The Past, Present, and Future of Eating Animals

Abstract This paper examines the transformation of human relationships with animals and meat consumption from prehistoric times to the present day. While the “Man-the-Hunter” narrative has long justified contemporary meat-intensive diets by appealing to human evolutionary history, modern industrialized meat production bears no resemblance to ancestral dietary practices, or the ancient worldview of the natural world of our early ancestors. Similarly, the early domestication of animals would have created new and intimate cultural shifts to prehistoric human-animal relationships. This analysis further reveals how meat consumption in the historical pre-industrial period became entangled with colonialism, imperialism, and systems of power rooted in White masculinity and supremacy. The paper traces how the relationship between humans and animals dramatically changed through meat industrialization resulting in contemporary consumers’ disconnection from animal suffering. Finally, this chapter makes a call for the anthropological engagement with the historical and cultural connection with meat in order to make ethical interventions for reimagining the future of eating animals.