The Hajja are one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer tribes in the world.
They are believed to have lived in the same territory in northern Tanzania, eating berries, potatoes and 30 different species of mammals for the past 40.000 years.
The BBC's Dan Saladino went to see how they hunt and gather, and to ask if their way of eating could serve as a lesson for everyone.
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Lying on my stomach, I poked my head into the dark tunnel and sniffed.
Some animal.
But I couldn't believe that someone would crawl in there and drive the animal out.
That someone is Zigvadze.
And the animal?
Well, she was a prickly pig.
After handing over the bow, arrow and ax to fellow hunter Hadza, Zigvadze undressed, took a short pointed stick and disappeared into the hole.
Perhaps, I thought, he is the smallest of the group, and is the obvious choice for the task.
But the more I looked, the more it became clear to me that this is because Zigwadze is least afraid of what might be hiding inside - a cobra or mamba, a reptile, flies and ticks, and a spiny pig with 35-inch-long spines.
Up to that point, my Hajj diet was strictly vegetarian, as it usually is for these people.
A handful of berries picked from the bushes as we wandered through the dry, wooded savannah, over thorns, past acacias and through dried grass.
Occasionally there were some crispy, moist potatoes dug out of the ground and cooked over a rapidly burning fire.
There were also many baobab fruit trees.
Baobab pods with fat grains, full of white, delicious chalk-like dust, are transformed into a drink of pure fiber and vitamin C.
Anthropologists noted decades ago that members of the Hajja tribe are always hungry, but never starving.
Their desire for food is matched by the abundance of ingredients around them, and the foraging and gathering skills necessary to find them.
There are nutrients all around us that I failed to notice, but the children of Haj, even at only four years old, are adept at finding them.
Soon all I could hear from Zigwadze was a distant, muffled voice.
He found himself two meters under the ground in an interwoven network of tunnels and chambers, in which the wing is prickly.
As he discovered the animal's underworld, he shouted instructions to fellow hunters outside to block off his potential escape routes.
After 40 minutes, he surfaced, covered in dirt and a few flies, ready to dig deeper right where the spiny pig was.
Although the members of the Hajja tribe number about 1.000 men, women and children, it is believed that there are currently only 200-300 true hunter-gatherers, who do not grow food or do any farming.
For these members of the Hajja tribe, farmers are an unusual and fun crew.
One asked me: "Why stand all day in a field and wait weeks and months for food when you can eat berries from the bushes, find as much honey as you can eat, or spend an hour in a porcupine's den and feed the whole camp?".
This is how our ancient ancestors got food and nourished themselves.
The meals that Zigdvadze and his tribesmen eat are our last remaining link to the diet on which humans thrived and through which our digestive system developed - such as the complex community of gut bacteria we all possess, weighing from a kilogram to two in an adult, known and as a microbiome.
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Currently, there is a growing consensus in the medical world that our microbiome plays a large role in the activity of our immune system and that the richer or more diverse our microbiome, the lower the risk of disease.
And because of the way they eat, the Hadza have the most diverse gut microbiome on the planet.
Among my companions was Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London, who wanted to find out if eating like Hajj would make his own microbiome more like theirs.
And that's why he took samples of his own stool before and after three days spent on the Hajj diet, in order to check whether the variety of bacteria present had changed.
The results were impressive.
After just three days, the diversity of bacteria in his already healthy microbiome increased by 20 percent, and he was able to detect rare forms of bacteria often associated with good health.
It will probably be years before Spektor's research reaches a definitive conclusion about our own optimal diet.
But there is a sense of urgency, because things are changing for Hajja - and fast.
For years, farmers expanded on their territory.
In the past decade, each year they cleared 160 hectares of forested land that was a source of wild food for the Hajj.
Herders and their hungry livestock began to arrive in large numbers, scaring away many of the 30 different species of wild mammals that the Hadja had hunted and eaten for tens of thousands of years.
For me, however, the biggest surprise was the intrusion into their world of a different kind.
A thirty-minute drive from the porcupine hunt, there is a sojen at a crossroads, and inside, shelves full of cans of sugary sodas and boxes of biscuits.
It took me nine hours in a land rover over rough terrain to get there, only to find that the biggest brands in the world had already arrived before me.
Zigvadze, however, kept alive the flame of Hajja's wisdom, which effectively amounted to a quick and efficient end for the prickly pig.
Face to face with the animal, Zigvadze poked it with a stick and said: "Come, prickly pig... come to me... come here, prickly pig!".
Then, not one, but two bushy porcupines appeared.
The most impressive thing was not the long black and white spines on their clumsy bodies, which, at 30 kilograms each, are bigger than you think, but the noise.
A wall of sound filled the air, created by the warning rustle of the spikes, and intensified as Zigvadze delivered several heavy blows to the heads of the spiny pigs.
And then it was over.
Hajj hunters share everything.
Their society is egalitarian.
They do not have a leadership structure, and when it comes to meat in particular, they have an obligation to divide everything they catch into equal parts.
The entrails, heart, liver and lungs are cooked on the spot and eaten immediately, and the butchered carcasses are taken back to the camp and shared.
As I watched, nibbling nervously on a piece of porcupine liver, I realized that I was witnessing a unique event - a hunt, and a meal, that allowed me to connect with the ancient past.
All photos he conceded JeffLeach from King's College London
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