> Also Don, I can agree to all your points in favour of coastal regions.
> I'm sure early humans will have loved coasts. I just cannot recognize a
> particular *adaption* to seafood, except maybe the dependency of iodide
> (which is present in non-agricultural exploited soils as well).
>
Amadeus, the adaptation is not 'just' to seafood--it is to life in a
particular habitat.   Food is not the only aspect of the envrioment to which
an organism must adapt.  I am saying that man is adapted to a coastal
environment--to seafoods and land foods, and to a way of life in almost
continuous contact with water.

All calculations regarding space requirements of hunter gatherers are based
on academic assumptions regarding natural productivity, availability, and
choice of foods that may not be accurate.  For example, how many of the
'scientists' making such calculations have taken into account native habits
of eating insects, as described by Price:

In Africa, "The natives have developed procedures fro inducing these ants to
come out by covering over the opeinign with bushes to give the effect of
clouds and then pounding on the ground to give an imitation of rain.  We
were told by the missionaries that one of the great luxuries was an ant pie
but unfortunately they were not able to supply us with this delicacy.  Parts
of Africa like many other districts are often plagued by vast swarms of
locusts.  These are gathered in large quantities, to be cooked for
immedieate use or dried and ground into a flour for later use."  p. 261,
Nutritionand Physical Degeneration.

You implied that 'we' should not eat animal products because there now are 6
billion humans on earth and by our eating animal products others are made
hungry.  This simply is not true.  People go hungry in various nations
because they are coerced into growing cash crops for export instead of
raising food for indigenous use.   We are not depriving them by eating
animal foods--least of all by eating seafoods.

Also, it is of interest to note that "During the Vietnam war, the North
Vietnamese turned American-made bomb craters inot fish ponds!  The Chinese
today occupy great tracts of inland continent but they grow rice in watery
paddy fields and in them they farm fish....The Japanese make the greatest
use of fish of any nation....If the Japanese were to grow enough food on
land to replace the amount of fish they eat, they would need seven times the
amount of land which they presently possess."    [Nutrition and Evolution,
page 175]

Since only a fraction of the Earth is dry land, most of it being ocean or
other bodies of water, seafoods are important for a large population.

Finally, there is no doubt that the present human population is near or
already exceeding the carrying capacity of the Earth.  Hence, a rational
long term plan should involve finding ways to reduce the present population.
Two important points here.  One, as noted by Danial Quinn, so long as we
keep increasing the human food supply, the human population will keep
increasing--so the simple way to reduce the population is to put a cap on
the food supply.  By eating paleo, we do that.  This doesn't mean people
presently living will starve, but that new people will not be born.

Two, in his book The Geography of Hunger, Josue de Castro put forth the
hypothesis  that animal protein deficiency is an important factor in
creating overpopulation (and hence hunger).  In  support of this, he cited
several observations:

1)  Cattle raisers have long known that if animals become too fat, they
become sterile;

2)  There is an inverse association between human birth rates and amounts of
animal proteins consumed daily, for example:

Formosa:  birth rate, 45.6, daily animal protein intake, 4.7 grams
India:  birth rate, 33.0, daily animal protein intake, 8.7 grams
Italy:  birth rate, 23.4, daily animal protine intake, 15.2 grams
Ireland:  birth rate, 19.1, daily animal protein intake, 46.7 grams
Australia:  birth rate, 18.0, daily animal protein intake, 59.9 grams
Sweden:  birth rate, 15.0, daily animal protein intake, 62.6 grams

(de Castro provides a list of 14 nations illustrating the inverse relation)
A simple observation is that overpopulation is a problem in nations where
people have adopted a vegetarian diet, and populations are stable in nations
where people eat plenty of animal protein.

Further support is provided by the observation that there have been
population explosions wherever man has reduced his animal protein intake and
increased his carbohydrate intake.

Now, some may say that this is simply an inverse relation between affluence
and birth rate--but this would not apply to the observation that the
population exploded first along with the agricultural 'revolution' circa
10,000 years ago.   Few would argue that H-Gs were more affluent than early
agriculturalists.  Most commonly in fact it is argued that agriculturalists
have more food security, hence are more affluent, than H-Gs.  Yet H-Gs
had/have low birth rates, while primitive agriculturalists had/ have higher
birth rates; suggesting that the key factor is not affluence (having food
security or 'stuff'), but nutritional (protein vs. carbohydrate).

3)  J.R. Slonaker of Stanford University performed a series of experiments
with rats, feeding them diets with varying levels of protein.  Among other
observations, he found that with higher levels of protein intake the number
of young was somewhat decreased.

Dr. Roger Williams, the first man to identify, isolate, and name pantothenic
acid, commented on de Castro's insight: "Nature does take measures to
prevent the extincitoin of a species, and when extinciton is threatened--by
starvatation for example-it may be that an exaggerated sex urge is one of
the devices used to perpetuate the race.  It may be that this contributes to
the high birth rate among people who are ill fed.  A parallel is found in
the area of plant physiology where it has been ovserved that hplants often
grow vegetatively as long as wel fertilized, and tend to go to seed
(reproduce) when conditions become adverse."  Nutrition Against Disease, p.
142.

So, contrary to the vegetarian belief that we can 'solve' the problem of
overpopulation by eating a low protein vegetarian diet, there is good reason
to believe that the real solution--the long term solution, i.e. reduction of
birth rates, and ultimately of population--can only be achieved by
INCREASING animal protein intake--or at least maintaining it at a high level
wherever possible, so that not all nations end up 'going to seed" and
overpopulated like the carbohydrate based nations, such as modern India or
China.

Don