Drinking water in frozen lands

[PaleoPhil]

Devil's advocate question: this just occurred to me, so it's probably a stupid question, or one that's been answered before, and I apologize beforehand, but if late Lower to Middle Paleothic people (around 300 - 500 thousand years ago) didn't heat foods with fire, how did they get drinking water in frozen winter lands like the Siberian tundra and Northern Europe? Did they eat snow? If they ate snow, doesn't that mean that it's OK to drink ice water with your meals? If they heated snow with a fire into water, doesn't that mean that they probably cooked some other foods as well?

[Raw Kyle]

I don't remember seeing this but I'm sure one of those programs about Inuit would tell you how they get their water. Since there are still Inuit who eat their meat raw though I would have to say that the water thing doesn't necessarily lead to cooking the food.

[PaleoPhil]

Well, the early contact Inuit were known to heat snow into water and cook food, but that is in modern times:

  "Also we came home to [an Inuit] dwelling so heated by the cooking that the temperature would range from 85* to 100*F. or perhaps even higher - more like our idea of a Turkish bath than a warm room. Streams of perspiration would run down our bodies, and the children were kept busy going back and forth with dippers of cold water of which we naturally drank great quantities." -Stefansson, Adventures in Diet, http://www.biblelife.org/stefansson1.htm

  "In the Barren Grounds, west of Hudson Bay, some groups used no sea products at all, illuminating their snow houses with burning caribou fat and heating these homes with twig fires." -Peoples and cultures of the American Arctic: Traditional culture, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/33100/Arctic/57875/Traditional-culture

I wonder whether this was true also in Paleo days. I can't think of another way to get water in the heart of winter when everything is frozen and there is little or no sun. Once one is heating snow to make water over burning seal oil or whale blubber or reindeer/caribou fat or twigs, why not try sampling some of the heated fat or cooking some flesh now and then? I can't imagine Stone Agers saying to each other, "No, we must not eat heated meat or fat because it violates dietary dogma and might contain ALEs." They would have eaten anything they found that tasted good and didn't make them ill within a short time. However, I think that the scarcity of fuel and importance of it for light and heat, and difficulty in using fats and oils to cook over would have made them eat raw most of the time--at least during the winter months.

So I still think raw is optimal and I will still eat raw, but I can't imagine Stone Agers not cooking at least some food in cold climates.

Stefansson also mentions drinking cold water in the Arctic with meals. I would imagine that it was ice cold, which would seem to suggest that drinking ice water with meals is OK if not optimal.

"...when I left Herschel Island I returned without reluctance to the Eskimo meals of fish and cold water. It seemed to me that, mentally and physically, I had never been in better health in my life." -Stefansson, Adventures in Diet

Granted, Stefansson was not right about everything. For one thing, I think he exaggerated the amount that Inuits cooked food because of his own preference for meats and fish cooked medium to medium well. Still, these things do make me wonder.

My guess is that this issue was addressed here before, but I searched and found nothing.

[William]

When I was there I melted ice. Snow water tasted like the way catpiss smells. And I'm Canadian, so I knew not to use the yellow snow. Foxes, eh?


Eating snow is a bad idea, takes too much energy to heat it up to body temp.

Inuit dwelling places were always above freezing, just a few human bodies generate enough heat in a small well insulated place, so ice would melt anyway.

[PaleoPhil]

Inuit dwelling places were always above freezing, just a few human bodies generate enough heat in a small well insulated place, so ice would melt anyway.

Excellent point, William, thanks.

Along those lines I found this:

Igloos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igloo

"On the outside, temperatures may be as low as -45 °C (-49.0 °F), but on the inside the temperature may range from -7 °C (19 °F) to 16 °C (61 °F) when warmed by body heat alone.

....in the traditional Inuit igloo the heat from the kudlik (qulliq) (stone lamp) causes the interior to melt slightly. This melting and refreezing builds up an ice sheet and contributes to the strength of the igloo."

Though this suggests that on days in which the outside temperature was below 40°C, the Arctic and Siberian peoples would need more than body heat to melt snow. Maybe they put a water container inside their sleeping bag or parka to warm it further on the coldest days if they didn't have seal fat or other fuels?

One of the questions I didn't find an answer to in the past is how far back the soapstone and ivory lamps were used. Some claim that such lamps were used for small amounts of cooking as well as lighting and heating, but others disagreed in the past at another forum.

[William]

I still think it was ice, but anyway the thought of a bag of frozen water in bed is for masochists. IIRC they slept naked under furs - the whole family together for warmth.

Soapstone lamps were probably used from the first, as those looong Arctic winter nights would have been intolerable without light.
I would like it if a person tried cooking over a seal fat fired soapstone lamp before claiming that they did. Bet water would not boil.

