Honey: food for humans?

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<freespirit freespirit Tuesday, July

19, 2005 6:42 AM Re: Re: [Rawschool] Re: bee pollen and raw honey

 

> Hi Nora,

 

While I do not disagree with your stance against honey

as true food for humans, your scenario about the early

humans doesn't really work. As an anthropology

student in college, I remember learning about

hunter/gatherer people in Africa who would go to great

lengths to get honey. Sometime the hive would be 50

feet up a tree. The men would climb up the tree

(straight up the trunk) in bare feet with a rope around

their waist. Then the people below would tie

smouldering leaves to the rope and the man would

haul them up. The smoke from these plants basically

anesthetized the bees. They would fly around the man

in a stupor while he broke off pieces of the hive and

lowered them in a basket down to the people, then

climbed back down the tree. The whole proceedure

was very dangerous and occaisonally resulted in

fatalities, but once or twice a year a comb was always

harvested. So for these people, the honey was worth

the risk.

 

Peace and light,

april

_____

April,

The entire hunter-gatherer model of early man is predicated upon our

present-day lifestyle. If we were a vegetarian society today, then no one

would ever have created that model, it would have been VERY easy to explain

the artifacts in a different way. Also, regarding the story you tell of

people working so hard to get honey -- this occurs in present (or recent)

time. That one group of people has learned such behavior does not

necessarily attest that honey is a well-designed food for our species.

Rather, it may only attest, for example, that calories are sometimes in

short supply in that area, and that the people developed this behavior as a

solution.

 

There are no records, no pictures, nothing at all to support such a story as

" reality " going backward in time It doesn't matter how many PhD degrees are

granted nor how many books and articles published. The entire " history " of

early humans is told, if we are really honest with ourselves, through the

lens of modern society, applying a massive set of assumptions that typically

go unarticulated.

 

It makes FAR more sense to me that we began as gatherers, in regions where

gathering was easy, then adapted into hunting MUCH later in time as we

migrated into regions where low-hanging fruit was less prevalent. But this

perspective, too, is little more than my own imagination at work. No one

knows, and there are other, better ways in which we can approach

understanding what is the ideal diet for our species.

 

One more thing...do you believe it is necessary, or more important, in our

highest and best good, to take away the food supply of another animal in

order to feed ourselves, particularly during a time when other foods are

abundant all around us? In other words, just because we can, does this mean

we " should " ?

 

Personally, I do not so believe.

 

Best to all,

Elchanan