>Below is an url from the online SLATE magazine. A regular feature, The
>Earthling, is written by Robert Wright--one of the more entertaining
>(to my taste) "evolutionary psychology" proponents around. Reading his
>columns would be an easy way to expose yourself to some of the tenets
>of this new and controversial field. In a nutshell EvoPsych is "Those
>genetically based mental traits that, during evolution, consistently
>helped their possessors get genes into the next generation became part
>of human nature".

>A very readable book/overview on the subject is called "Stone Age
>Present" (William F Allman). I still see it stacked in discount
>(outlet malls esp)bookstores for 6 bucks, while also sometimes in B&N
>for over $20. And I wonder, should I be buying a stockpile so that
>when people catch up to another book ahead of its time (like Eaton et
>al's_Paleolithic_Prescription_ turned out to be) it is not impossible
>to get a hold of? Anyway, here is the SLATE url...

>The Earthling:
>http://www.slate.com/redirect/announce.asp?gotoT=/Earthling/97-06-19/
>Earthling.asp

I agree the book is excellent. I find it fascinating how the author in
combining the disciplines of anthropology, psychology, linguistics,
philosophy and biology attempts to explain how the human mind developed
and how he is able to trace so many traits and behaviors of modern man
back to when he/she still was a hunter-gatherer roaming the plains. For
anybody interested in human behavior and development this book is a
must. Stefan, in the process of developing your universal ethics I
think you will find this book to be very valuable.

The book does not speak much about diet but the where it does it has
some very interesting perspectives. The two excerpts below are from p.
203-206.

"To be sure, our modern-day bodies reflect the evolutionary legacies of
a long history of eating meat.  It is not only the big human brain that
distinguishes humans from our evolutionary cousins, the apes; our
bowels do, too:  The gut of an ape is dominated by the large colon -
the big, tubelike organ that helps process the tough fibers of plant
food - and this testifies to the apes everyday diet of massive amounts
of vegetation.  The human gut, on the other hand, is unique among
primates in that it is dominated by the small intestine, which is where
protein and nutrients are rapidly broken down and absorbed - an
anatomical arrangement that suggests that humans have long been eating
nutrient-rich foods such as fruits, nuts, and meat.  Further evidence
that this dietary preference stretches far back into antiquity comes
from the fossil teeth of our ancient human ancestors, which have only a
thin coating of enamel and show none of the grit marks and heavy wear
that would result from a diet consisting solely of tough plant fibers.
Also, the human body cant make A or B12, two vital substances that are
commonly found in meat.
But other quirks of our modern-day "eating anatomy" reveal that the
meat our ancestors typically ate was by no means like the sirloin we
consume today.  The human body absorbs 95 percent of the fat we ingest,
suggesting that this compact source of calories was extremely hard to
come by in ancient times.  This legacy of our ancient ancestors eating
has created a psychology of food preference that is celebrated in the
local burger palace.
Having existed for eons in an environment where only lean meat was
available, our ancestors would have found a fast-food hamburger a
gustatorial paradise.  It is precisely what our ancestors loved about
fat - its incredibly rich content of calories - that makes it so bad in
modern times, when fat is available in great quantities.  This
evolutionary legacy in our food psychology is the reason that fatty
foods cause so much trouble for those of us who live in the food-rich
industrialized West today: Having evolved in an environment where fat
was scarce, our modern-day minds have a hard time knowing when to stop.
Meat is the ideal food for the most cooperative species on Earth:
Packed with calories, meat is one of the most compact sources of
nutrition going.  In every type of environment from savanna to Arctic,
hunting large game provides the most calories per hour of work among
all the various ways of obtaining food, regardless of whether people
are using stone-tipped spears, nets, fishhooks, or bows and arrows.
Thus meat is a great bargaining chip for social relations.  A person
could typically gather and carry about enough plant food for at most
only a few people to eat.  The carcass of a large mammal, however,
contains enough food for many people, making it ideal for sharing with
friends or neighbors, courting lovers, tending to the sick, or
provisioning a family."

"The first big sign that our ancient ancestors had begun to make the
changeover to including meat in their diet comes with excavations of
the archaeological sites of the 2-million-year-old ancestor Homo
habilis.  One of the most famous places where this ancient ancestor
plied its trade is Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, which is often called
"the Grand Canyon of prehistory."  At one site there, dating back about
1.85 million years, archaeologists uncovered several huge piles
containing more than 2,500 stone tools and some 15,000 pieces of animal
bones ranging from mice to pigs to antelope to elephants. In keeping
with the old "man the hunter" image of our forebears, anthropologists
at first assumed these piles of stones were the remains of campsites
left behind by roving bands of hunters.  Thought to be evidence of
"home bases" not unlike those of modern hunter-gatherers, the sites
suggested that early  humans had a life-style where men hunted for meat
as women gathered plant foods.  Later these ancient ancestors would
meet back at their home base and share their food others, perhaps
engaging in the beginnings of the social and cultural practices that
characterize modern human culture.  A circular arrangement of stones
was uncovered at Olduvai that resembled the remains of the twig huts
built by modern hunter-gatherers, and so was proposed as evidence of
early home building.
As attractive as this vision of our ancient ancestors life was,
however, archaeologists discovered evidence of a very different
life-style when they began to look more closely at the stones and bones
Homo habilis left behind.  Putting the bones under an electron
microscope, researchers found that many of the ancient bones bore un-
mistakable signs of cuts and gouges made by stone tools, in much the
same way that a wooden kitchen cutting board is scored by the cutting
action of a knife.  The cut marks are clear evidence that our ancient
ancestors were using tools to cut the meat off the bones in the sites
of Olduvai.
But while the powerful vision demonstrated that our ancestors were
eating meat nearly 2 million years ago, it also revealed other marks on
the bones that made the notion of our ancestors living like miniature
boy Scouts at home bases a lot less likely.  Many of the bones bore
scratch marks, for instance, that were made by the teeth of a
carnivores such as hyenas, suggesting that animals other than humans
also ate the bones at the Olduvai sites.  Other scratch marks on the
bones revealed that, at least part of the time, our Home habilis
ancestors were not hunting but scavenging for their meat.  On some
bones, scratch marks made by stone tools cross over marks that had
previously been made by carnivore teeth, and on other bones there are
teeth marks that cross over tool marks.  Thus both carnivores and
hominids appear to have eaten the same bone.  On about half these
doubly cut bones the hominid made the cut first, suggesting that the
carnivore got to the bones after the hominid discarded them.  On the
other half, however, the carnivore tooth marks appear first, suggesting
that our ancient ancestors had scavenged the bone from a carnivore kill
site."

Best, Peter
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