Certain studies in the field of paleopathology indicate that hunter-gatherer communities went through nutritional stress in the period of late winter and early spring (Huss-Ashmore et al., 1982). Namely, in that part of the year, reliable sources of food such as small mammals, fish, and fresh or stored plant food were very poor or unavailable, which is why their diet was mainly based on large ungulates, i.e. meat with a very low percentage of fat (Speth & Spielman, 1983 ). A similar problem that was mentioned was also experienced by animals that would use up their body fat stores during the winter and would have very little fat at the end of winter and the beginning of spring. In this period of food shortage, hunters had a somewhat paradoxical hunting strategy; they avoided very lean animals and lean meat in general (Speth 1983; Noli & Avery, 1988). They knew that eating pure meat for a long period could cause serious problems and even death. Although the clinical documentation of this phenomenon is very poor (Cordain et al., 2000), numerous ethnographic and historical literature confirm the stated claim (Speth & Spielmann, 1983). For example, Stefansson in the book Arctic Manual (1944);
“If a person who used to eat normally starts eating only rabbit, the first few days the meals will be bigger and bigger, until after a week the amount of meat eaten will increase by 3–4 times. By then, the person will begin to…
