Elsevier

Journal of Human Evolution

Volume 71, June 2014, Pages 119-128
Journal of Human Evolution

Honey, Hadza, hunter-gatherers, and human evolution

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.03.006 Get rights and content

Abstract

Honey is the most energy dense food in nature. It is therefore not surprising that, where it exists, honey is an important food for almost all hunter-gatherers. Here we describe and analyze widespread honey collecting among foragers and show that where it is absent, in arctic and subarctic habitats, honey bees are also rare to absent. Second, we focus on one hunter-gatherer society, the Hadza of Tanzania. Hadza men and women both rank honey as their favorite food. Hadza acquire seven types of honey. Hadza women usually acquire honey that is close to the ground while men often climb tall baobab trees to raid the largest bee hives with stinging bees. Honey accounts for a substantial proportion of the kilocalories in the Hadza diet, especially that of Hadza men. Cross-cultural forager data reveal that in most hunter-gatherers, men acquire more honey than women but often, as with the Hadza, women do acquire some. Virtually all warm-climate foragers consume honey. Our closest living relatives, the great apes, take honey when they can. We suggest that honey has been part of the diet of our ancestors dating back to at least the earliest hominins. The earliest hominins, however, would have surely been less capable of acquiring as much honey as more recent, fully modern human hunter-gatherers. We discuss reasons for thinking our early ancestors would have acquired less honey than foragers ethnographically described, yet still significantly more than our great ape relatives.

Introduction

This special issue of the Journal of Human Evolution is dedicated to ‘Insectivory’ – eating insects. This paper focuses on the consumption of honey as an insect product. While hunting and meat-eating have long received attention in the literature on paleodiets, honey consumption has received much less attention until recently (Wrangham, 2011, Crittenden, 2012). Here, we first discuss the importance of honey for human foragers wherever honey exists. Next, we analyze how much honey is consumed by Hadza hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. We report how much honey is acquired by males versus females and how acquisition varies with age. We also report on the amount of honey acquired from each bee species. We discuss the importance of a chopping tool to access hives inside trees. Finally, we discuss the importance of controlling fire to make torches to stun and incapacitate stinging bees. These factors are used to estimate how important honey was for foragers living before effective chopping tools and the control of fire.

Honey is probably the most energy dense food in nature. Several analyses have concluded that it has roughly 3049–3680 kcal per kg (Skinner, 1991, Ulene, 1995, Murray et al., 2001). There are several different species of bees in Africa that make honey but the one famous for its aggressiveness in defense of the hive is Apis mellifera. This kind of honey also usually comes in the greatest quantities. The African honey bee is famous for its serious stings and aggressiveness compared with those hybrid subspecies that European beekeepers have cross-bred. Within a minute or two of being stung, one's hand can swell noticeably and stay feverish for several days.

With straw-like tongues, honeybees suck nectar from flowering plants. The nectar mixes with proteins and enzymes in their stomachs. When they return to the hive they fan their wings, which causes the nectar to evaporate and thicken. Nectar is about 80% water, while honey is only 14–18% water (Winston, 1991). Honey then is nectar that bees have collected, regurgitated, and dehydrated to enhance its nutritional properties for the larvae that feed on it. It is also an important food for humans, other mammals such as black bears (Ursus americanus), and the honey badger or ratel (Mellivora capensis), as well as birds like honeyguides (Indicator indicator) and honeyeaters (Meliphagidae) (Ford and Paton, 1976). In addition, our closest relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) (Sanz and Morgan, 2009, McLennan, 2011), bonobos (Pan paniscus) (Bermejo et al., 1994, McGrew et al., 2007), gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) (Kajobe and Roubik, 2006) and orangutans (Pongo abelii and Pongo pygmaeus) (van Schaik et al., 2003) all eat honey, so it is likely that the last common ancestor (LCA) of the great apes also accessed honey. We use our data on the Hadza to estimate how much honey our ancestors were capable of acquiring before they could control fire and before they had very effective chopping tools.

