> ... If you took two groups of HGs with the same diet and only varied 
> one thing, i.e., one group gets feedlot meat and the other gets
free-range, I doubt you'd see a significant difference in their health.

Maybe, but that is conjecture at this point. All I know is that traditional
HG's don't eat grain-fattened or processed meats and the three people I know
personally who weren't pleased with their results from going Paleo had all
eaten moderate to high amounts of fats from commercial bacon, sausage or
other fatty meats (plus one had continued to eat some dairy and one had
continued to eat soy milk and some grains), and you had unsatisfactory
results after eating a Neanderthin diet high in saturated fats. High amounts
of saturated fats from commercial meats appears to be a common factor here.
Counting you, three of these four people experienced spikes in LDL. While
that may not necessarily be unhealthy in itself, it caused one person to
drop Paleo for Ornish, it caused a second to add more low-fat dairy (like
cottage cheese) and some whole wheat, and it appears to have contributed to
your giving up on Neanderthin, based on what you said at the time:

	"As you might imagine, as pleased as my doctor is with the weight
loss and triglyceride drop, he is very concerned about the total cholesterol
and LDL levels, which seem to be out of control.  It appears to me at this
time unwise to continue with this diet, although I am open to suggestions."

My suggestion would have been to cut back on the saturated fats, eat more
protein and "good" fats (and maybe leafy greens, depending on how much you
were eating), and watch future test results.

> They'd still use the entire carcass, the organs, brains, marrow, etc. 
> They'd eat the same amounts, at the same intervals.  My guess--and 
> it's no more than that--is that all these other factors would drown 
> out the contribution, if any, of the SFAs in the muscle meats.

Actually, according to the data of Cordain and others, the difference in fat
between wild and commercial whole-carcass land animals is substantial. Here
is some data:

Total fat
Grain-fed steer, whole carcass, 1200 lb: 30% or greater
Wild caribou, whole carcass, leanest 7 months of the year: less than 5% Wild
caribou, whole carcass, maximum of the year: 16.6%

	"Game meat contains lower proportions of fat, especially saturated
fat, than does meat from grain-fed domesticated animals, even on a
whole-carcass basis (Eaton SB. Humans, lipids and evolution. Lipids
1992;27:814–20.)." --Loren Cordain, Janette Brand Miller, S Boyd Eaton and
Neil Mann, Macronutrient estimations in hunter-gatherer diets, American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 72, No. 6, 1589-1590, December 2000

HG's only get 3.6-17.6% of their calories from saturated fat, so they would
likely be eating much more saturated fat if they switched to eating
whole-carcass commercial livestock and would be getting different ratios of
other fats as well.