Human consumption of large herbivore digesta and its implications for foraging theory

Abstract

Vegetal matter undergoing digestion in herbivores' stomachs and intestines, digesta, can be an important source of dietary carbohydrates for human foragers. Digesta significantly increases large herbivores' total caloric yield and broadens their nutritional profile to include three key macronutrients (protein, fat, and carbohydrates) in amounts sufficient to sustain small foraging groups for multiple days without supplementation. Ethnographic reports of routine digesta consumption are limited to high latitudes, but the practice may have had a wider distribution prehistorically. Including this underappreciated resource in our foraging hypotheses and models can substantively change their predictions. Assessing the explanatory power of kilocalorie-centered models relative to ones that attend to humans' other nutritional requirements can help us better address major questions in evolutionary anthropology. This paper explores the foraging implications of digesta in two contexts—sex-divided subsistence labor and archaeologically observed increases in plant use and sedentism—using estimates of available protein and carbohydrates in the native tissues and digesta, respectively, of a large ruminant herbivore (Bison bison).