It's not really surprising that evidence points to ancient humans eating more plants. It'd be ridiculously energy-intensive to have to hunt down every meal.
While one person spending a day hunting a medium-sized or large-sized animal can feed 100 people. (And similarly trapping, using nets to fish, etc.)
Fortunately we can do both.
Fishing is great, if you live near bodies of water with lots of fish in them. Coastal communities probably did eat a LOT of fish for much of human history, but only so many fish come up to the coast. Fishing gear is also a bitch to build and maintain by hand, in cultures that still do it making new nets and repairing old ones is a full time job for at least one member of each family.
Animal protein also requires prompt preservation or eating, whereas a bunch of yams, cassava and so on can be reliably kept for a very long time.
In some places the only vegetation is mostly useless for humans, consisting almost only of cellulose, but this can sustain ruminants that can then be hunted or domesticated by humans.
On the other hand, hunting in a tropical jungle is pretty difficult, but then you have an abundance of fruits and roots and so, your diet will have far less meat and a lot more plants.
> The anthropologist Richard Lee reported that the !Kung, one of the so-called Bushman people of Southern Africa, got two-thirds of their calories from plants. Nor were they an exception. When he compared fifty-eight foraging societies from around the world, Lee found that half got the majority of their calories from plant foods; another eighteen relied mostly on fishing. Only eleven—less than a fifth—relied on hunting as their primary means of subsistence, and all but one were limited to either the highest or the lowest latitudes, far beyond our African homeland.
Now, to be sure, communities found in the 1960s that subsisted mainly from foraging can _not_ be assumed to be representative of pre-historic people, they are living in the 1960s same as everyone.
But they had access to hunted game as well as foraged vegetables, if hunting is so much more efficient, why did most of them get most of their calories _not_ from hunting? Because they were choosing to inefficiently spend more labor on collecting plants, when they could have been relaxing instead, because they preferred it culturally? I guess it's possible.
Because the efficiency of hunting animals vs harvesting plants isn't universal in actually existing environments humans do and have lived in, but can depend on the specifics of the given ecological location? Seems likely. Maybe the ecologiccal locations most communities the anthropologists looked at in the first half of the 20th century were not representative of pre-historic humans? Certainly could be, but it's certainly not obvious. As OP notes, where hunting seems to beat plant gathering calorically is in extreme environments not representative of African savannah where we thinks humans and their forebears did most of their evolving.
But in general, _most_ of the arguments given when people talk about this topic are based on imagination and what people find plausible or seems like a good just-so story to them, not on any kind of evidence at all. It's a topic where people really are drawn to ideological explanations over clear-eyed looks at evidence, I guess because it's not _really_ just about eating and labor, but about all the cultural implications and assumptions that go along with it for people, many of them that become really tied up with gender, as the OP discusses.
It is in fact not at all clear that hunting is more labor efficient than collecting plants in general, and what anthropological evidence there is from the 20th century (in which in some cases anthropologists really did do caloric input/output calculations) does not neccessarily suggest it at all. Foraging people anthropologists encountered in the 20th century definitely didn't have the kind of success you suggest at hunting -- multi-person parties went hunting, and did not succesfully kill mega-fauna on every expedition, in observed cultures; what they observed was not that a single-person could reliably bring back meat to feed 100 on a daily expedition.
Because at the end of the day, it's not just about efficiency of calorie-gathering anyways. If all your protein is lean, you'll die without other sources of calories anyways. Generally speaking, you needed hunting to meet your protein requirements, and then gathering to fill in the rest of your calories -- especially since women can gather at the same time while men are out hunting. So even if plant-gathering is less efficient calorically, it's still more efficient for the group, considering the gendered division of labor.
Unless you happen to be Inuit, for example, where you might subsist entirely on things like extremely fatty seal meat, since there's not much gathering to be had. Obviously it depends on great deal on your geography.
My original comment was simply pushing back on the assertion that hunting is "ridiculously" more energy-intensive. If you're good with a bow and arrow and there are lots of antelope around...
The idea that one person can on on average day provide calories to feed 100 (for the day?) is not backed up by anthropological observation of foraging people hunting in the 20th century, and I don't see any reason to assume it would have been true for prehistoric people either.
I guess that would have been the much shorter post i could have written.
And it's super energy intensive! Those guys spend up to 20 hours a day sleeping.
Agreed, in a short and pithy way I was trying to make this point. I’ve been taught to be weary of the “beautiful savage” argument too, so I don’t think pointing out to tribes that only eat meat or only eat vegetables is useful. As cool as the Hadza are their hunting and eating practices don’t really give me much additional guidance and I tune out when my influencers of choice start waxing poetical about their amazing life changing visit.
it's also slow to digest, so fruit sugar sources can be a good complement, but are less healthy
but then most "fruit sugar sources" also had much less sugar in them before humans messed with them and more of other nutrients
and there are stuff like shrooms, roots various plants etc.
but also however we look at it, meat was a fundamental component, I mean without supplements or being able to take advantage of a huge variety of plants from all around the world being vegetarians is very likely to lead to some form of malnutrition. But also we have misgrown a lot of plants to be much way less nutrious and have access to a wide variety and access to supplements so it doesn't matter anymore. Additionally even way back you probably could survive on a mostly vegetarian diet without malnutrition, just _mostly_ instead of _purely_ no meat.
On the other hand in today's society people consume often way to much meat and often unhealthy meat, too while at the same time not consuming a lot of the plants, roots and mushrooms people likely did eat before civilization started.
I guess like so often the answer is balance.
But also too-little-nutrious food, both from plants and meat, seems to be becoming increasingly a problem.
An animal can have a lot of calories. To give an idea of how much, when I was a kid my father once accepted as pay for a job a butchered cow. He put it in a freezer and it took our family of 3 around a year to finish it.
Ancient people didn't have freezers, so it would not be worth it for a small group to hunt and kill a large animal unless it was very easy, because they would only get a few days food out of it before it spoiled. This is assuming they have other food sources, of course.
A larger group, say a village with a hundred or so people, would be able to finish eating a large animal before it spoiled. For them it could easily be worth it to send out a hunting party every few days even if that party has to do a lot of work.
It might be more intensive to harvest but it has a lot more calories and precious fat.
I've been told by a survival expert that gathering food is a full time job, and many of the contestants didn't seem to get that. They'd waste calories building elaborate shelters and carving toys.
BTW, if I look around the woods in the PNW, I don't see much flora that could be eaten, even though it's rather lush. Although there are berries and mushrooms, those are far from a complete diet.
1. not enough calories
2. a seriously unbalanced diet
and they'd slowly come unglued.