based on numerous examples of trans-European imports, suggested that some semblance of a “united Europe”, based on trade or exchange contacts between tribes of different ethnocultural traditions, was formed in the Chalcolithic-Bronze Age. Ben Krause-Khiora's discovery suggests that such trade contacts developed much earlier. It also raises the question of livestock in Mesolithic cultures. An analogy can be the tribes of Oceania, who are at a stage of socio-economic development comparable to the Ertebølle culture: the seafaring and fishing nature of the culture, Mesolithic implements, the insignificant role of agriculture, and pig breeding. It should also be noted the sacred status of the pig in Neolithic and later European cultures, for example, in Scotland pork was taboo, in many other regions it was considered an obligatory dish for Christmas, Trinity and other most revered religious holidays.

What did ancient Americans eat?

A monograph by archaeologist Elmo Leon Canales was published in Peru, dedicated to the food of the ancient population of Peru and neighboring countries.XIIIthousand BC to the present day. The novelty of the monograph lies in the fact that the diet of the ancient Indians was studied comprehensively, technologies for processing and storing food, as well as the volumes of food consumption and their the nutritional value. It was previously assumed that the complex terrain and clear climatic boundaries characteristic of northwestern South America created insurmountable boundaries between tribes living in different environmental conditions. However, as the study showed, already inVIIthousand BC an exchange system developed here, thanks to which fruits, anchovies, meat of pelicans, cormorants and other seabirds arrived in the mountainous regions. It was these coastal animals, and not llamas, as previously thought, that served as the main source of animal proteins and fats. Researchers of the Huari culture (500-1200 AD) have repeatedly noted its commercial, rather than military-bureaucratic nature. After the publication of Canales' monograph, it became apparent that trade in this region had much older roots.

Integrated geophysical study The Wari culture confirmed the localization of settlements along trade routes that connected regions with different climatic conditions. Along these routes, a network of small settlements was created, located within a 2-4 hour journey. This testifies that the Wari culture was a union of tribes, and not a centralized state. The first stage of assimilation of new regions was the penetration of characteristic ceramics; later, the entire region was involved in trade and exchange relations, and settlements were localized in places close to natural sources of water. As the researchers note, during the Wari there were significant changes in the diet - local crops and game were gradually replaced by maize. The lack of centralized control and a regular army was the reason that the Incas easily conquered the Huari culture, disrupting the traditional trade and food relationships between the regions, which in turn became the internal reason for the fall of the Inca empire: the Huari tribes were unable to adapt to the imperial customs of the Incas. In addition, maize became a strategic product accumulated for the needs of the empire; its crops were planted to the detriment of other agricultural crops.

Long-term settlements of the Mesolithic and Neolithic times turned out to be earthen mounds scattered across the Llanos de Mojos savannah (Bolivian Amazon). Geographers believed that they arose under the influence of various natural factors - changes in river beds, soil erosion, long-term termite mounds or bird colonies. Until recently, the archaeological cultures of this region were unknown, and the region itself was considered unpromising for excavation on the periphery of two cultural areas - the Eastern Andes and the Brazilian Highlands. According to an interdisciplinary study published in PLOS ONE, they represent shell middens of a culture that existed here for more than 6,000 years (late 9th millennium - mid 3rd millennium BC). The oldest dates (10,604 ± 126 years ago) were obtained from material from the lowest available horizon. It is likely that there were other cultural layers underneath, but deepening became impossible due to the fact that the excavations reached the groundwater level.

Similar shell middens are also characteristic of the Mesolithic cultures of the Old World: Kapsi (Western Mediterranean), Ertebølle (Southern Scandinavia), Jomon (East Asia). Their appearance demonstrates a change in feeding behavior characteristic of the Mesolithic. Many shell middens accumulated throughout the culture's existence and during this time were compressed into dense rocky blocks of shells, animal bones and charcoal. Bottom layer related to early period settlements consist of shells of freshwater snails, bones of ungulates, fish, reptiles and birds; the upper one, in addition, contains shards of ceramics, human bones and bone tools. The boundary between the layers is a layer of baked clay and earth, 2-6 cm thick, which was formed as a result of the cultivation of hearths at the level of ancient soil. Despite the differences associated with the transition to the Neolithic, both historical periods demonstrate kinship: freshwater and land snails served as the main food product. Researchers suggest that at an early stage the settlements could not have been inhabited throughout the year, but only during one of the seasons, for example, the rainy season. Typically, residential hills have a regular round or oval shape. Another type of embankment associated with this culture are Neolithic drainage embankments that protected fields from river floods. Their shape is often elongated and irregular, as they were filled up and rebuilt after heavy floods.

