How Did Hunter-gatherers Get Their Calcium?

[Herbie]

The question could be who decided to stop eating egg shells and dispose of them, we weren’t civilized, we might have ate everything that wasn’t poisonous without predudice.

I know from living with Brazilians that they cook and eat banana skins, never before had I ate them from the culture I am in.

If we eat them no one would have ever slipped on a banana peel.

 

[mt_dreams]

as mentioned hunter/gatherers like other animal/reptilian species ate eggs of anything they successfully got their hands on. due to the fragility of eggs, it's most likely the hunters would eat them on the spot raw & whole while looking for game/honey to bring back to the tribe. Also weeds like nettle are native to most continents and provide 1 gram of calcium per 30g(1 ounce) of leaf. ocean tribes would more than likely get their calcium from seaweeds. kelp has roughly .66grams of calcium per 30g(1 ounce)

Ancient people had plagues, slavery, wars, witch-hunts, more wars, threw feces out of their windows into the streets, died from simple surgery or very commonplace illnesses now. I highly doubt ancient times were a low stress lifestyle that we should be aiming for now. What evidence do you have that organisms worked well and were balanced thousands of years ago?

I agree with you that mineral ratios and absolute amounts become unnecessary in the grand scheme of things when everything else is going right, but people romanticise and fantasize about the past far too much when it comes to health.

It appears you are grouping in pre & post ice age into one group. All those things you listed are from post ice age agricultural revolution traits. true hunger gatherers did not have such realities. This is not to say that conflict b/w small tribes did not happen, but the large macro events like slavery, plagues, wars, etc, did not come about until large groups of people started permanently living in one area, which only took place after we left the garden.

Knowing that stress is responsible for 99% of disease, it's impossible to know exactly how healthy pre ice age humans were. I would imagine the ones in areas of high nutrition & low rates of predators where much better off than today when it comes to stress. I'm not romanticizing this situation, merely trying to think rationally on the plethora of living conditions those humans may have dealt with.

 

[Suikerbuik]

This is hilarious.
Who told them to eat these to increase their calcium/phosphor ratio?
They taste awful, how should they have come to the idea to eat these?

I once say a documentary about a tribe living near the coast and cliffs. At risk for their lives they climbed those meters high cliffs and ate the (raw) eggs, including shell, laid by the birds nesting there.

 

[Vinero]

Milk.
Ancient people also had cattle.


Ofcourse not all ancient people had cattle.
How did the eskimos get their calcium for example?

 

[RisingSun]

This is hilarious.
Who told them to eat these to increase their calcium/phosphor ratio?
They taste awful, how should they have come to the idea to eat these?

Since when are animals (us) attracted to tasty things? We are attracted to things we need when in a natural state with the mind free of society’s burden.

Sick animals eat bentonite clay.
Does it taste good? No
They just need it

 

[Atman]

Since when are animals (us) attracted to tasty things? We are attracted to things we need when in a natural state with the mind free of society’s burden.

Ever since? Animals are attracted to what tastes good because they need it.
That's how the sense of taste evolved. It's also the reason why we can discard the latest trend of demonizing sugar per se without even knowing of Peat, because we have such a delicate taste for sugars.

I just find it odd to think of humans eating eggshells because it's such an unpleasant experience.
Maybe they taste good if you are really calcium deficient, who knows...

 

[Waremu]

Milk.
Ancient people also had cattle.


Ofcourse not all ancient people had cattle.
How did the eskimos get their calcium for example?

I agree. I would also add that I personally think the general consensus of how long we have been consuming milk be possibly be greatly understated because, for example, if we look at the basics of evolutionary psychology, it would seem highly unlikely that any starving person wouldn't look at a animal milking it's young and decide to try to get some of that milk by copying what it does. It just seems too intuitive to a starving person. If starvation is so strong that it can drive humans to eat one another, then surely it would be strong enough to cause someone to try to copy what an animal and it's young does with regards to obtaining milk. Tribes also got calcium from bones of animals. Even various types of fish have eatable bones which are packed with calcium. (150 grams of sardines, which isn't very much, actually, has over 500 grams of calcium, for example; a can of sardines has over 300 grams of calcium). Unusually they ate animals entirely. That would provide a lot of collagen and calcium. So a good case can be made that primitive diets were high in both calcium and collagen, whether from fish cow, bison, etc.