Where honey is available, it is an important food for hunter-gatherers. Almost all warm-climate foragers in the Standard Cross Cultural Sample (SCCS) of traditional societies have honey in their diet (Fig. 1, Table 1). Of the 36 foraging societies in the SCCS by our definition of foragers, there are 29 with data on honey consumption.1 Fifteen of the 16 warm-climate societies (Effective Temperature ≥13 °C) take honey, whereas none of the 13 cold-climate societies (ET < 13 °C) (Table 1) take honey, or at least there is no mention of it. Of the 15 warm-climate societies, only the Badjau of the Philippines, who spend most of their time on boats, do not collect honey (Nimmo, 1964). It is clear that the cold weather explains why there is such a difference in honey consumption between the warm-climate and cold-climate foragers. According to one source, bees “…brave the rigors of life in the arctic tundra and make the best of the few, long days during the very short summers… Most bees, however, are warmth-loving creatures and the greatest diversity of species is to be found in warm, temperate areas…” (O'Toole and Raw, 1999: 32).

Across the SCCS foragers, honey is taken exclusively by males in seven societies, predominantly by males in four societies, and equally by both sexes in three societies. Foragers go to great lengths to get honey. Men of the Vedda of Sri Lanka would climb long vines hanging down from the tops of cavernous cliffs or climb bamboo stalks through narrow ravines to reach honey (Seligman and Seligman, 1911; see also Kraft et al., 2014). The bee hives are so high that a fall would almost certainly mean death or incapacitation. In the rain forest of Malaysia, the Batek likewise use vines to climb up to hives but they usually simply hang down along the trunk of tall trees, which are a bit safer (Endicott and Endicott, 2008). The Mbuti of the Congo forests eat large amounts of honey. According to Ichikawa (1981), honey is their favorite food. At times, during the rainy season up to 80% of the calories in their diet come from honey (Ichikawa, 1981).

Australian aborigines like the Aranda have a strong preference for honey. They mostly take honey from stingless bees (Trigona spp.). Tiwi women acquire honey about as frequently as men and in similar amounts (Barry and Schlegel, 1982, Odea, 1991). According to one report (Cherry, 1993) they “caught a bee feeding on pollen, and after attaching to it a leaf or petal by means of sticky juices of certain plants, let it go. The bee would fly straight to the hive and the item it was carrying not only would make it easier to see, but would result in its flight being lower and slower, thus, it was easily followed by the hunter…To obtain the honeybag, a tree could be cut down or, if the tree were large, a hole could be cut in the tree under the hive. A stick could then be poked into the hive and stirred about until the honey ran down the stick into a bark basket.”

In South America, many foragers took honey, but unlike African foragers, they would often let it sit or cook it with cornmeal or manioc until it became mead (alcohol). According to Holmberg (1950:28), who studied the Siriono of Bolivia, “In extracting honey the tree containing the hive may or may not be cut down. In any case, a hole is made – nowadays with an iron ax – below the spot where the honey is located. The combs are then removed with the hands and the honey wrung from them into calabashes. Before the introduction of iron tools, the hole where the bees entered the hive was enlarged by using fire and the chonta digging stick.”

We see in the previous paragraph that iron tools, wherever available, are so effective that they have displaced other tools. Given that iron has been available for only about 3300 years, even where it was first made in the Near East (Waldbaum, 1978), other materials had to serve before that. Hafted stone tools, which date back to at least 500,000 years ago (Wilkins et al., 2012), must have done a reasonably good job. Before this perhaps hand held chopping tools were used. The earliest depiction of honey collecting is said to be about 20,000 years ago (Isack and Reyer, 1989). It is not only easy to imagine that humans were collecting honey long before this, but hard to believe otherwise.

The Hadza live near Lake Eyasi in northern Tanzania. They number about 1000 and live in camps that average between 20 and 30 individuals. Camps are larger during the dry season because it is necessary to be near drinking water and there are only so many waterholes with water year round. The Hadza are mobile foragers, moving camp about every four to six weeks. There is a dry season from mid-June to mid-November and a rainy season from mid-November to mid-June (Fig. 2a). The amount of honey available and acquired varies considerably during the year with the greatest amount acquired during the rainy season (Fig. 2b). However, one type of honey or another is acquired during much of the year (Marlowe and Berbesque, 2009). The Hadza acquire honey from seven different species of bees (Table 2). Both sexes collect honey, but often target honey from different species of bees, and men take much more than women.

