Steak - Mark Schatzker [30]
Drucker tested the theory by analyzing isotopes in the collagen in Magdalenian Woman’s bones and comparing them with isotopes found in the remains of Magdalenian prey animals. The results were surprising: Magdalenian Woman, Drucker discovered, ate hardly any fish. She didn’t eat much saiga antelope, either, because there wasn’t evidence of much saiga antelope consumption in her bone collagen. What she did eat was a tremendous amount of steak. Sixty-eight percent of her protein came from large bovids—either aurochs or European bison. Given that Paleolithic humans ate huge amounts of meat—probably as much as three and a half pounds a day (though a Paleolithic serving probably included as much fat as lean muscle)—that means that during an average week, Magdalenian Woman downed almost four Texas Kings’ worth of aurochs or bison meat.
Was Magdalenian Woman one of prehistory’s greatest Beef Loyals? Did she eat better than the other women? Was she privileged? It is possible, especially given all that jewelry. In France, a wealthy husband is still sometimes referred to as his wife’s bifteck. If she goes to a cocktail party and starts spreading unpleasant rumors about the man who got the promotion her husband deserved, people will say, “Elle défend son bifteck”—she’s defending her steak. Maybe the hunter who flattered Magdalenian Woman with seashells and deer teeth also dragged home plenty of dead aurochs and bison and lavished her with back fat, bone marrow, and rib eyes.
Why would Stone Age hunters have prized large bovids? Because they were large, for one thing. Killing a big animal results in a great deal of meat, to say nothing of the prestige accorded the thrower of the winning spear. Fat had everything to do with it. During a Paleolithic winter in France, fruit and vegetables were scarce. If Magdalenian Woman didn’t get a little over half her caloric intake from animal fat, she would have died. Fat was a winter-long obsession. And for a fat-obsessed hunter-gatherer, a bigger carcass is always preferable to a smaller carcass. Other things being equal, a bigger carcass will have more fat on it than a small one. There is a fine strip of back fat beneath the hide of a saiga antelope, but the strip of back fat underneath an aurochs’s eelstripe is thicker, wider, and more filling.
Some evidence suggests, furthermore, that the larger a mammal is, the higher the percentage of body fat it will have. It is the consumption of small, ultra-lean rabbits that leads to protein poisoning, after all—though if you want lean, try eating a shrew. Blue whales, on the other hand, come wrapped in thick layers of blubber. When you consider that a big male saiga antelope tops out at 140 pounds and a big male reindeer at 700 pounds, an 1,800-pound aurochs would have provided hundreds of pounds of fat—fatty brain, fatty marrow, fatty organs, and fatty steaks—that could feed a tribe of cave-dwelling humans for weeks. An 1,800-pound aurochs, it hardly needs saying, would have earned its killer unimaginable prestige.
The aurochs painted on the walls at Lascaux, it comes as no surprise, look fat. None of them appear remotely scrawny, which,