10,000 B.C. Reality Show

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Mrcharly

Your geese, ducks and many other birds you can eat migrate.
Your fish will be best caught at certain times and not others.
Salmon migrate only at certain times of the year,
Your deer prefer areas of shelter at certain times of year according to weather and when they give birth.
Other animals are sometimes best hunted in other locations other than where you live because they are easier to trap or shoot.

I don't know what other animals you had 10,000 years ago, but I do know you can't stay in one place and hunt all the time.
 
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Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
17
Scotland
As Joe said things do migrate abroad, but even today within the UK animals like deer will change location due to pressures of finding food and also at times of the Rut deer will move up to higher ground to stake out defendable territories for the purposes of breeding. So as they follow their food (and drives) hunters would have to follow them too. Also if you hunt in one area continuously then very soon there will be nothing left to hunt. And most hunting peoples around the globe know that that will lead to starvation. A lot of cultures will leave signs of what's been hunted recently in an area to prevent others over hunting that species.
 

superc0ntra

Nomad
Sep 15, 2008
333
3
Sweden
I'd like to see one of these shows where the people involved have at least rudimentary knowledge. Remember seeing one such show where they were in Alaska I think it was and they were busy trying to trap a rodent and complaining about how they starved, and I could see 4 different edible plants in abundance on the TV screen so it'd be like within 25 metres of them.
Aside that I'll probably watch it out of curiosity.
 

Stevie777

Native
Jun 28, 2014
1,443
1
Strathclyde, Scotland
In North America, it's very common for native communities to have both summer and winter camps.
Haida even took their house boards with them.

If anything (program unseen), I suspect that it demonstrates the size of the body of knowledge needed to survive, to optimize living circumstances and to prosper.
And prosper, native communities certainly did so.

Catch up on the show online if you're curious.
http://www.channel5.com/shows/10000-bc
 

mrcharly

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jan 25, 2011
3,257
44
North Yorkshire, UK
Mrcharly

Your geese, ducks and many other birds you can eat migrate.
Your fish will be best caught at certain times and not others.
Salmon migrate only at certain times of the year,
Your deer prefer areas of shelter at certain times of year according to weather and when they give birth.
Other animals are sometimes best hunted in other locations other than where you live because they are easier to trap or shoot.

I don't know what other animals you had 10,000 years ago, but I do know you can't stay in one place and hunt all the time.
Um you don't hunt the same animals year round.

I don't think people were so migratory. They changed what they hunted and gathered.
Geese migrate thousands of miles, they aren't going to be followed.
 

boatman

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Feb 20, 2007
2,444
4
78
Cornwall
In coastal areas there were always the shellfish resources in case the fishing or the hunting failed. Must have been pretty static, even if seasonally, to pile up the middens.
 
Um you don't hunt the same animals year round.

I don't think people were so migratory. They changed what they hunted and gathered.
Geese migrate thousands of miles, they aren't going to be followed.

I'm sorry if I can't explain myself in English too good. I'll try a little better.

We live in groups, mainly close connected groups. So I hear do many other hunting people. If you stay in one place you are only going to catch all the game in that area. Then you have to move. You also get bored, well we do, with the same food.

Maybe Uk has lots of places where lots of people can go to catch fish, hunt deer, shoot/trap geese and whatever, without competition from others all time.

So for me if we need to get geese to eat I have to travel to an area of marshland about 80 miles away and a three days travel by foot and canoe. The area is only used briefly by the geese as they travel south and not north. This happens only once a year and lasts maybe week or maybe three. We like geese. Yes, sometimes they fly over where we live. But they fly very high and cannot be shot. On their early.spring grounds they can be. I use tent when I stay there and put up on a tiny island where it is dry. There are Moose there and they are easy to shoot but I cannot shoot them as it is very marshy because the place (magwattum'na'tsa) is under four or five feet of water and I can't skin or carry a moose in deep water or get it into the canoe.

So to find moose I must go to areas I know which has good moose grazing and is open enough to get a good shot and has shelter to hide from. Moose is heavy so I can only do this to get food to freeze or dry in winter when they is enough snow on ground for dogs and sledges. We go as a family - everyone goes, we travel in groups. One man cannot collect moose on his own. This maybe ten, twentymiles away or many days travel. Every year is different. Sometimes you not get lucky. So I hunt caribou if we are unlucky. Caribou can only be caught in the open with some rocks, small trees to hide behind, best near traditional crossing places in big rivers. Depending on which herd of caribou I go after we may have to travel for eight to ten days days to the north to best area again in small hunting clans. I must go where they go when they migrate NW/SE or NE/SW both herds travel differently and one will not come in forest anyway. There's no point going that far for one animal. So we stay for a few weeks waiting, waiting waiting for them to pass. We have small wood 'cabin' there made by my father, using axe and saw only.