[Hannibal]

(...) if late Lower to Middle Paleothic people (around 300 - 500 thousand years ago) didn't heat foods with fire, how did they get drinking water in frozen winter lands like the Siberian tundra and Northern Europe?

The answer is simple - they dwelt in regions of Central Africa
That was not so long ago when homo sapiens did travel to some northern and colder regions

[PaleoPhil]

The answer is simple - they dwelt in regions of Central Africa
That was not so long ago when homo sapiens did travel to some northern and colder regions

If you read The Paleolithic Societies of Europe by Clive Gamble you'll see that hominid hunters were in Europe going back at least 500,000 years before the present. The best hunting grounds were south of the edges of the glaciers, where the melting ice and snow produced fertile steppes that were the domain of megafauna. At around 500Kyr BP there was a dramatic decline in the giant cats and hyenas, which opened up a niche for the hominids who scavenged, and increasingly hunted, the resulting abundance of megafauna, whose numbers shot up as the numbers of the giant predators declined. Eventually, the homo sapiens (and other hominids, like the NeanderThals) specialized in "prime-aged hunting," focusing on megafauna (prime-age animals offered the youngest, choicest meats of the full-sized adult game, and the megafauna like mammoths offered the biggest stores of fats and fatty organs) of the megafauna and smaller prey animals in the abundant bounty that befell them. Many of them gorged on mammoth meat and fat and built their homes out of mammoth bones. It's likely that there was nary a fruitarian among them.

"Mammoth kills were also a valuable source of fat. Rich in vitamins and energy, the fat of a single mammoth could feed a group of more than 20 people." -- Miles Barton, Prehistoric America

I read somewhere, maybe it was Paleolithic Societies, that the human tribes that specialized in hunting mammoths ate little else, because the mammoths were such an abundant source of fats, meats and organs--everything a tribe needs for a healthy diet save water.

[TylerDurden]

The claim that hominids depended mainly on large mammals for their food has already been debunked(at least the one previously claiming that the Neanderthals virtually only ate meat and then only mammoths - the idea was that they became extinct as mammoths died out - turns out their diet was more varied , including plants and that they didn't subists on only mammoths at all).Here's an article on 1 of the several new studies:-

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/lifestyle/apart-from-a-meat-diet-neanderthals-also-ate-plants_10043088.html


Same goes for Cro-magnon, they did hunt some large mammals(wild aurochs and horses mainly judging from cave-paintings) but they also hunted a wide variety of smaller animals as well.

Basically, cavemen didn't give a damn what diet they ate, they just ate what was available, and if they'd been fussy eaters, they'd have all become extinct long ago(well at least in the subarctic areas).

[TylerDurden]

Water is of course easy to get from rivers in Arctic areas(most never freeze completely because of the constant flow of water) and frozen lakes can have holes hacked in with the use of implements like clubs.

[William]

Water is of course easy to get from rivers in Arctic areas(most never freeze completely because of the constant flow of water)

Name one.



 

and frozen lakes can have holes hacked in with the use of implements like clubs.

We did it, but not with a club. All we found was more ice, all the way to the bottom, and we had a special tool called an ice chisel, made of steel and hardwood, not available to tradional Inuit.

[TylerDurden]

This shows typical ignorance. Rivers may well freeze on the surface, if flowing very slowly, but don't generally freeze much below that point. You'd require really extreme low temperatures to ensure ice all the way to the bottom.

[yon yonson]

what's wrong with just melting ice in your mouth? if you're getting all kinds of energy from fat mammoths i dont see the problem...

[Raw Kyle]

This shows typical ignorance. Rivers may well freeze on the surface, if flowing very slowly, but don't generally freeze much below that point. You'd require really extreme low temperatures to ensure ice all the way to the bottom.

I don't think anyone disputed that. The challenge is, go get some of that water with no modern tools.

[TylerDurden]

I don't think anyone disputed that. The challenge is, go get some of that water with no modern tools.

Like the other poster mentioned, ice melts into water in the mouth etc. No need for cooking. And, Inuit etc., routinely make holes in the ice to get water below(just have to use clubs or whatever).

[William]

You'd require really extreme low temperatures to ensure ice all the way to the bottom.

Inuit live and lived mostly in the Arctic, where really extreme low temperatures are normal most of the winter.
I did mention that we dug to the bottom of a lake. It was 5 feet deep, and the mud at the bottom was frozen too.

Someone once calculated how much energy is required to heat snow in the mouth to body temperature, compared to energy from food; it turned out to be a bad idea, and AFAIK nobody does it in southern Canada except as curious children.

Easier to melt ice, as icewater tastes a lot better than the snow water.

The Arctic is so different that it helps to see it as alien - it's the only place AFAIK where a healthy large predator will deliberately hunt Man, and then there is snow-blindness, and no running etc. The Inuit needed to learn survival stuff not required of the rest of us, this might explain their big brains and, I assume, high intelligence/sophisticated culture.

