Today I learned about ‘rabbit starvation’ and how Neanderthals avoided it.
When you’re a hunter-gatherer and it’s winter, you may try to survive by eating only meat—like rabbits, but also deer and other game. But this gives you too much protein and not enough carbohydrates and fat: most of this meat is very lean. If you eat enough lean meat to get all the calories you need, you can die from an overdose of protein! It’s called ‘protein toxicity’.
Hunter-gatherers in this situation sometime...
Published on July 11, 2025 00:49