How are our family traditions centered, to eat meat? Think about it. When we think of Thanksgiving, we think Turkey. When we eat pork, new year's Eve Parties often celebrate pork and sauerkraut. Christian Easter is the traditional meal ham. And in the summer, we cannot wait for the first hamburger or steak on the grill.
How did it occur, what happened to a species, designed to digest vegetables and fruit, nuts, berries and legumes food?
We can imagine that eating meat was initially an opportunistic event, born of the need to survive. The taste of cooked meat and the sustainable energy that came from eating high-fat meat products would have been useful to the earliest people.
First cooked animal meat, would have been cooked by a forest fire, and perhaps eaten by primitives to celebrate its survival. It is something that together they would have participated each in a clan. When man learned to hunt and moved to a hunting-orientation, rather than as collectors, he would have acted in groups. You would be in teams to hunt and kill an animal for food in a group effort. Hunt and kill an animal of food, not only for the individual, but for the clan, and it would have been an occasion to celebrate when the raiders returned home bringing food.
If you were to eat the animal, again it would in the clan, a group effort to skin of the animal and tear or cut the meat from the carcass. Everyone would have shared part of the process and then in this shared in the fruits of their work.
It is easy to see how, as soon as we had to hunt for meat, the need for the collection of and celebration involved was rooted deep in our nature. We celebrate the seasons and life events with family and friends, and to eat meat as this early celebration involved, has in modern times continued this tradition.
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