[PaleoPhil]

Like the other poster mentioned, ice melts into water in the mouth etc. No need for cooking. And, Inuit etc., routinely make holes in the ice to get water below(just have to use clubs or whatever).

Interesting, do you have a source to refer us to on this for more info?

Does it make sense to assume above that William is exhibiting "typical ignorance," given that he lives in Canada?

William--fascinating post. Your Canadian experience is quite helpful on topics like this. Of course, if any of it is off, others can add their own experiences or research.

[SuperInfinity]

Maybe they got their water from paleo fruitarians being kind enough to piss into their primitive bowls and carved implements? After all fruits contain a very high percentage of water. Nearly all other primates get the vast majority of their water (if not all at certain times) from fruit. Hilariously I even once saw an anti-fruitarian trying to argue that getting too much liquid as you would from fruit was bad for you.

[TylerDurden]

Interesting, do you have a source to refer us to on this for more info?

Does it make sense to assume above that William is exhibiting "typical ignorance," given that he lives in Canada?

William--fascinating post. Your Canadian experience is quite helpful on topics like this. Of course, if any of it is off, others can add their own experiences or research.

Oh, it's known that the Inuit made holes in the ice to fish so I assumed that they must also have drunk from such holes as well(if freshwater not saltwater). However, it does seem as though they used ice mainly re storage and just brought it back to their  warm igloos to melt:-

http://books.google.com/books?id=10yea7-5dQ0C&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=inuit+diet+water&source=bl&ots=TSF8CF75nu&sig=5TF4eU5OVmoMr8pGSWLOeOlGDBM&hl=en&ei=7LR0StmmCpqsjAex9_SnBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#v=onepage&q=inuit%20diet%20water&f=false

As regards the accusation of typical ignorance, it's also mentioned in numerous other articles that sea-ice, for example, doesn't go below a certain level, generally(allowing seals etc. to make holes in the ice etc. Similiarly, any basic knowledge of the outdoors(such as in the dead of winter in a cold climate) should involve having seen many rivers still flowing in ice-cold temperatures, with only a bit of ice around.

[William]

From that link, I see : "During most of the year, drinking water had to be found by the Inuit in the form of fresh water ice, in the icebergs and ice blocks which had originated from the continental ice cap and become immobilised in the sea ice, near the coast during winter."
This is for the Greenland Inuit - the American Inuit would have found their freshwater ice in the pressure ridge, where there was sea ice more than a year old. There is no salt in such old ice.

Inuit did spend a lot of time sitting around holes in the sea ice, these holes were the breathing holes kept open all winter by seals, and when the seal emerged the hunter would poke it with his spear.
As reported in the link, seal meat was their staple, not fish.

Raw eaters don't need as much water as modern Inuit who now boil their seal meat in Iceland, we know that from experience. I had the impression from Stefansson's book that his hosts cooked their fish only because they thought that white men could not eat raw. If they were not used to cooked fish,  all that water-drinking is explained.

[PaleoPhil]

Oh, it's known that the Inuit made holes in the ice to fish so I assumed that they must also have drunk from such holes as well(if freshwater not saltwater). However, it does seem as though they used ice mainly re storage and just brought it back to their  warm igloos to melt:-

http://books.google.com/books?id=10yea7-5dQ0C&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=inuit+diet+water&source=bl&ots=TSF8CF75nu&sig=5TF4eU5OVmoMr8pGSWLOeOlGDBM&hl=en&ei=7LR0StmmCpqsjAex9_SnBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#v=onepage&q=inuit%20diet%20water&f=false

Excellent link, thanks. It answers my original question--Inuit in frozen lands took particularly pure ice chunks home and melted them for water. Since it says there was 4000 ft. of ice on Greenland, it sounds like the Inuit there would not have been able to drink from holes in freshwater lakes or rivers during the winter, though that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't possible in other Arctic areas.

As regards the accusation of typical ignorance, it's also mentioned in numerous other articles that sea-ice, for example, doesn't go below a certain level, generally(allowing seals etc. to make holes in the ice etc.

But salt water is not drinkable, is it?

Similiarly, any basic knowledge of the outdoors(such as in the dead of winter in a cold climate) should involve having seen many rivers still flowing in ice-cold temperatures, with only a bit of ice around.

I'll leave the nature of Arctic rivers in winter to you and William to debate. In Vermont, where I live, all the rivers and lakes freeze over completely in the coldest months, including the largest river (which people skate and ice-fish on), except for the largest lake during unusually warm winters, which has been happening more often in recent years. The really fast-moving streams in the area where I grew up had thin layers of ice, but even they were covered completely during the coldest months (we used to skate on the flat patches of those too). Even the waterfalls would freeze over.

