Why did humans start eating meat?/Traditional Meat

3 Why did humans start eating meat?around eating meat? Think about it. When we
It must have felt unnatural at first, to eat animalthink of Thanksgiving, we think of turkey. If we
flesh. After all, we’re not so far removedeat pork, then New Year’s celebrations often
from animals ourselves. Perhaps it even feltrevolve around pork and sauerkraut. At Christian
cannibalistic. There might not have been thatEaster, the traditional meal is ham. And in the
much intellectual distinction between humans andsummer, we wait for that first hamburger or
other animals. When humans were puresteak on the grill.
vegetarians, they were living in harmony with theHow did that happen to a species that was
earth and with the other creatures co-habiting thedesigned to eat vegetables and fruits, nuts,
planet with them. Their closest animal relatives,berries and legumes?
apes, were vegetarians. Eating the products ofWe can imagine that eating meat was initially an
the earth, like plants, grains and fruits that theyopportunistic event, born of the need to survive.
could gather and eat would have seemed theThe taste of cooked meat, plus the sustained
natural order of things.energy that came from eating high-fat meat
But necessity is the mother of invention.products made primitive sense even to earliest
Prehistoric men who lived in frozen geographies,man.
or who lived in an area that became devastatedInitially, finding cooked animal meat, from a forest
by fire, would have eaten anything to survive.fire, would have been cause for celebration.
Just like the soccer players whose plane crashedIt’s something everyone in a clan would have
in the mountains of Chile, and were forced to eatparticipated in eating together. When man learned
the flesh of other players who died in the crash,to hunt and moved to a hunting orientation, rather
earliest man at some point had to make thethan a hunter-gatherer orientation, he would have
choice for survival, and that could have consumingdone this in groups. They would have had to hunt
meat for the first time and changing humanin teams, and killing an animal for food would have
history – and health – forever.been a group effort. Hunting and killing an animal
We can imagine that men first ate meat that hadmeant food not just for the individual, but for the
been charred or cooked by virtue of being caughtclan, and would have been cause for celebration
in a natural forest fire. They might havewhen the hunters brought the food home.
subsequently eaten raw meat, if necessary, butIf they brought the animal back to the clan, it
we can also imagine that our earliest digestivewould have taken a group effort to skin the
systems rebelled against eating raw meat.animal and tear or cut the meat from the
Imagine having eaten raw foods and vegetablescarcass. Everyone would have participated in this,
for eons, and all of a sudden, incorporating meatand subsequently, shared in the rewards of their
products into your system. You may have heardwork.
friends who were vegetarians tell stories of tryingIt’s easy to see how, once we didn’t
to eat meat and becoming violently ill afterwards.have to hunt for meat, but could buy it, the need
Biologists will tell you we’re really not designedfor gathering and celebration was deeply ingrained
to eat meat, but we adapted to it. However, inin our natures. We celebrate the seasons and
the timeline of human history, eating meat is alife’s events with family and friends, and
relatively recent evolutionary development.because those early celebrations involved eating
Traditional Meatmeat, that tradition has continued to modern
How did our family traditions become centeredtimes.