Greek/Spartan Diet and fitness

[john m roberts]

The Morans (junior warriors) of the Maasai people of East Africa still live on a diet almost exclusively of cow's blood mixed with milk, ashes and maybe a little cow urine (don't worry, the cow is a sacred animal in their culture.) Henry Treece and others in the early 20th century detected survivals of a number of warrior customs that were common in archaic Greece that survive to this day in Eastern and Southern Africa, cattle cults and warrior fraternities among them. They implied a close Libyan-Greek connection from them (Libya had a different meaning in the ancient world). They speculated that the culture of Sparta was a survival of a lifestyle that had prevailed in much of Greece in the pre-classical era. That said, black broth sounds like nasty stuff.