....Raw eaters don't need as much water as modern Inuit who now boil their seal meat in Iceland, we know that from experience. I had the impression from Stefansson's book that his hosts cooked their fish only because they thought that white men could not eat raw. If they were not used to cooked fish,  all that water-drinking is explained.

Thanks William, that book excerpt had me concerned for a moment, because I don't drink noticeably more water on my raw ZC diet and am not particularly thirsty, so I wondered for a moment if there was something wrong with me, but then I recalled that my urine is fairly light in color and my skin is actually LESS dry than it was when I ate carbs, so I think I'm getting enough fluids by eating raw meats as well as fluids.

Plus, I value Stefansson's contribution very highly, but I share your suspicion re: Stefansson and Inuit cooking, as all other sources I've seen mention more eating of raw meat and organs than he did, including Weston Price (who wrote about Eskimos drying and smoking fish, rather than cooking), and Inuit people themselves. I agree that the Inuit he encountered probably cooked more for the white men than they normally would, plus I think Stefansson was more disposed toward cooked foods and against organs, because he admitted that he preferred the taste of well-done meats, except that he also admitted in "Adventures in Diet" that by living with Eskimos he became "as fond of raw fish as if I had been a Japanese." I also suspect that he did not care for some organs, though he did seem to like bone marrow and the foods in the Bellevue study included "liver, kidney, brain, bone marrow," but which of these Stefansson ate, I don't know.

[Iguana]

But salt water is not drinkable, is it?

Why not ? Why would salted food be edible while salted water would not be drinkable ? Funny that people saying sea water is undrinkable are the same ones eating salted food !

Alain Bombard crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a lifeboat to show that we can survive on raw fish and seawater :

http://www.ourdailydead.com/2005/07/page/2/ Published: July 24, 2005
Alain Bombard, who deliberately drifted across the Atlantic for 65 days in a lifeboat with no provisions - subsisting on plankton, saltwater and raw fish - to prove it was possible, died on July 19 at a hospital in Toulon, France. He was 80.

Dr. Bombard became an instant legend in France in 1952 when he drifted from the Canary Islands to Barbados in a small rubber boat.

[PaleoPhil]

Why would salted food be edible while salted water would not be drinkable ?  Funny that people saying sea water is undrinkable are the same ones eating salted food !

I don't salt my food or eat salted foods and I give those people the benefit of the doubt when they recommend not salting food that they do not do so themselves, until proven otherwise.

Alain Bombard crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a lifeboat to show that we can survive on raw fish and seawater :

Survive for a limited time, yes, but I haven't of any traditional society that regularly consumes salt water, not even in frozen lands, have you?

I think the ice melting that William suggested and was reported in the book Tyler linked to (excellent link--thanks Tyler) was the more likely main source of drinking water during Arctic winters. The book also notes that the Inuit had the highest tested sensitivity to the presence of salt in water, which is the opposite of what one would expect in a high-salt consuming society.

Maybe they put the ice in sealskin containers in the warmest part of their igloos. I remember seeing a tv documentary in which an Inuit family was living in an igloo and they had a well insulated warm room that they slept in that I think got up to 60 degrees or thereabouts.

[PaleoPhil]

Here's another source that reports that Eskimos cooked some of their food and that boiling over a seal oil lamp was one cooking method:

"The seal provides large quantities of superb fuel for lighting or heating (a 200 lb. seal provides nearly IOO lb. of blubber in winter) ;

....the Eskimos often eat their food raw, sometimes frozen, sometimes thawed. Cooking when done consists of boiling or occasionally roasting, never frying. Caribou meat and fish are eaten raw, and are preferred when they are rotten; caribou and fish heads are boiled. The caribou liver is allowed to ferment inside the moss-filled caribou stomach under a hot sun for some days before being eaten; probably all its glycogen breaks down. Seal is lightly boiled over a lamp of seal oil, blood being added to make soup after the cooked meat has been taken from the pot; if eaten raw, seal is eaten frozen. Dried meat with fat may be pounded into pemmican; this foodstuff has been praised by Stefbnsson (1944) but was found very unsatisfactory by his colleague Hadley (Stefbnsson, 1921) and by others (cf. Kark, Johnson & Lewis, 1945). Large quantities of water are drunk during a meal which, like most aspects of Eskimo life, is unhygienic-face, hands and clothing get smeared with fat and gravy, and those eating do not necessarily leave the meal to urinate." (The Diet of Canadian Indians and Eskimos By H. M. SINCLAIRLa, boratory of Human Nutrition, University of Oxford, 1952)

If they could boil water with their seal oil lamps, then they could clearly melt ice with them.

[TylerDurden]

They urinated where they ate - god almighty!