arjen:
> I decided to come back to the board to try one more
> time to guide the discussion in a different direction.

Hard to believe considering your "final" post.

> Unfortunately, I don't have access to a lot of good
> information, but I will try to keep the information I
> need for backup as basic as possible, so that there is
> little chance for mistakes.

Several of your assumptions below, however, do need "backup".

> Further I will just use the logic, possibilities and
> impossibilities of natural selection.

You use some absurd assumptions as well.

> I really don't want
> to discuss about thriving, surviving and being healthy
> or not, since this is all way too much a matter of
> personal opinion and anecdotes.

You brought it up. And health is certainly relevent to the topic at hand. If
it is not, I cannot understand what your point is.

> We do not know how
> people would have done on a raw vegan diet in our
> past, simply because it hasn't occurred anymore since
> we moved out of the tropical areas.

"We" didn't move out of tropical areas, since the "we" you refer to are not
humans.

> It is likely that the
> necessity of using other food sources turned to habit,
> or maybe we just liked the new foods or simply the
> variety.

Or perhaps the "new" foods were extremely nutritious compared to fruits,
roots, and shoots, and were worth the energy spent proccuring them.

> Anyway, meat eating became established and an
> accepted part of our diet. This does not necessarily
> mean that it is the best choice for our health or that
> we become sick when we leave vertebrate meat out of
> our diet.

Health? Hmmm...you still need to say what constitutes health then.

> Whatever you may think of this, it is an
> endless and useless debate.

Because you have already made up your mind beforehand, perhaps?

> You simply never know if
> you have the ideal diet, because it is always possible
> to feel even more healthy.

And does this apply to raw vegans as well?

> What I am
> interested in is figuring out how evolution works and
> what we are adapted to and what not.

Where do you discuss this?

> The whole discussion about age at death was also just
> a ridiculous distraction from the actual topic, which
> was if there is a causal relationship between meat
> eating and brain growth.

And what have you provided to show that it was not casual?

> The big question
> is of course: what is the function of having large
> brains and is it eventually still going to be an
> advantage to have even larger brains? Causal
> relationships are hard to establish and it is
> absolutely absurd to claim a causal relationship
> between traits in the distant past.

Is that an answer to your question?

> Development of the
> brain can be the cause of a lot of different factors
> than nutrition. Starting to eat meat coincides with
> extensive use of tools, getting used to new habitats
> and food sources, needing to develop new techniques
> for obtaining food (hunting) and no doubt several
> other factors.

I assume you mean "result" instead of "cause".

> Humans started to hunt too, so of course
> their brain grew accordingly.

You are assuming causality here. There is only correlation.

> It is totally
> unscientific to assume that the brain growth is
> dependent on the nutrition of meat, since it coincides
> with many changes in behavior, habitat and
> exploitation of new food sources.

It is totally unscientific to dismiss animal foods as a factor since it
coincides.

> And besides:
> I don't think there can be any doubt about the fact
> that brain expansion in humans was already in progress
> before we started eating meat.

Fact? You'll need some support for such an assumption.

> We also have to take
> into account that brains can even expand on "bad"
> nutrition as long as the selection pressure on brain
> growth is strong enough.

Examples of this? Human brains grow on "bad nutrition", but they did not
evolve on "bad nutrition". Is there some other animal who evolved a larger
brain on "bad nutrition"?

> And I even heard from
> somebody that Neanderthal people had larger brains
> than modern humans, so how does that fit in the
> meat-brain growth picture?

Have you any idea what Neanderthals ate? Besides, larger brain - smaller
neocortex is my understanding...

> Obviously there is still a lot of misunderstanding
> about human evolution and the inhibition of natural
> selection.

Everyone but you misunderstands it apparently.

> This
> is the fact that we have been moving away from the
> tropics for probably already more than a million
> years, but we still haven't developed any fur to
> protect us from the cold. This is because we used the
> fur of other animals to keep us warm. This effectively
> prevented natural selection, causing us to still have
> a tropical make-up.

Causing? And a "tropical make-up" according to you means raw vegan, right?

> Another obvious example is the
> lack of population control: in my opinion it is very
> possible that humans started moving out of their
> original habitat because of population pressures,
> since we effectively cancelled out a serious
> proportion of the naturally occurring deaths. Of
> course this is not as strong in prehistoric times as
> it is now, but it still is a factor that should be
> taken in consideration.

And have you figures on prehistoric populations? This is a factor that
should be taken into consideration.

> And if the inhibition of
> natural selection is possible with fur and population
> control, why wouldn't it be possible for food choices?

Because humans evolved eating animal foods. Assuming that these foods were
somehow wrong, you need some sort (anything???) of support from a variety of
arenas. You have shown no support. You simply say, over and over, that
humans may be better somehow eating raw vegan, that animal foods are not
part of natural selection for humans.

> If we eat something that we are not adapted to, does
> that mean that we will die?

Since we are not adapted to a raw vegan diet, you have your own, very
personal, answer.

> We have to keep in mind that natural
> selection for physiological traits is not likely to be
> as strong as on morphological traits, since
> morphological traits have a more direct link to
> survival.

physiology: the science dealing with the functions and vital processes og
living organisms

morphology: form and structure, as in biology

I can't understand your point above. Nor the one below.

