Excess protein enabled dog domestication during severe Ice Age winters
I can&#x27;t speak to the nutritional aspect of it, but having attempted various high protein or protein&#x2F;fat heavy keto diets in the past with varying levels of success I do have to say it doesn&#x27;t take long before you just get sick of eating meat. The charm of it wears off. Our paleolithic ancestors would have craved and sought out any and all carbohydrate sources, and preserved summer fruits and berries as much as they could have. First nations here in Canada made&#x2F;make pemmican, a mixture of animal products and berries from the summer, as a winter food, and I&#x27;m sure this practice goes back for a very long time.<p>At a certain point, I&#x27;m sure being sick of meat (especially from fairly large and omnipresent megafauna), the services of a companion dog&#x2F;wolf would have been worth the waste.<p>Also many northern hunter gatherers eat the contents of the stomach of their kills as a way to get carbohydrates, trace nutrients and vitamins, etc. Between that and a source for furs, leathers, bones (for tool&#x2F;structure making), one might make more kills than necessary and have excess meat.