Peoples with Diets Heavy In Animal Foods

[PaleoPhil]

Despite living in subtropical Paraguay, the traditional Aché reportedly only average 1% of their calories from fruits:

"Systematic recording of dietary intake while living in the forest entirely off wild foods suggests that about 80% of the energy in the diet comes from meat, 10% from palm starch and hearts, 10% from insect larva and honey, and 1% from fruits. Total energy intake is approximately 2700 kcal per person daily, and males acquire about 84% of all calories consumed. Children do not produce significant amounts of food until they are fully adult. Despite the presence of over 500 species of edible vertebrate prey, only 9 species of mammals provide more than 1% of the prey biomass actually harvested by Aché hunters. Most important (in descending order) are Nine-banded Armadillo, Paca, South American Tapir, Capuchin monkey, White-lipped Peccary, South American Coati, Red Brocket, and Tegu lizards."[20]  

Source: Hill, K., and K. Hawkes. (1983) Neotropical hunting among the Aché of Eastern Paraguay. In Adaptive Responses of Native Amazonians, R. Hames and W. Vickers, eds., pp. 139–188. New York: Academic Press http://ihhr.asu.edu/kim/1983%20Neotropical%20hunting%20among%20the%20Ache%20of%20Eastern%20Paraguay.pdf

[Nation]

Fascinating!

"10% from insect larva and honey"

That sounds either like a lot of larva or a lot of honey. Maybe honey isn't that rare in the wild?

[TylerDurden]

Fascinating!

"10% from insect larva and honey"

That sounds either like a lot of larva or a lot of honey. Maybe honey isn't that rare in the wild?

  Well they have giant anthills in the tropics etc.  I doubt honey is that easy to obtain, though.

[PaleoPhil]

The traditional Ache eat plenty of both honey AND larvae/insects (including the bee larvae in hives that comes with honey).

"Cerambycid larva, which feed on rotting palms, and at least 10 other larval types are eaten frequently. The adult forms of at least 5 insects are eaten, and at least 14 different kinds of honey are taken, the most common being that of Apis melifera." (Kim Hill and Kristen Hawkes, Neotropical Hunting among the Ache of Eastern Paraguay, p. 142)

The world history of beekeeping and honey hunting By Eva Crane

p. 96: "Hill et al. (1984) made a quantitative study on a group of Ache hunter-gatherers in eastern Paraguay. Bees' nests in the forests provided an appreciable proportion of their food, and in the 1980s this contained much more honey from (Africanized) honey bees than from native stingless bees. The total calorie intake on different hunting trips averaged 3827 Kcal per man per day, of which 47% to 77% was provided by meat, 0.4% to 44% by honey and 6% to 45% by vegetable material and insect larvae. The calorie intake from honey bee nests (honey + larvae) was more regular and--if both sources were available--very much higher than that from nests of stingless bees.

.... Figure 12.4b shows a typical scene of instant enjoyment when such combs containing honey and/or brood were eaten warm from the nest. Gilmore (1963), writing on ethnozoology in South America, said that A. mellifera was 'feral in many places, where its nests in trees are exploited as are those of native species. Its light honey sharply contrasts with the dark 'strong' product of the stingless species.' .... Metraux (1963) reported that the Apapocuva (a Guarani people in Paraguay and southern Brazil) collected honey, and that they 'spare several combs so that the bees can return. ... They also acclimatize swarms of bees to their villages.' It seems likely that this also refers to A. mellifera [stinging bees]."

p. 579: "The amounts of the four main components of a large number of honey samples from four countries (Crane, 1990a) were:

Component - Range (%) - Average (%)

water - 13-26 - 17.0%
fructose - 22-54% - 39.3%
glucose - 20-44% - 32.9%
sucrose - 0-8% - 2.3%

Acids (especially gluconic), minerals, amino acids and proteins, enzymes and aroma components, constitute no more than 1% of the honey."


Interestingly, because so much of the Ache diet consists of meats, insects and honey, the "Ache women's contribution to the diet is considerably lower than that observed for men." (Female subsistence strategies among Ache hunter-gatherers of Eastern Paraguay, Ana Magdalena Hurtado, Kristen Hawkes, Kim Hill and Hillard Kaplan, HUMAN ECOLOGY, Volume 13, Number 1, 1-28, DOI: 10.1007/BF01531086, http://www.springerlink.com/content/ku205j41j1864502). So the claim of some vegetarians that women always provide much more of the calories than men for all traditional cultures is false.