Foraging / surviving from the land
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But (stealing/taking has been mentioned) we're not talking about after some end of the world event when seemingly every survivalist thinks they have the skills to feed their family, which includes just 'taking', this thread is more about living off the land 'now'. A lot of people live off whats available to them now in major towns and cities if you include charity hand outs, skip diving, begging and theft; the poor homeless buggers on the streets that is.
yeh all them fat hunter gatherers and skinny under nourished farmers your average farmer provided for many people a hunter gatherer for them and a little extra . plus your HG diet is fairly low calorie so needs a large qty you need to be very effecent to dig up roots to get a Plus on the energy recouped etc espesialy if its 10miles in hot weather from your dwelling
Exactly, subsistence farmers tend to be under-nourished because of reliance on just a few crops, see pellagra and maize,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra
That's exactly it; farming creates a surplus of calories, enabling a society to grow and expand its territories, and participate in a wider variety of useful activities, but it does so firstly at the cost of increased workloads for low status individuals, and secondly at the expense of nutrition (so archaeologists start to see evidence of all sorts of nutrition-related illnesses like rickets and scurvy, and individuals are smaller and weaker). I guess that in human history, the 'Zerg Rush' approach worked best! I read that it was only in the 19th century that nutrition in Western Europe began to approach the quality of that enjoyed by hunter-gatherers. Of course we did that by industrialising agriculture and importing a wider variety of products. Hunter-gatherers achieve good nutrition by limiting their populations to the available resources...unintentionally, of course!
Interestingly, I heard that there is a second sharp decline in the quality of nutrition that we see in human remains, around the early Renaissance - about the time that modern banking began. Read into that what you will!
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There is also evidence that hunter gatherers had much the same problems we have or had, cancer, scurvy, calcium deficiency el al. With this wonderful diet how come the majority of hunter gatherers died so young? I'm old enough to remember seasonal shortages especially with different fruits, thankfully my children are not. To be absolutely honest sod going back to the old ways, I want my range of food all year round and so long as Tesco can fly it in I'll be buying it.
discounting legalities of game hunting(with a computer machined rifle )and not putting farmers out of business,I think the only way to foridge in the uk is by car. Not enough game or wildland to make easy enough pickings for a true life. You may be able to survive for a while as an adult man in good health and good weather, but what happens when things go wrong with the limited recources of britian! Fishing doesn't count as foraging, you could forage by the sea shore easily in Britian for certain things but you would need a car to get to other areas, and even then it would difficult enough. Britian is just too managed! We forgot moles and hedgehogs too, and baby deer , kittens and puppies, golden eagles ........
Also an adult man eats 5000 calouries if active for extended periods as a minimum if not more, thats probably 2 kilos of fibourous potatoes or bread or PARSNIPS, our forager will also be digging many latrines too !
If you where not allowed to return to civilisation, forraging for the rest of your life in the uk would be a vary precarious proposition!
Edit : club baby seals
back on point ? Yes/no
edit 2: yeh er the parsnips actually turn out to be 6.5 kilos a day not 2. 15lbs worth !
Also an adult man eats 5000 calouries if active for extended periods as a minimum if not more, thats probably 2 kilos of fibourous potatoes or bread or PARSNIPS, our forager will also be digging many latrines too !
If you where not allowed to return to civilisation, forraging for the rest of your life in the uk would be a vary precarious proposition!
Edit : club baby seals
back on point ? Yes/no
edit 2: yeh er the parsnips actually turn out to be 6.5 kilos a day not 2. 15lbs worth !
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Comparing our own knowledge with the knowledge our distant ancestors had can lead to false assumptions, our ancestors were able to read patterns in their natural surroundings that only the most dedicated forager could come anywhere near, the distractions of modern life mean we spend little time trying to understand our natural environment or passing on skills. If you could put together a group of experts in several bushcraft practices, you could come close to the knowledge that a tribal or family group had, I believe today you could survive off the land if you were in the right location, but if you wanted to take it beyond mere survival you would need to be part of a group. The optimum population for England is 30 million, in terms of self sufficiency, if everyone was to live off the land it would be much lower, tens of thousands rather than millions.
