I wonder how hard it would be to get enough food to support bodybuilding in earlier eras. It would definitely be easier for a small group of guards than for a whole army.
My first idea would be lots of milk—but interesting how our go-to examples in Ancient Athens actually considered that barbaric. A cursory search suggests they largely got their proteins from fish. Well, definitely, if I have to get maximal amount of proteins with 1 day of labor with pre-modern tech I take a fishing net. One fisherman with two assitants, could, I figure, support 50 well-built guards.
There may be some reason why they aren’t already catching those fish. Or they’re already catching those fish and you need to find a way for those fish to go to your grow-a-bigger-guard project.
When you start looking into ecology it’s actually remarkable how many of the agricultural and cultural quirks of old civilizations that have been through some boom and bust cycles actually line up with ways of protecting the productivity of the land and water...
But in general, I don’t think that the king’s guards would have problems getting enough protein if they want it. A peasant army, of course, is a different matter.
The LP allele did not become common in the population until some time after it first emerged: Burger has looked for the mutation in samples of ancient human DNA and has found it only as far back as 6,500 years ago in northern Germany...Lactase persistence had a harder time becoming established in parts of southern Europe, because Neolithic farmers had settled there before the mutation appeared...The remnants of that pattern are still visible today. In southern Europe, lactase persistence is relatively rare — less than 40% in Greece and Turkey. In Britain and Scandinavia, by contrast, more than 90% of adults can digest milk.
Yeah, but still Greek colonists in South Italy held so many cattle that it is where the name Italy came from. It doesn’t sound very efficient to do it for the meat only. Better goats them, they are more suited for a hilly terrain anyway.
I wonder how hard it would be to get enough food to support bodybuilding in earlier eras. It would definitely be easier for a small group of guards than for a whole army.
My first idea would be lots of milk—but interesting how our go-to examples in Ancient Athens actually considered that barbaric. A cursory search suggests they largely got their proteins from fish. Well, definitely, if I have to get maximal amount of proteins with 1 day of labor with pre-modern tech I take a fishing net. One fisherman with two assitants, could, I figure, support 50 well-built guards.
There may be some reason why they aren’t already catching those fish. Or they’re already catching those fish and you need to find a way for those fish to go to your grow-a-bigger-guard project.
When you start looking into ecology it’s actually remarkable how many of the agricultural and cultural quirks of old civilizations that have been through some boom and bust cycles actually line up with ways of protecting the productivity of the land and water...
You probably want cheese.
But in general, I don’t think that the king’s guards would have problems getting enough protein if they want it. A peasant army, of course, is a different matter.
They were quite possibly lactose intolerant.
Forget the ancient Athenians 2500 years ago, the modern ones are still lactose intolerant:
Yeah, but still Greek colonists in South Italy held so many cattle that it is where the name Italy came from. It doesn’t sound very efficient to do it for the meat only. Better goats them, they are more suited for a hilly terrain anyway.
It sounds like we need to know more to see whether cattle made sense there—maybe it’s that cattle are easier to manage than goats.