> This is why our ancestors, who were still
> mostly frugivorous in our original tropical habitat,
> might very well have looked totally different than
> modern humans, but that their dietary adaptations
> might not have changed very much.

They _were_ different from modern humans. They weren't human. They are not
the "original" humans.

> Our meat eating habit started when we started
> manipulating our environment in a serious way, which
> means when we started using tools. This is generally
> accepted to have started with Homo habilis about two
> an a half million years ago.

So, accordingly, in your estimation, we have 2.5 million years of animal
foods as part and parcel in our ancestors diet, but we aren't adapted to
animal foods because this in "un-natural selection"?

> Saying that extended
> canines in humans are not important for meat eating
> while every meat eater in the animal world has them,
> shows ignorance to me.

Humans are unique in many ways. But even if you can't accept that, why do
you think your "original" humans (sic) had extended canines and then as they
ate more and more animal foods they became smaller?

> It is like insisting that we
> have to live in the water, just because we can swim.

How so?

> The fact that Gorillas, who barely eat meat, and
> animals like flying foxes, who are totally
> frugivorous, have extended canines, is irrelevant,
> since the fact remains that all animals that do eat
> meat have extended canines.

Humans eat meat and have small canines.

> (Remember: that every cow
> is an animal, doesn't mean that every animal is a cow;
> this seems to be a hard concept for some people).

Remember that nature refuses to live up to our categories. There are
exceptions to most any "rule" we can make about nature. <snip platypus
example>

> The big question that remains is: why did the extended
> canines of our ancestors disappear about 5 million
> years ago?

Yes.

> I don't know, but it is unlikely that it
> has anything to do with the development of speech,
> since that has been an extremely gradual process, so
> unlikely to be subject to strong selection pressures.

"Extremely gradual process"? That's quite a statement. Hundreds of people
studying linguistic evolution will be glad to know it is now settled. ;)

If long canines are related to hunting, and humans use tools and
intelligence (and originally scavanging) for hunting, is it not possible
that natural selection would tend to favor getting rid of those long
canines. Long canines in humans makes about as much sense as antlers--both
totally unnecassary.

> Fact remains that the extended canines did disappear
> and that doesn't support a meat eating adaptation.

Or it does.

> Like I said before: they did not disappear because of
> the use of tools, since those have only been in use
> for two and a half million years.

And when did we lose the long canines?

> Another topic I would like to bring under the
> attention is that in my opinion diet choice should be
> based on the principle that if everybody eats the way
> that you do, it should be a sustainable choice, simply
> because if your way of eating means that other people
> starve or other species become threatened, it can not
> be considered ideal. Even if we would get rid of all
> farming and animal husbandry, a modern hunter/gatherer
> lifestyle would not be sustainable.

And a raw vegan diet would be more sustainable than a cooked grain-based
diet?

> This is because
> the inhibition of the normal natural selection process
> has taken away all possibilities for population
> control. There would simply be way too many
> hunter/gatherers for the available wildlife. Obviously
> we need a different approach.

Maybe we need a smaller population?

> Focusing on the
> hunter/gatherer fase of our evolution and simply
> ignoring the final stages of the evolutionary process
> is not a solution!

Now I am totally lost. What final stages of evolution are you referring to?
I thought your argument was that we should go back way before we were human
to find the "original" diet, and here I find, that 2 million years of
hunting and gathering (which ended some 3-10,000 years ago, depending on
your ancestry) shouldn't be focused on. Is McDonalds the final stage of
human evolution, or do you have something else in mind?

> And by the way: I am not ignoring
> the hunter/gatherer fase of our evolution: I am simply
> trying to show that we are not adapted to it (see
> canines), even though we have lived like that for a
> long time.

Again, your obsession with canines is not sufficent to show that humans are
not adapted to animal foods.

> Another problem with modern meat eating is that our
> world is highly contaminated and that this brings a
> new form of "natural" selection. Since carnivores are
> on the top of the food pyramid, it is obvious that
> they accumulate a lot of contaminants. Eventually this
> will lead to a strong selection pressure against meat
> eating, favoring the herbivores on the planet. Even if
> you pick your meat from the best sources, this process
> is unavoidable.

It is a problem with eating, drinking and breathing in general, but it has
nothing to do with whether humans are adapted to animal foods.

> Modern society also brings the possibility for rapid
> evolution of diseases, which makes carnivores even
> more vulnerable.

And why is that?

>I still haven't had any satisfactory
> reply why RAF eaters are assuming to be immune to
> those diseases, like mad cows disease.

Did you ask the question before? Maybe they will die of it sometime. What
does that have to do with whether humans are adapted to animal foods?

> Another point I
> haven't had a satisfactory reply to is that RAF eaters
> assume that we are adapted to eating meat and not to
> cooking food. How can they justify this? And don't
> come with the answer that we have been eating meat for
> a much longer time than cooking our food, since time
> is not very important to evolution; selection pressure
> is the key factor!

Selective pressures take time. Besides you are arguing for a raw vegan diet
that hasn't been seen in human s _ever_, regarless of time or selctive
pressures. But even if we fantasize that prehumans were raw vegan (with an
occasional invertabrate), say, 3 million years ago, then it doesn't matter
since time is not important for evolution--selection pressure is: the
selective pressure on humans _includes_ a change in diet. Not just
everything else you can think of. Can you grasp that?

Cheers,
Kirt