The comments about the great diet of hunter gatherers is interesting. As far as I remember there was one study years back of a coastal community that concluded that they had a varied and nutritious diet. Seems like from there we have started thinking that hunter gatherers generally had such a diet. The reality is that some did (the ones that were able to find and defend a good location), while other hunter gatherer communities were not as lucky. Many communities during that period of humanity died out due to starvation. Most humans on earth can trace their ancestry to very small groups of survivors from early human history. The rest of those communities were not nearly as successful.
You could steal from other animals. Although that's not so different from foraging it the sense that it takes calories.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBpu4DAvwI8
Oh, yes, that's not to say that hunter gatherers never suffer disease or acute malnutrition (although a more biodiverse environment would offer more options for substitution) etc. But there was a trade off between small populations and large, chronically malnourished farming communities. It occurs to me that the seasonal shortages you experienced (and which I remember too) were also because of industrialised agriculture, not despite it - for example, quince, sea buckthorn and medlars falling out of favour partly because of their poor suitability for largescale cultivation and shipping.. The demise of seasonality is more down to transportation than the management of agriculture itself. Also the experience of post-industrial agriculture has little bearing upon the living standards associated with early agriculture. Disease rises and life expectancy falls with the introduction of agriculture. However the total population supported can rise, which creates a surplus of labour which the society can put to other uses (even if they only live to 35).
(Cue a Yorkshireman exclaiming "35! You didn't know you were born... In my day we'd raised a family before we were twelve and if we had 5 good years after that we'd've thought ourselves lucky for it!"
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I think what rik was referring to was shortages due to the seasonal unavailability of the plants. I grew up in Bulgaria, and even recently, it wasn't just shortages, it was all out unavailability. Simply stated, if a particular fruit or vegetable is not in season in the country, you don't have it. There was virtually nothing available during winter, so we had to pickle vegetables and can fruit during the months when they were in season. These days we are so used to fruit and vegetables being imported year round, that we forget that they grow in some areas for a very limited time during the year.
...And that's why until globalisation, everyone died every Christmas! I understand what you're saying, but the fact remains, that the existence of human beings now means that there has to have been a way around it. Canning was commercialised around 1811 by Bryan Donkin, whose works until recently still stood in my home town. Pickling admittedly has been around much longer - maybe 4000 years, so long after settled agriculture, but cannot have accounted for all food consumed in winter. Crops which historically filled the hungry gap, like kales, have fallen out of use to a large degree, because with global production the juicy summer crops are more palatable or cheaper. Similarly, fruits like quince or medlars, have fallen into relative disuse because fruit that must blet before consumption are unattractive in shops and probably suffer in transport. (I see I have made this point before).
From a hunter-gatherer perspective in Northern Europe, I suspect that lots of people died during winter, because cold is a lot more difficult to bear when hungry. But seriously, it sounds like people on here can't imagine what we did before supermarkets were invented. The case cannot be made that it is impossible to live by foraging, because historically people did and in some parts of the world, they still do.
For an introduction to survival by foraging, specifically in Northern Europe, try the book Survival Advantage by Andrew Lane. I think it is recently back in print. I believe that the author lived for some time by using the methods described in the book.
From a hunter-gatherer perspective in Northern Europe, I suspect that lots of people died during winter, because cold is a lot more difficult to bear when hungry. But seriously, it sounds like people on here can't imagine what we did before supermarkets were invented. The case cannot be made that it is impossible to live by foraging, because historically people did and in some parts of the world, they still do.
For an introduction to survival by foraging, specifically in Northern Europe, try the book Survival Advantage by Andrew Lane. I think it is recently back in print. I believe that the author lived for some time by using the methods described in the book.