We like fish too. The river and lakes next to where I live is full of fish. But they cannot be caught in numbers so I travel with a hunting partner when the summer run of salmon happens to a place on the river where it is shallow enough to catch lots. This is some days away. If nice weather we take families and have fun.

In winter - now, I set trap lines normally. These are for fur animals and they are difficult to catch. The area where most are varies from year to year and the government have only set places where you can go for conservation reasons. So we travel for several days and spend it in our winter camp which is semi permanent from logs and only can be used three or four winters.

So many times we travel and stay with families and stay in hut or cabin or big canvas/wood shelter we make. In the old times all this was done slowly and travel was harder because no one had skidoo, pick up or other modern stuff.

Maybe you are lucky in England and there was plenty of good places to hunt in old times all without having to go places to catch them. This could be possible but I don't know.


As for the programme 10,000bc What can I say?? We watched a programme in our hall. They appear to be given food. Spend all day sitting, eating, eating, and women have make up on. small shelters, Food has to be looked for!
 
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Stevie777

Native
Jun 28, 2014
1,443
1
Strathclyde, Scotland
Maybe you are lucky in England and there was plenty of good places to hunt in old times all without having to go places to catch them. This could be possible but I don't know.

!
Yeah, those places are called Supermarkets, it's about all the hunting freedoms we have left here.

Nothing i like better than to stalk a frozen chicken on aisle three for up to but not beyond 3 days. And dont get me started on the fish isle. sat their with rod and line for over a week and not even as much as a nibble. Once chased a Haggis around the deli section for over two hours before i got distracted by a Thomas the Tank Engine 20p ride.

That's Hunting UK Style buddy...Real Hard Core. And we wonder why this show is a total failure. :lol:
 

mrcharly

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jan 25, 2011
3,257
44
North Yorkshire, UK
Once chased a Haggis around the deli section for over two hours before i got distracted by a Thomas the Tank Engine 20p ride.
You chased it? That's what you are doing wrong. Lure it into a basket with a small black pudding. They can't resist those, it's like people and lolcats. Once in the basket, the Haggis will be unable to get away (their little legs just drop through the mesh).
 

mrcharly

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jan 25, 2011
3,257
44
North Yorkshire, UK
On a more serious note, I know nothing really about pre-historic britain, but since we have found remnants of stone buildings dating over 5000 years ago in Scotland I reckon that at that time people were living a life not dissimilar to crofters. A bit of fishing, a bit of shore-gathering, a bit of herding and growing some veg.
 

boatman

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Feb 20, 2007
2,444
4
78
Cornwall
Temperate woodland and coast, lot of resources in the mesolithic especially once they started modifying their environment which they probably did, clear areas to provide glades fro deer as an example. This may have started accidentally as small areas of woodland were cleared. Accidental plant development as well, choose the biggest/Tastiest plant and maybe its seeds will start a basic garden near your house as you drop them or clear away less desirable plants from their growing spots.
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,665
McBride, BC
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150227084555.htm
This evidence suggests that Britain was trading for wheat long, long before actual cultivation began.

There's certainly more to hunting and gathering societies. There's trade.

In Canada, there are some west coast deposits of copper metal. Pea-sized lumps up to maybe thumbnail sizes.
Because of the differing chemistry of impurities from deposit to deposit, that copper was traded all over North America.
Likewise, obsidian volcanic glass for point knapping has been shown to have been traded extensively as well.

Here in British Columbia, the salmon spawning runs are times of very intense fishing activity. Both people and bears.
As Joe points out, you have to go there. The fish don't come to you. The easy fishing is with stone weirs in the rivers.
Even some weirs in the dry interior in trout rivers as they drop out of lakes for spawning.

After the last ice age, it is thought that Pacific sea levels rose so fast that the Haida Gwaii village that you were born in might be underwater by the time you died.
There are salmon weirs in the rivers on Haida Gwaii in all the best places. Last summer, some government research divers started there and swam out into the ocean,
following the submerged ancient river courses. HA! abandoned & submerged stone fishing weirs all along the coast! But again, the fish aren't there all the time.

