Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets
I don&#x27;t see how that&#x27;s surprising, at least if you subscribe to the Endurance Running Hypothesis (and I do). Any prey humans used to hunt using what we now know as persistence hunting would have been large game. Especially in the hot, tropic climates early humans seemed to have thrived in, such meat would have started to spoil, even if hunted fresh, before any such hunter would have had the time to bring it back to the family group, let alone consume it. Meats in general have a very short shelf life and if we look to the various independently developed preservation methods in human groups around the world, many of them seem to be centered around a controlled decomposition by &quot;favourable&quot; organisms (like the maggots in the seal story).<p>There&#x27;s also the simple observation that no doubt many of us have already made: animals all around us seem to have no issues with partially decomposed meat. Dogs don&#x27;t seem to mind it, nor do cats, nor do other primates like chimpanzees. It&#x27;s obvious that at least in our very recent evolutionary history we had far higher tolerance to spoilage.