In total, three hills were excavated during geoarchaeological research and corresponding archaeological material was discovered on all of them. Since similar shell heaps (sambaquis, the oldest dates are 10,180-9,710 years ago) are also common in Lower Amazonia, archaeologists suggest that it was from there that the culture began to spread throughout the Amazon Valley. The discoverers of this culture, zooarchaeologists Rainer Hutterer and Umberto Lombardo, believe that the reason why local inhabitants abandoned the inhabited mounds around 2200 BC is unknown, but such a reason could have been the significant climate change recorded during this period in many regions of the Old World.

Alcoholic drinks

We have already talked about the finds of ancient evidence of winemaking in and around the world. Until recently, the earliest vessels with wine were considered to be shards from the Iranian settlement of Haji Firuz Tepe (5400-5000 BC), but finds in Georgia may predate the appearance of winemaking by several centuries. At one of the settlements of the Shulaveri-Shomutepa culture (6000-4000 BC, the oldest monument - 6625 ± 210 BC) a vessel of the “qvevri” type with stucco decorations in the form of bunch of grapes on the neck. The researchers considered these decorations to mark the contents of the vessel and, indeed, a biochemical analysis of the dry residue at the bottom of the vessel confirmed that wine was fermented and stored in it. The final dating of the archaeological layer in which the vessel was discovered has not been published, but it is very likely that it is older than the vessel from Haji Firuz Tepe. Vessels of this type are still used in Georgia to make homemade wine, and the oldest of them date back to 8000 BC. and although biochemical studies of their contents have not been carried out, their winemaking purpose does not seem surprising.

Wine was made in Georgia more than eight thousand years ago.

Such a deep antiquity of winemaking in the Caucasus is reflected in many aspects of the culture of the peoples of the Caucasus. Linguists consider it acceptable for Indo-Europeans to borrow the Georgian word “rvino”, from which the Russian “wine” and the Latin “vinum” and the Greek “ϝ οινος” come. An example of borrowing wine drinking Indo-European peoples Silver cups found in pit burials of the Trialeti culture (end of the 3rd - 2nd millennium BC) can serve as examples. In 2006, during excavations in Mtskheta, in a layer dating back to the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. A bronze figurine of a “toastmaster” was found - a man with a wine horn in his hand. Archaeologists also note that at the time when the Indo-European tradition of cremation penetrated the Caucasus, qvevri vessels were used as funeral urns, which suggests that death was perceived as a rite of passage. Unique to the Christian world is the cross of St. Nino (IV century), made, according to legend, from a grapevine.

Etruscan press stone and vintage image on a Greek vase

During excavations at the Gallic village of Lattara (near Montpellier, Southern France), a stone platform dating back to 425-400 was recently discovered. BC, which presumably could have been used for squeezing grape juice. Around the platform, archaeologists found numerous shards of amphorae. The platform from Lattara exactly repeats similar Greek and Etruscan winepresses, quite often depicted on vases of that time. A basket of grapes was placed on the platform, into which a man stood and crushed the grapes with his feet. The juice flowed from the basket onto the platform, and from there along the beak-shaped spout into the placed amphorae, which were then buried in the ground and left to ferment. Biochemical research carried out by Patrick McGovern in the laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania confirmed the winemaking nature of the find: the remains of grape juice were found on the platform, and in the vessels near it there were traces of tartaric acid, reliable evidence that it was wine, and not grape juice, that was stored in the vessels. Thus, the oldest evidence of winemaking in France was found. Earlier, here in Lattar, the oldest cultivated grape seeds in France and Etruscan amphorae were discovered, the wine in which was dated back to a more ancient time - 525-475 BC. In addition, biochemical analysis revealed that aromatic herbs such as rosemary and basil, as well as pine resin, which served as a preservative, were added to Gallic wine.