 

[dfspcc20]

Weston A Price* noted that all the "primitive" tribes he studied had at least 4x the RDA of calcium. I think the RDA for calcium at the time was 600mg, so that would be at least 2400mg they were getting. Not all tribes were the same, but calcium came from things like dairy, oats, greens, bones, shells (eggs and shellfish), insects, etc.

* I know that name will trigger some people on this forum.

 

[RisingSun]

I agree. I would also add that I personally think the general consensus of how long we have been consuming milk be possibly be greatly understated because, for example, if we look at the basics of evolutionary psychology, it would seem highly unlikely that any starving person wouldn't look at a animal milking it's young and decide to try to get some of that milk by copying what it does. It just seems too intuitive to a starving person. If starvation is so strong that it can drive humans to eat one another, then surely it would be strong enough to cause someone to try to copy what an animal and it's young does with regards to obtaining milk. Tribes also got calcium from bones of animals. Even various types of fish have eatable bones which are packed with calcium. (150 grams of sardines, which isn't very much, actually, has over 500 grams of calcium, for example; a can of sardines has over 300 grams of calcium). Unusually they ate animals entirely. That would provide a lot of collagen and calcium. So a good case can be made that primitive diets were high in both calcium and collagen, whether from fish cow, bison, etc.

Sure they would milk animals from times to times or drink the milk after they killed one when they managed to get a kill.

But it was a sporadic use, very much like getting honey, because you would be competing with bears and fighting bees the size of your fingers.

Nobody wad having a gallon of milk a day every day.

I am very much for this approach, to introduce things sporadicly and randomly, as our ancestors, who didn’t have access to everything all the time.

 

[michael94]

well I do not "agree" with the premise of hunter gatherers, or what we are taught about ancestor
it is important to talk about calcium... but believing in hunter gatherers just gets us thinking in circles
Yes this youtube video is closer to the truth than Darwin etc.

TARTARIA

 

[Nicole W.]

How did hunter-gatherers get their calcium? How much calcium did they consume in a day or in a week, does anyone know?

I was wondering that myself and so I took a look at the diet of another hunter gatherer: the Chimpanzee, our closest living relative genetically speaking. Their diets consists primarily of wide variety of fruit (predominantly figs) and palm nuts which are predominantly saturated fat. The figs are the fruit highest in minerals, but their diets include a fair bit of leaves and other vegetation and a small percentage of proteins in the form of other mammals and insects. The animal protein part of their diet seems to be under 10%. So I suspect the calcium is coming mostly from fruit, probably figs, and then maybe the vegetation they consume. Maybe that was the case with our ancestors as well.

 

[Waremu]

Sure they would milk animals from times to times or drink the milk after they killed one when they managed to get a kill.

But it was a sporadic use, very much like getting honey, because you would be competing with bears and fighting bees the size of your fingers.

Nobody wad having a gallon of milk a day every day.

I am very much for this approach, to introduce things sporadicly and randomly, as our ancestors, who didn’t have access to everything all the time.

Much about the past is pure speculation, and no one knows for sure exactly what people did at that time, but I don't think milk would have been that scarce at that time as some say. From larger animals yes, but you still had smaller animals that produced milk such as goats and I don't see how hunters wouldn't have thought to breed goats in larger numbers to get milk from them, similar to dessert travelers in middle eastern areas of the world, etc. I don't buy into eating things randomly just because we did at one time in the past either. We did a lot of things in the past that if we did today would result in worse health. And I don't know where you got the idea of a gallon of milk per day from. Thats a far extreme example. And I don't think hunters in the past would be easily scared off by bears to take honey as some say. Many of the hunter tribes were very skilled and would have most likely waited for the bear to get up to the honey only to kill it with bows/spears and taking it as meat along with the honey. Many of them worked in groups as well to overwhelm the bear. In fact, some tribes were so skilled at finding bears from looking at signs, such as bear feces, etc. There are even some good documentaries that show tribes doing that today in parts of the world such as Africa, where these types of skills were likely passed down. I think we heavily underestimate the level of skill/sophistication and other abilities many of them have.

