Environmental Engineering Reference
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preference for killing such large herbivores as bisons
and woolly mammoths. Moreover, these animals yielded
unusually high amount of lipids, a quality not encom-
passed by a simple energy ratio. Conversely, hunting cer-
tainly contributed to the emergence of bipedalism and
running (due to the necessity of covering larger home
ranges) as well as to the evolution of strategic thinking
needed to search for and kill animals (Foley 2001).
Perhaps the most important outcome of foraging
studies is the realization that many gatherer-hunter soci-
eties reached levels of complexity, including sedentism,
high population densities, large-scale food preservation
and long-term storage, social stratification, elaborate rit-
uals, and plant cultivation, that are usually associated
only with farming societies. This cultural complexity had
its energetic foundations in exploitation of extraordi-
narily productive environments, substantial storage, and
incipient agricultural practices. The image of ephemeral
encampments and marginal existence in small groups
describes most preagricultural societies, but it does not
fit some foragers in the Upper Paleolithic, when the
mammoth hunters in the Moravian loess region lived
permanently in well-built semisubterranean dwellings,
made a variety of tools, fired clay, and sculpted. Zvelebil
(1986) argues that delayed acceptance of farming in
Europe's northern and eastern forest zones (where farm-
ing was available in 5000-4500 B . C . E . but was not
adopted until two or three millennia later) was the result
of high foraging yields.
Similarly, the well-documented social complexity of
the Upper Paleolithic groups of southwestern France
was based on the high productivity of the continent's
most southerly open tundra or steppe-like vegetation,
which supported the largest herbivorous herds in the
periglacial Europe (Mellars 1985). The highest popula-
tion densities in foraging were associated with exploita-
tion of marine resources. Maritime foraging was marked
by high biomass and high resource diversity, reliance
on migratory species, sedentism, technical complexity,
cooperative resource exploitation, high per capita pro-
ductivity, territoriality, resource competition, and warfare
(Yesner 1980). Whereas foraging groups typically com-
prised 20-50 people, the Pacific Northwest's settlements
commonly housed (in well-built wooden structures) sev-
eral hundred people. The seasonal abundance of salmon
and its preservation by smoking constituted the energetic
basis of this extraordinary population density and resul-
tant social complexity. Compared to cod (3.2 MJ/kg)
or whitefish (6.3 MJ/kg), chinook salmon yields about
9.1 MJ/kg, largely owing to its high fat content (15%).
The effects of the high food energy value of migratory
marine species are even better demonstrated in the case
of Northwestern Alaskan Inuit. Despite an extremely
harsh environment, and low and unpredictable density
of large land mammals, these groups were able to secure
a food energy surplus in less than four months of near-
shore hunting of baleen whales during their migration.
Sheehan's (1985) calculations for four precontact settle-
ments with a total of about 2,600 people show that
even a minimum estimate of the baleen whale harvest
could—together with subsidiary exploitation of walruses,
beluga whales, several seal species, and fish—result in
food surpluses. Indeed, walrus and bearded seal were
mostly taken for raw materials and dog food. The baleen
whale's huge mass (even the most commonly landed im-
mature 2-year-olds averaged nearly 12 t), its incompara-
ble food energy density (@36 MJ/kg for blubber, 22
MJ/kg for mukluk, skin and blubber), and its easy stor-
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