Discovery of Etruscan winemaking in Southern France raises the question of the relationship between two types of colonization of this region: seafaring Greek and land Etruscan. The Greeks founded emporia (trading posts), such as Emporia (in Roussillon), Agate (in Septimania), Massalia (Marseille), Olbia (near Marseille), Nikaia (Nice), Antipolis (Antibes). According to the research of Andre Nickels, these emporias over the course of several generations became major ports and were included in the Greek trade system, the main source of which was the shortage of grain in the metropolises. In exchange for grain, the Gauls received wine, which was produced in abundance in Greece. Some historians even note that the Gallic leaders were so addicted to Greek wine that they even sold their own soldiers into slavery. At the same time, the Greeks did not introduce the Gauls to winemaking and maintained a monopoly. This model of colonization, which finds certain analogies in the much more ancient migrations of the Bell-shaped Beaker culture, sharply contrasts with the land model of Etruscan colonization: the Etruscans tried to introduce the Gauls to their own traditions and in the same way, followed by the Romans, who built circuses and baths in the British islands and the Middle East and North Africa.

The ancient Slavs ate:

The ancient Slavs did NOT eat:

• . It just wasn't there. But honey was consumed in large quantities;
• tea and . Instead, they drank herbal infusions and various honey drinks;
• a lot of salt. The food would seem very bland to a modern person, because... salt was expensive and was saved;
• tomatoes and potatoes;
• there were no soups or borscht. Soups appeared in Rus' in the 17th century.

The ancient Greeks ate:

• porridge (mostly barley or wheat). Everything was seasoned with olive oil.
• meat roasted on a spit (mainly game and wild animals). Rams were slaughtered “on holidays.”
• fish in a huge assortment + squid, oysters, mussels. All this is fried and boiled with vegetables and olive oil;
• wholemeal flatbreads;
• vegetables: various legumes, onions, garlic;
• fruits: apples, figs, grapes (more than 100 varieties) and various nuts;
• dairy products: milk (especially sheep), white cheese (like our cottage cheese);
• They drank only water and wine. Moreover, the wine was diluted with water at least 1 to 2;
• various herbs and spices;
• sea ​​salt.

The ancient Greeks did NOT eat:

• sugar. It just wasn't there. Just like the Slavs, they consumed honey in large quantities;
• tea and coffee. Only diluted wine and water;
• cucumbers, tomatoes and potatoes;
• buckwheat porridge;
• soups

The main feature was that they cooked mainly over fire and the “average income” was not complicated and did not take long to prepare. Everything was simple. The dressing was wine vinegar without complex sauces. For breakfast, the Slavs had milk with bread and honey, the Greeks had flat cakes with honey and diluted wine.

The history of the appearance of such traditional (from our point of view) dishes for Ukrainian cuisine as borscht and lard is described very interestingly in the article “History and Traditions of Ukrainian Cuisine”. We ourselves gradually complicate everything and complicate life by preparing food. But at first it wasn’t like that...... There is always something to learn from history.

Tags: history of food, stories about food, history of simple food, food history, Russian food history, history of the development of food, history of food in Russia, history of the appearance of food.

Why didn't people eat each other in ancient times? April 7th, 2017

According to scientific information there is no evidence that ancient people would have used their own kind for food on a regular basis. Yes, there were some kind of religious sacrifices, for example, these remain. But this is a completely separate topic and this process did not take place for the purpose of saturation. But there were at least as many “of their own kind” running around as there were wild animals, and in some places even more.

So why do you think? Here's how science answers this question...

The thing is that people are rightfully considered the most dangerous prey in the animal kingdom, but they certainly cannot be called the most nutritious, although human meat is very high in calories. A new study based on calorie counts in the average human body suggests that human consumption of its own kind was primarily ritualistic rather than for satiation—at least among hominids including Homo erectus, H. antecessor, Neanderthals, and modern humans. of people.

To figure out how many calories an average body contains, the researchers looked to other studies from 1945 to 1956 that described detailed chemical composition four grown men who bequeathed their bodies to science. It turned out that the average adult male contains 125,822 calories (mostly from fat and protein), which is enough to meet the daily nutritional requirement for 60 people. It is worth noting that the highest calorie, of course, is fat (49,399 calories), but the least calorie part of the human body is teeth (only 36 calories). These numbers represent a lower limit, since Neanderthals and some other extinct hominids appear to have had greater muscle mass and needed more food.