Women target kanoa (Trigona ruspolii), often found in Commiphora trees, more than any other kind of honey because the hive is usually about eye-level and the bees do not sting. The honey of the stingless bees is usually difficult to reach without chopping into the limb to reach a hollow inside, where the hive is located. Women usually have to borrow their husband's axe to target this type of honey. Kanoa is more often taken than all other types of honey but it comes in smaller amounts than ba'alako, the honey made by the stinging bee (A. mellifera scutelata). The hives that contain kanoa, nateko, and tsunako, the honey of the stingless bees, can be identified by simply looking at the protruding spout on a tree, made of wax and resin. This serves as the entrance into and out of a hive, and is open during the day but closed at night (Peterson, 2012). By watching and listening at the spout, one can tell if the hive is active and worth raiding.

Hadza men routinely monitor the state of baobab trees for ba'alako in the local area around their temporary camps. Frequently, men follow the honeyguide bird if it comes to get their attention by chattering at them, and then flying in the direction of a beehive. According to the Hadza, honeyguides only lead their accomplices to the hives of A. mellifera (the stinging bee). There are, however, cases where they follow the bird but give up looking for honey after having decided that it would not be worth it. Sometimes the bird seems to think there is plenty of honey but the Hadza disagree. Ba'alako, from stinging bees, is usually high up in baobab trees (often as high as 15 m, with a diameter of 8–9 m) where men can reach inside a hole to access the honey. Hadza men must use their axes (Fig. 3) to fashion wooden stakes to climb up the tree. They use the blunt side of their axes to hammer the first stake into the baobab tree then repeat this until they can climb up to the hive. If there is a lot of honey in the hive they climb down and start a fire. They make a torch and carry it back up the tree to smoke the bees. According to one view, this induces panic, which causes the bees to consume great amounts of honey to store for the future. However, this makes the bees drowsy. Once the bees are sufficiently sated, one can reach in and grab the honeycomb (Fig. 4) or parts of it without getting stung so many times.

Section snippets

Cross-cultural analysis

To define the warm-climate versus cold-climate foragers, we used effective temperature (ET). This is calculated as ET = ((18*W) − (10*C))/((W − C) + 8) where W equals mean temperature of the warmest month and C equals mean temperature of the coldest month. This effectively takes into account the variation in temperature across the year, not just a simple mean difference. We use ET ≥ 13 °C to define warm-climate societies and ET < 13 °C to define cold-climate societies. We used Fisher's exact

Analysis of honey consumed by foragers

Across the foraging societies in the SCCS, honey consumption is significantly less likely in the cold-climate societies than in the warm-climate societies (Fisher's exact p < 0.0005). None of the cold-climate foraging societies take honey, whereas all but one of the warm-climate societies do take honey.

Analysis of honey consumed by the Hadza

The rest of our results pertain to the Hadza only. In our Hadza data, there are a total of 12,762 food items of all types in the dataset. There are 4075 entries of food items acquired by (256)

Discussion

Honey is an important food for the Hadza. Not only is it the highest in caloric value but its availability helps mitigate shortages in the overall diet because hunting is less productive in the rainy season, just when honey is at its most available. When we compare hunter-gatherers, like the Hadza, with our ape relatives, one of the clear distinctions is in the use of tools. While there is a great amount of overlap between chimpanzees and human foragers in diet and tool use, there is clearly

Conclusion

Honey might be the most common and important insect-related item in the human forager diet, and probably the paleo-diet over much of the Pleistocene, at least in warm climates. Foragers risk falling to their death (or being crippled) when they are in tall baobab trees or climbing vines to access bee hives. These examples of dangerous actions illustrate just how much foragers value honey. Hadza men and women rank honey as their favorite food (Berbesque and Marlowe, 2009). Other foraging

Acknowledgments

We thank two anonymous reviewers for excellent suggestions. We thank Hervey Peoples for making Fig. 1 and Table 1. We also thank Costech for research permission in Tanzania. We thank the National Science Foundation (grant # 0544751, #9976681, # 0242455), as well as grants from the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation (SL952012) and Wenner-Gren. We also thank the Petersons, especially Daudi, for their help in numerous ways. We also thank our field assistants in Tanzania. We thank Nicholas Blurton Jones for

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