I can shoot the migratory Canada geese and ducks less than 10 minutes from my house. If I forget something, I can go back.
I have less than a 4 week window of opportunity and they are gone south.

Maybe those TV people knew they would get fed so they didn't have to think about finding it themselves.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,970
4,621
S. Lanarkshire
The UK has a coastline of nearly 20,000 miles. It's entire land mass is riven with river valleys and estuaries. It is temperate woodland with wide spread upland moors.

Basically it's a garden isle :D Avalon indeed. No wonder it was/is so popular as a place to live.

Seriously, where I live now, in the middle of the Scottish lowlands….there's a salmon river half a mile from the front door, between me and the river there are woodlands that are still rich in deer. The local ponds are full of wildfowl, the hedgerows are full of fruit and nut trees….and this is a terribly urbanised bit of the world. In the prehistoric period we know that the wetlands were widely used for hunting, that the coastline provided protein rich food on a regular basis, that the woodlands provided harvests in season as well as both oxen and boar, and transhumance (seasonal movements of domesticated animals to hill grazings) was commonplace.

We don't need to travel as far as Joe does, is what I'm trying to say, to access a wide range of habitats and hunting/foraging areas.
Nowhere in the UK is more than 70 miles from the coast, and that's the furthest, most live much closer.
Our temperate climate means that we don't get the deep months long frozen cold that the continents endure, that our rivers and lochs rarely freeze or bake dry in months long sunshine without rain. We just stay kind of damp and green most of the year.

M
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,970
4,621
S. Lanarkshire
Funnily enough Son1 was here today, and he reckons the only other place he'd happily live would be New Zealand :)
Another Island culture with rich ecodiversity.

Seriously though, it's true about our home isles. Just too many people these days :sigh:

M
 

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
17
Scotland
Don't worry folks, if I've won the Euromillions tonight I intend to buy an estate/island and set up a bushcraft collective with workshops and all sorts. So I'll be looking for volunteers to come live on it.;)
 
Yeah, those places are called Supermarkets, it's about all the hunting freedoms we have left here.

Nothing i like better than to stalk a frozen chicken on aisle three for up to but not beyond 3 days. And dont get me started on the fish isle. sat their with rod and line for over a week and not even as much as a nibble. Once chased a Haggis around the deli section for over two hours before i got distracted by a Thomas the Tank Engine 20p ride.

That's Hunting UK Style buddy...Real Hard Core. And we wonder why this show is a total failure. :lol:


Happens here Stevie - we get naturalists come to hunt in our freezers and take food.

An innuit hunter further north some years ago got a visit from a game/wildlife department officials. He'd been out shooting geese and had put some in his food store. Unfortunately one of the geese he'd shot had a sat transmitter in or on it, and they traced the goose back to his home because the sat. transmitter was still working. They took the goose away for 'examination'..
 

njc110381

Forager
Jun 17, 2008
107
10
Gloucester, UK
I was quite surprised at his reaction to the situation. Even if he wasn't fully with it at the time and perhaps thought it was his wife he was sleeping next to, he should have taken it on the chin and talked it through, said he was sorry etc. If I did something like that when I was half asleep, which I believe is possible, I'd be mortified! You'd do whatever you could to fix it, not try to turn it around and blame the girl. That's not on and I'm glad they hoofed him out.

The series in general has been interesting. I said from the start that they should have had more training, or at least one member who knew what they were doing to lead the group. As it is they have no chance. The majority were keen to work the ration system and not hunt - well that only works if you know you're going home on a set day. It spoils the whole idea.

Hunting wise the boar are a poor target. Yes they provide a lot of food, but I wouldn't hunt one with a bow. Home office firearms guidance suggests .270 to be the minimum rifle calibre for this species in the UK... For those who don't understand firearms they average out at 2700ft-lbs of bullet energy - the legal limit without a firearms certificate for an air rifle is 12ft-lbs and the standard service rifle to the British army makes about 1200. There's no way in hell I'd shoot one with a bow, in the dark and on the ground. Chances are you will die before the boar.

If I was them the deer would be dried and smoked, I'd probably have used the guts to attract flies and catch the maggots to use as bird/fish bait and my shelter would have a load more stuff piled on it. You could probably even form a basic fireplace inside the hut by packing wet mud around a tightly packed pile of grass and then burning it out. Life needn't be as hard as they made it, but then they were fighting a losing battle from the off. They don't stand a chance.
 

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