Be that as it may, in comparison with other animals that made up the diet of ancient people, eating their own kind was unprofitable and too dangerous. On average, the mammoth provided the tribe with 3,600,000 calories, the woolly rhinoceros - 1,260,000, and the bison - 979,200, and it was much easier to catch them, and the horn and skins were used for economic needs, the researchers conclude. The results of their analysis were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

In some Paleolithic monuments of Europe, whose age ranges from 936,000 to 147,000 years, scientists actually managed to find evidence of cannibalism, which can be regarded as a necessary measure in case of famine or a simple reluctance to “waste” an absolutely healthy body that died of natural causes. reasons. But in most cases, according to researchers, prehistoric cannibalism was still of a ritual nature.

By the way, there is an opinion that Animals do not kill their own kind, or alternatively: “Animals do not kill just like that.”

Essence:
Wild animals never kill their own kind, except by accident. And in general, they kill only to eat or when defending themselves. Well, just knights in the shining armor of nobility!

In fact:
Here are the results of a study of wolves in Alaska:

"from 1975 to 1982, collars were placed on 151 wolves from 30 packs... (Ballard et.al. 1987). During the years of tracking, 76 of these wolves died:... 7 were killed by wolves...".

"In northern Alaska, in one of the national parks, from 1986 to 1992, collars were placed on 107 wolves from 25 packs (Meier et al. 1992). Of those tagged, 31 wolves died, including 16 killed by wolves from neighboring packs." (According to the website Okhotniki.ru).

So they fight to the death, in the literal sense of the word. And not only wolves. A bear can easily not only kill, but also devour a fellow bear, and even more so bear cubs. Anyone, be it your own or strangers. Lions are more picky in this regard: a lion (male) will protect his cubs, but he will kill strangers without hesitation, although he will not eat. By the way, did someone say that they don’t kill for nothing? Here you are! He'll bite you and throw you away.

If we leave aside mammals, then among fish and invertebrates cannibalism, that is, eating individuals of one’s own species, is generally common. Spiders have become a proverb; such a tradition is widely known among squids. The most famous cannibals in our Central zone - pikes. The so-called pike lakes are known: closed lakes in which there are no fish except pikes, and they grow there to very large sizes. What do they eat? An adult pike spawns and the fry hatch from it. The fry eat the smallest plankton, those that have managed to grow - larger plankton and their younger brothers, those that have grown even larger - those who have not yet had time to grow... And the larger the individual, the greater the percentage in its diet is its own meat younger brothers and sisters. This is an ecosystem where the elements of the food chain are not representatives of different species, but representatives of different ages of the same species.

There is one important pattern here: the more complex the organism is organized, the longer one individual lives, the less common cannibalism occurs. There is a biological basis for this: prion infections, which most often develop in those who eat their own kind. In addition, prion infections primarily affect nervous tissue, and if there is a brain, there is something to hurt. The most popular prion diseases these days - the famous mad cow disease (obviously in cattle) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (in humans) - are caused precisely by eating individuals of their own species. For cows, it is forced; people feed them meat and bone meal, obtained from the same cows during the processing process, from waste. In humans, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is directly related to traditions of cannibalism and was very popular in New Guinea. Draconian measures against cannibalism led to the almost complete eradication of the disease, but it still sometimes occurs. Actually, in the same New Guinea, any identified case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease indicates that the aborigines have taken up their old ways and is an indication for sending a punitive expedition to the appropriate area. It usually helps both against a bad tradition and against a bad disease.

That is, if you live less than 10 years, and besides, there are no brains, only nerve ganglia, you can calmly feast on your own kind. But if you are going to live 15 - 20 years or more, and besides, you have also acquired a brain, it is better to refrain from eating individuals of your own species. Purely for medical reasons.

Conclusion:
There is no special nobility among animals. They gnaw to death and eat their own just like that. Highly organized species with a developed nervous system are smaller and may even abandon cannibalism, while those that are more primitive and smaller eat their own more often. But everyone who is generally capable of killing kills their own.

Humans are perhaps the only species that has developed such a feeling as humanism and has come up with the idea of ​​​​the value of each specific life. Which is definitely something to be proud of.

sources