Pemmican: The original energy bar?

Buffalo (and other) meat could be preserved by drying. (Dried meat,
or "jerky" is still a raw food. Today many scientists believe that raw
red meat provides the most complete source of nutrients for the
human body.) This jerky could then be pounded into a powder and
mixed with an equal amount of rendered tallow (fat) and, if possible,
berries such as chokecherries or buffalo berries. This preparation is
called pemmican. The nutritional composition of pemmican is very
close to human breast milk. Like breast milk, eighty-five percent of it's
calories are derived from fat. It is digested without use of intestinal
flora, and so if pemmican is eaten exclusively for several days the
amount of bacteria in the gut is greatly reduced. Like breast milk, very
little waste remains from it's digestion. Pemmican is recommended
as an excellent first food for infants, as well as for persons suffering
from a gastrointestinal disorder. When one is aware that the name by
which the Lakota called non-Indians means "takers of the fat", it is
clear that pemmican was a very essential survival food for Plains
Indians, but not just the Plains Indians. Many other Indians used
pemmican. A pemmican made from sea mammals was the main food,
sometimes the only food, that was eaten by the Inuit most of the year.
Fat is an excellent preservative, containing a high concentration of
vitamin E, and a diet based on Pemmican would sustain people
through the winter. It should be noted that the molecular structure of the
fat of a wild animal differs from that of a domesticated animal. Wild
game contains over five times more polyunsaturated ("healthy") fat per
gram than domestic livestock. The fat in wild game contains a fatty
acid that may play a part in preventing atherosclerosis ("hardening of
the arteries"). This fatty acid cannot be detected in domestic beef. 

Sources: NeanderThin by Ray Audette Paleolithic Nutrition: a consideration of its
nature and current implications, by SB Eaton and Melvin Konner, New England
Journal of Medicine, Vol. 312, no.5, Jan. 1985