Game is rarer than plants due to the second law of thermodynamics: As one moves up the food chain from plants, to herbivores, to carnivores, one finds that there is less to eat at the higher levels because energy is lost at each step in the chain. The role of game in the human diet can more clearly be understood in light of ecological, nutritional, evolutionary, and cross-cultural information.Įxcept in the high latitudes occupied by peoples such as the Inuit, plants are generally the most abundant food source. Some anthropologists have argued that the advent of hunting game with tools was the critical development in the evolution of humans, resulting in such cultural characteristics as male aggression, sophisticated tools, and the sexual division of labor. The importance of nondomesticated animals, or game, in the human diet is unclear.
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