28 THE PROTEIN ELEMENT IN NUTRITION 



The early hunting period dates from the invention of weapons 

 and devices for hunting and fishing, such as are employed by the 

 representative of the precibicultural epoch at the present time. 

 As he passed through the homo-simian period his diet became 

 more and more of an animal nature, and in the hunting period 

 he developed largely into a carnivorous type. At this stage of 

 evolution, as his skill in hunting increased, man was able to dis- 

 seminate far and wide over the earth, as he was able to obtain 

 sufficient food by hunting, and from fruits and seeds. 



THE PRECIBICULTURAL COOKERY EPOCH. As soon as evolving 

 man began to apply artificial heat to his vegetable food, he greatly 

 augmented his supply, as by cooking the vegetable cellulose was 

 broken up, and the nutritive materials set free. The effect of 

 the introduction of the art of cookery was that more vegetable 

 food was used than in the early hunting period, until it came to 

 constitute one-half or more of the total diet, as is the case with 

 precibiculturists at the present time. Another effect was the 

 abandoning of, and the corresponding loss of power to digest in 

 the raw state, the less digestible and less palatable kinds of 

 vegetable foods, until he eventually limited himself to the easily- 

 digested kinds only. " The most primitive peoples now living 

 cook their food, and though widely separated both ethnologically 

 and geographically, they employ identical methods of cookery. 

 Thus the aboriginal Australians and Californians, the Bushmen, 

 the Andamanese, and the Ainus, all know how to extract noxious 

 principles from their vegetable foods, and all employ underground 

 ovens." The identity in the methods employed by these peoples 

 would show that they had taken their methods of cookery with 

 them when they first migrated from a common centre. All 

 existing precibiculturists know how to cook with underground 

 ovens, but some of them have not yet attained the level of dis- 

 covering how to boil water. Such is the case with the Australian 

 aborigines, the Fuegians, and the Bushmen of South Africa. 



It is of importance in discussing the food of mankind to take 

 into consideration the food of the existing precibiculturists. 

 There are still many representatives of this epoch of man's 

 evolution races who neither cultivate the vegetable kingdom 

 nor breed animals for food. Included amongst them are the 

 aboriginal Australians, the Andamanese, the Californian Indians, 

 the Esquimaux, the Bushmen of South Africa, the Veddahs of 

 Ceylon, and the hairy Ainus. 



Their dietary consists of 



