Topic: Meat eating and human evolution from talk.origins
Sorry Jillery, I missed your post, pasted below with my response.
Q at SAP: Why do we find millions of stone tools yet almost no Homo fossils?
No mystery, Homo lived, died, decomposed and got recycled in forests, while their stone tools accumulated, mostly along waterways; large handaxes & choppers/cleavers/chisels better preserved than the thin flake tools.
Homo, being in nomadic terrestrial groups, moved their camps up and down a stream (Like pygmies they camped up to 50m from water's edge), then moved to the next stream, etc. If they had been sedentary, their middens would have accumulated.
Q: Was there a utility link between small sharp stone flakes used to slice meat and their domeshield portable shelters?
Pygmies slit the stems of large Ngongo broad-leaves and clothespin them to the wicker frame of their dome huts, in overlapping shingles fashion. Ancient Homo did the same with their portable domeshields, and used the same slit & pin method to hang and
cure ultra-thin meat slices at streamside (sunnier there than under the forest canopy) long before fire was domesticated. Pygmies instead smoke chunks of meat, a faster process.
How'd they hunt giant forest hogs?
Killing a boar or sow required a strong sharp spear, the hunters stood behind shields next to trees. When charged they jabbed, and climbed 2' up the tree, safe since the boar couldn't raise it's head high, unlike a bull or stag. (In Borneo, a hunter
places the spear butt down and stands on it, the boar impales itself on the point during the charge.)
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UV & Dead Sea & pork prohibition
Jillery:
Point of pedantry: Dead Sea lowlands have *reduced* ultraviolet levels, due to its increased atmosphere, as compared to highland regions. The proof is snowbirds still get burned during vacations
there.
Visitors always go to nearby cities above the basin (airports are there) and exposed to higher UV. UVB causes sunburn, UVA causes deeper skin aging.
I have also claimed that people who lived in the Dead Sea basin evolved skin with less melanin similar to those in NW Europe (cloudier due to Gulf stream) than people living where UV was full strength.
"After recently visiting the Dead Sea in Israel and not getting any skin burns, I was wondering about the reasons for that. Searching the literature, it seems that the UV radiation is indeed lower in the Dead Sea (ca. -400 m) compared to Beer Sheva (a
nearby city at ca. +300 m): 1 2 3. Both UVA and UVB rays are lower, but UVB rays are attenuated the most."
https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/2711/what-are-the-causes-of-lower-uv-radiation-at-lower-elevations#:~:text=Searching%20the%20literature%2C%20it%20seems,rays%20are%20attenuated%20the%20most.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea
Do you have any documentation which shows that normal ultraviolet levels are sufficient by themselves to kill trichninella cysts?
Perhaps the dessication that happens with creating "meat chips" as you describe contributes.
The motile larvae in muscle are killed by UV, most in 10 minutes, virtually all in 1-2 hours, if I'm reading this paper correctly, (note that the disease depends on the quantity of parasitical worms, a few do little damage to a large host, but may weaken
a small host.)
https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/mobile/abstract/19432900562
The effect on the cysts? I don't know, but reading this "However, the use of (gamma) irradiation in meat was first approved for pork to control Trichinella spiralis in 1985 and then fresh and frozen poultry meat to control microorganisms in 1990" makes
me think it is also highly effective against larval cysts.
I note that many tests done on various meats & parasites use meat slices of 3cm thick = +1", like a thick pork chop, which is *much* thicker than what I referred to as 'ultra-thin slices' such as done with prosciutto and serrano.
In sum, I think that consistently thin slicing and wind-sun drying (perhaps after washing/salting when available) reduced infectious transmission of most meat parasites to a sustainable level long before fire & smoke were used regularly.
The 'kitchen tools' used to process meat and bulbous USO roots/rhysomes were the same as those used to construct shelters, a biface handaxe, some thin sharp stone flakes, clothespin leafstems, wicker. The residues found on some ancient stone tools
include various animal and plant tissues (but no mollusc) which might support that.
DD
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