A far-flung food history finder friend has alerted me to this ancient food heritage site, already recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. It's in Alberta, Canada, in the foothills of the Rockies, and is apparently the largest, oldest--dating back 5500 years--and best preserved of the buffalo killing sites in North America. Its name derives from a hapless young brave who hung out under the cliff to watch the carnage and got caught in a pile of diving buffalo.
Our reporter writes:
They were hunter/gatherers,
living on inhospitable land, frozen much of the year, unreceptive to growing
edible crops. The only
domesticated animal they had was the dog, and they did not know about the
wheel.
But they somehow managed to
psyche out the buffalo, analyze the terrain, and spend weeks gently coaxing
the herd towards its ultimate doom.
Once they had their crop of buffalo, they would use every bit of the beasts—eating the fresh meat and drying the rest in strips for future consumption. The pelts they used for clothes, the skins for tents, the sinews for thread, etc. Without this meat, these people would have not survived.
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