 

[tara]

Wouldn't tropical fruit and nuts have provided significant calcium to early gatherers?

 

[RisingSun]

Much about the past is pure speculation, and no one knows for sure exactly what people did at that time, but I don't think milk would have been that scarce at that time as some say. From larger animals yes, but you still had smaller animals that produced milk such as goats and I don't see how hunters wouldn't have thought to breed goats in larger numbers to get milk from them, similar to dessert travelers in middle eastern areas of the world, etc. I don't buy into eating things randomly just because we did at one time in the past either. We did a lot of things in the past that if we did today would result in worse health. And I don't know where you got the idea of a gallon of milk per day from. Thats a far extreme example. And I don't think hunters in the past would be easily scared off by bears to take honey as some say. Many of the hunter tribes were very skilled and would have most likely waited for the bear to get up to the honey only to kill it with bows/spears and taking it as meat along with the honey. Many of them worked in groups as well to overwhelm the bear. In fact, some tribes were so skilled at finding bears from looking at signs, such as bear feces, etc. There are even some good documentaries that show tribes doing that today in parts of the world such as Africa, where these types of skills were likely passed down. I think we heavily underestimate the level of skill/sophistication and other abilities many of them have.

Ok.

You seem to know exactly how people lived in the past. Your sources are better than mine

 

[Waremu]

Ok.

You seem to know exactly how people lived in the past. Your sources are better than mine

No, that's what you added. Read what I said again. I said that 1. Much is unknown and 2. I was giving my opinion, based on what I have read and studied. I never once stated my opinion as fact. I just find it hard that humans were as less sophisticated as some would lead us to believe. We come into the world from the womb of our mothers with milk being our first food. In my opinion, it seems so basic to what we know about evolutionary psychology that starving groups of hunter-gatherer tribes would see goats and other small animals drinking milk and would try to mimic their behavior and use it as a regular food. And this would be doable with smaller animals such as goats without the large-scale agricultural revolution first happening.

 

[fradon]

How did hunter-gatherers get their calcium? How much calcium did they consume in a day or in a week, does anyone know?

they could get it from spring water as there were not water treatment plants back then all the water was calcium rich spring water or lake water

bone broth

any various root and tuber vegetables and also fruit...back then they didn't have coffee and colas and all the acidic stuff we eat now so their need for calcium might not have been so high.

plus they were alwasy moving this increases sweating and respiration which lowers acidity.

 

[mouse]

Hunter-gatherers had much higher levels of vitamin D from sun exposure; consequently their need for calcium was far lower than what is being assumed in this thread.

 

[RisingSun]

Hunter-gatherers had much higher levels of vitamin D from sun exposure; consequently their need for calcium was far lower than what is being assumed in this thread.

Nobody has made any quantity assumption in this thread.

We are just discussing the sources of calcium, regardless of the intake.

 

[x-ray peat]

This is only true for when resource constraints become a problem.

For instance, the reason that American Natives never developed is because they never had to, since they basically came across two continents of free land and game.

Same dynamic probably holds true for white Americans to some extent, vis-a-vis Europe. America still remains a natural welfare program of sorts.

The further back we look at paleolithic life, the less and less you would see wars, famine, and ugliness. Because there were fewer humans, thus more resources per person, and thus less conflict.

I think it's actually the opposite. Civilization could only develop once there was an abundance of food that allowed for specialization and division of labor among its members. If life circumstances were such that everyone has to spend all their time on food production then there would not be the excess production of farmers to allow others to specialize in metallurgy, house building, defense, trade, administration etc; the building blocks of civilization.

If interested the book Guns, Germs and Steel goes through the question of why certain parts of the world developed and why others didn't. There is a reason why civilization first developed in the "Fertile Crescent."

 

[lvysaur]

Civilization could only develop once there was an abundance of food that allowed for specialization and division of labor among its members.

Yes, and such an abundance could only be unlocked after transitioning to agriculture. The transition in the first place would be preceded by declining game/fish resources, and increased human competition for them.