I justa hve to chime in here...

>Ideal training mimicking life in nature must include:

>Twisting
>Reaching
>Stepping
>Squatting
>Pushing
>Pulling

I agree with this completely. Which is why the majority of my training is an attempt to mimic "normal" activities. Some call it functional fitness or functional trianing. I do spend brief amounts of time in the gym with a somewhat planned set of exercises, but more often I intentionally make real activities and chores harder (like carrying heavy, awkward loads rather than using a handtruck or wheelbarrow). It's easy to do considering I live on a large property and there's always something that needs to be relocated from one spot to another 500 feet away. My neighbors, however, think I'm absolutely nuts :)

>Strapped into a damned machine isolating certain muscles robs accessing most
>of the more than 600 muscles we're composed of.

My experience with machines - last year I tore my biceps trying out an overhead curl machine in the gym. I was adjusting myself in the seat and I allowed my left (stupid) arm to overextend under resistance. The tearing sound was just like fabric tearing. I'm a very active 52 year old, so there was no question I would have the surgery to reattach the tendon. I'm still rehabilitating myself, and plan to avoid anything other than free weights and cables in the future.

>By today's standards, I'd guess the far more demanding paleo lifestyle
>resulted in levels of conditioning we'd associate with athleticism. That's
>an area I've yet to see HIT folks discuss, rather finding it in the works of
>Scott Abel, Vern Gambetta, and other coaching and exercise physiology
>experts.

Jones did address athleticism in a rather roundabout way. His contention was that exercise improves the muscle, and practice improves the skills. He wasn't a functional fitness kind of guy at all. I think his followers like Darden have eased up a bit in that regard (though I'm inclined to think he would label Darden as a heretic nowadays).

>It always saddens me when I think of the hours of wasted time people
>spend in the gym or out on the road.

Careful there, Jim  - some of us profess to enjoy being out on the road. I'm into my winter layoff right now, but I'm expecting to be cycling 20-30 miles per day again around Valentine's day. 

>After HIT, I
>just have a difficult time finding an activity that winds me.  And
>that includes pounding up steep hills on a bicycle for hours on end.

As we've discuseed in the past, I find that hard to believe. I've done HIT in the past and never found that it could sustain the leve of cardiovascular fitness I required for cycling. Not even HIT done in a circuit-training fashion.

>I hope I don't need to say that I am far from a genetic abnormality

I think you are :)