This posts raises a question that pestered me for a long time...
Considering that the mass of brain tissue to the mass of muscle and fat and other edibles is extremely small in larger prey animals, I wonder what real quantities of brain tissue the paleo man would have eaten over longer periods of time (e.g. averaged). Brain being a prized part, it was probably reserved to the leader and his friends anyway (as witnessed by people who went to live with some remaining true hunter-gatherer people). It is true that grizzly bears will eat out the brain of spanning pacific salmon preferentially to other tissue. I also recall fish caught in a net, with most heads (brains) eaten away by minks and other such mustelids. Some animals have a very developped taste for raw brain... But again, I wonder at how much brain could a man eat in ancient times...
This posts raises a question that pestered me for a long time...
ReplyDeleteConsidering that the mass of brain tissue to the mass of muscle and fat and other edibles is extremely small in larger prey animals, I wonder what real quantities of brain tissue the paleo man would have eaten over longer periods of time (e.g. averaged). Brain being a prized part, it was probably reserved to the leader and his friends anyway (as witnessed by people who went to live with some remaining true hunter-gatherer people). It is true that grizzly bears will eat out the brain of spanning pacific salmon preferentially to other tissue. I also recall fish caught in a net, with most heads (brains) eaten away by minks and other such mustelids. Some animals have a very developped taste for raw brain... But again, I wonder at how much brain could a man eat in ancient times...