>Hmm, good point.  I'd say the key question is, WHEN did we start hunting
>with dogs?  If it's long enough ago, then we can conclude that our bodies
>have adapted to that WOE.  Anybody know the answer?
>
>A similar argument applies to cooking.  Fire, I believe, is generally
>considered to have been first discovered 2 to 300,000 years ago, and to
>have been in widespread use by about 100,000 YA.  That's a lot less than
>the 2 million years that humans have been around; but it's also a lot more
>than the 10,000 years since the discovery of agriculture.  So is cooking
>"paleo" or not?  This subject has been touched on on this list, but not
>thoroughly explored.
I guess that depends on your definition of paleo. Ray's definition  contains
a loophole that allows cooking (cooked foods are ok if the *could* be eaten
raw), but it's somewhat of an arbitrary definition. It's certainly one I
like, since I prefer cooked meat, but you could make valid arguments that
it's too restrictive, or that's it's not restrictive enough. If we've had
fire for as long as 100,000 years, like you mentioned that's a lot longer
than the 10,000 years since the Neolithic revolution, so could foods such as
tubers or wild grains be included in an alternate but still paleo
definition?

>
>Another thought on the dogs -- it occurs to me that hunting with dogs
>didn't change the TYPE of food people ate:  it just changed the QUANTITY,
>made it more easily available.  So maybe it doesn't count as "forbidden."

It might have affected the RATIO of that type food eaten also, if it
increased the quantity, so in that case it might have made an impact on
overall nutritional profile. Again, I'm curious like you if anyone has
estimates of how long we've actually hunted with dogs.