This sounds gross to me right now, but it may come in handy one day.....
The Food Insects Newsletter
Hunter-gatherers were sometimes very labor-efficient
A Grasshopper in Every PotJuly 1989. Volume 2, Issue #2.
By David B. Madsen
originally published in Natural History (New York). July 1989. pp. 22-25.
In
the spring of 1985, "millions" of grasshoppers (the migratory
grasshopper, Melanoplus sanguinipes) were found lying along the eastern
shore of the Great Salt Lake. Madsen, state archaeologist in the
Antiquities Section of Utah's Division of State History, says, "enormous
numbers of the insects had flown or been blown into the salt water and
had subsequently been washed up, leaving neat rows of salted and
sun-dried grasshoppers stretched for miles along the beach." The
hoppers, coated with a thin veneer of sand, were in as many as five rows
in some places, with the widest rows ranging up to more than six feet
in width and nine inches thick and containing up to 10,000 grasshoppers
per foot.
A year earlier, while digging in Lakeside Cave which
is at the western edge of the Great Salt Lake, Madsen and co-workers had
discovered thousands(and estimated millions)of grasshopper fragments in
the various strata of the cave floor. The hopper fragments, in a matrix
of sand, were also found in the majority of samples of dried human
feces found in the cave. The connection between beach and cave was
obvious. Lakeside Cave has been visited by Great Basin hunter-gatherers
intermittently for the past 5,000 years. It served only as a temporary
base because it is far from fresh water. Obviously, the cave was used as
a winnowing site for removing sand from the grasshoppers which were
scooped up at the beach and most of which were then hauled elsewhere.
Madsen
and colleagues found that one person could collect an average of 200
pounds of the sun-dried grasshoppers per hour. At 1,365 calories per
pound (compared with about 1,240 calories per pound of cooked medium-fat
beef and about 1,590 calories per pound of wheat flour), this amounted
to an average return of 273,000 calories per hour of effort invested.
According to Madsen, "Even when we took a tenth of this figure, to be
conservative, we found this to be the highest rate of return of any
local resource. It is far higher than the 300 to 1,000 calories per hour
rate produced by collecting most seeds (such as sunflower seeds and
pine nuts) and higher even than the estimated 25,000 calories per hour
for large game animals such as deer or antelope."
Madsen also
investigated the rate of return per unit of effort expended in
collecting Mormon crickets (Anabrus simplex), another food of early
Native Americans. Crickets were collected from bushes, grass, etc., at
rates of 600 to 1,452 per hour, an average of nearly two and one-third
pounds or, at 1,270 calories per pound, an average of 2,959 calories per
hour. The crickets often reach greatest densities along the margins of
streams or other bodies of water which lie in their line of march and
which they will attempt to cross. In two such situations, they were
collected at the rates of 5,652 and 9,876 per hour, an average of nearly
18 1/2 pounds of crickets or 23,479 calories per hour. The first number
(2,959 calories per hour) surpasses the return rate from all local
resources except small and large game animals, while the latter compares
favorably even with deer and other large game.
Madsen places
cricket collecting in a modem context by saying, "One person collecting
crickets from the water margin for one hour, yielding eighteen and
one-half pounds, therefore, accomplishes as much as one collecting 87
chili dogs, 49 slices of pizza, or 43 Big Macs." He concludes, "Our
findings thus showed that the use of insects as a food resource made a
great deal of economic sense."
THIS BLOG ATTEMPTS TO SHOW HOW SCIENCE IS CATCHING UP WITH REVEALED RELIGION
THIS BLOG IS AN ATTEMPT TO PUT ALL THE COOL STUFF THAT I BUMP INTO ABOUT THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST AND EVENTS THAT LEAD UP TO IT INTO ONE LOCATION.
THE CONTENTS WILL BE FROM AN LDS PERSPECTIVE. IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ANYTHING IN HERE, I DO NOT PARTICULARLY CARE TO ARGUE, UNLESS YOU CAN ADD TO THIS BODY OF WORK. I HAVE AN OPEN MIND, THAT IS WHY I READ STUFF FROM ALL DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES AND SEEK LEARNING FROM THE BEST BOOKS. I JUST AM NOT HERE TO ARGUE ABOUT IT - BUT TO PUT IT OUT THERE WHERE OTHERS CAN PERUSE/PURSUE IT. I TAKE PARTICULAR INTEREST IN HONEST SEEKERS OF TRUTH AND BELIEVE THAT SCIENCE IS REVEALED RELIGION'S BEST ALLY. YOU WILL SEE ALOT OF TOPICS IN THIS BLOG THAT SHOW SCIENCE BACKING - AND SLOWLY CATCHING UP WITH - REVEALED RELIGION.
ENJOY!!
THE CONTENTS WILL BE FROM AN LDS PERSPECTIVE. IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ANYTHING IN HERE, I DO NOT PARTICULARLY CARE TO ARGUE, UNLESS YOU CAN ADD TO THIS BODY OF WORK. I HAVE AN OPEN MIND, THAT IS WHY I READ STUFF FROM ALL DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES AND SEEK LEARNING FROM THE BEST BOOKS. I JUST AM NOT HERE TO ARGUE ABOUT IT - BUT TO PUT IT OUT THERE WHERE OTHERS CAN PERUSE/PURSUE IT. I TAKE PARTICULAR INTEREST IN HONEST SEEKERS OF TRUTH AND BELIEVE THAT SCIENCE IS REVEALED RELIGION'S BEST ALLY. YOU WILL SEE ALOT OF TOPICS IN THIS BLOG THAT SHOW SCIENCE BACKING - AND SLOWLY CATCHING UP WITH - REVEALED RELIGION.
ENJOY!!
Not gross at all if you know how to cook them. Chapulines (roasted grasshoppers or locusts) are a delicacy here.
ReplyDeleteI hear they taste a lot like shrimp [however salty and crispy].
ReplyDelete