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...And that's why until globalisation, everyone died every Christmas! I understand what you're saying, but the fact remains, that the existence of human beings now means that there has to have been a way around it. Canning was commercialised around 1811 by Bryan Donkin, whose works until recently still stood in my home town. Pickling admittedly has been around much longer - maybe 4000 years, so long after settled agriculture, but cannot have accounted for all food consumed in winter. Crops which historically filled the hungry gap, like kales, have fallen out of use to a large degree, because with global production the juicy summer crops are more palatable or cheaper. Similarly, fruits like quince or medlars, have fallen into relative disuse because fruit that must blet before consumption are unattractive in shops and probably suffer in transport. (I see I have made this point before).
From a hunter-gatherer perspective in Northern Europe, I suspect that lots of people died during winter, because cold is a lot more difficult to bear when hungry. But seriously, it sounds like people on here can't imagine what we did before supermarkets were invented. The case cannot be made that it is impossible to live by foraging, because historically people did and in some parts of the world, they still do.
For an introduction to survival by foraging, specifically in Northern Europe, try the book Survival Advantage by Andrew Lane. I think it is recently back in print. I believe that the author lived for some time by using the methods described in the book.
I don't think that anyone is saying that "people" in general can not survive through hunting and gathering. I think what is being asserted here is that a single individual can not do it alone for a prolonged period of time. I think that is supported by historical evidence, where in most tribes banishment alone into the woods was considered to be equivalent to death. People survived communally by storing and preserving food, or by relying heavily on hunting. And yes, many died in the process. During much of the history of northern Europe, certainly before farming, population sizes were tiny.
The second assertion, which I made was that even when living communally, with complete general knowledge of bushcraft, the tribe would be unlikely to survive unless they have historically acquired data for the specific region of animal migrations, and the locations of specific plants, which in most cases were cultivated even though we do not consider it full scale farming. For example, many Native American tribes burned grass lands to promote the growth of new grass which attracted buffalo so they could hunt it, etc.
And the last thing that people are asserting is that a single person without prior knowledge of the exact location of resources available in the area certainly can not survive today without performing unlawful activities.
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We tend to put an idealistic gloss on the past. Thieving and Rieving was always a reality and part of the survival "game" I can recall learning this verse at school
"The mountain sheep are sweeter, But the valley sheep are fatter; We therefore deem’d it meeter To carry off the latter. We made an expedition; We met an host and quell’d it; We forced a strong position And kill’d the men who held it."
"The mountain sheep are sweeter, But the valley sheep are fatter; We therefore deem’d it meeter To carry off the latter. We made an expedition; We met an host and quell’d it; We forced a strong position And kill’d the men who held it."
It's interesting that the latest diet fad is called the caveman diet, as for prehistoric life spans, skeletons have been aged at 70 years of age, the only thing we can be certain of is that we will never know how comfortable or uncomfortable life was for our ancestors. Our minds are full of useless knowledge, our brains are smaller and we have lost touch with our natural environment, more bushcraft skills and plant knowledge have probably been forgotten than most of us will ever know. If we had the same knowledge as our ancestors I'm sure living off the land would be possible in a temperate area.
without resorting to ; outside help ie. stealing farmed sheep, fishing with a net, calling it off when things get bad, taking advantage of the fact your the only one eating rabbit in all of scotland, not living like somesort of freaky hermit who does nothing else but search for and eat one sort of food (a change for most I understand) buying lots of equipment to aid you ie 1000 fish hooks and alot of line, thinking how long you have to keep it up for, I do not think foraging in the uk is achievable longterm.
My arguments the best, it wins and is the only one there is. So there !
My arguments the best, it wins and is the only one there is. So there !
Yes it would be possible in a temperate prehistoric landscape, must've been or we wouldn't be here. But we don't live in a pristine wilderness, even in lovely rural France you won't have the range of un-buggered-up landscapes to make it a long term viable option.
xylaria
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
ahhaaaa what about my argument, which sits at home in smug silence knowing your are all wrong.
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