Were Big-Game Hunters Targeting Fat?

Abstract

While our focus in the preceding discussion has been on paleoanthropology’s ­preoccupation with protein, over the past decade or so perspectives in the field have begun to shift, and a growing number of researchers now accept the potential shortcomings of a diet that is heavily based on the fat-poor muscle tissues typical of most African ungulates. As a result, a number of paleoanthropologists are now empha­sizing the importance of the fat that early hominins could glean from the marrow bones and brains of hunted (or scavenged) large game. Thus, while nutritionally motivated meat-eating and big-game hunting still retain their position of prominence in most contemporary evolutionary scenarios, animal-derived fat obtained mostly from marrow and brain is now seen as an essential part of the picture (e.g., Bunn and Ezzo 1993; Cordain et al. 2001; see also arguments and counter-arguments in Blumenschine and Caro 1986:275; Blumenschine and Madrigal 1993; Lupo 1998; Madrigal and Blumenschine 2000).