Rei stated:
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Completely true - in societies that are in equilibrium, in temperate climates (the number that I've typically heard is 80% from gathering, 20% from hunting in such environments). If the society is focusing heavily on hunting for calories, it is not in equilibrium. If we're not talking about a temperate climate, then gathering isn't as major of a percentage of calories. How many calories did the innuits traditionally get from plants, for example?
From Current Anthropology--Frank Marlowe, "Male Contribution to Diet and Female Reproductive Success among Foragers" Volume 42, Number 5, December 2001 pages 755-759:
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Variation in male contribution to diet. Male contribution to diet varies from 25 to 100%, with a mean of 64%...Because there is less edible plant food for women to gather in colder climates, male contribution is higher at higher latitudes, where effective temperature is lower.
The difficulty with moving into a new territory is that you may not recognize food plants until many years have passed. You can recognize game animals quite easily.
Then it should also be considered that when one game animal becomes scarce, you will switch to another prey that is more easily found and the unhunted species can recover in numbers. Humans are generalists when it comes to hunting, they do not rely on any one type of animal to meet their needs.
Optimal Foraging Theory suggests that predators will simply go after the easiest prey available. In an environment where mammoths and bison were grazing side by side, the bison would quite easily be the animal of choice for most paleohunters. There is also some suggestion that hunting bison will actually increase their rate of reproduction. If this were to occur, they could outcompete the mammoths that they shared their habitat with. Prehistoric overgrazing might have selected against an animal that needed tall grass species to eat.
Anyhow, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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Bringer of fire, trickster, teacher.
[This message has been edited by Speel-yi, 10-17-2003]