> Our closest
> primate relatives, the chimps, do hunt.  Therefore,
> hunting definitely
> preceded cooking.

Oooo, bad logic. Maybe OK common sense, but bad logic
none the less. We are NOT chimps. Chimps are NOT our
ancestors. The brain development for humans and
chimps, although probably similar, can't be assumed to
be equivalent.

The "advance" from eating
> everything raw to using fire
> for cooking had to wait for improvements in brain
> capacity, hand eye
> coordination, manual dexterity, etc.  In other
> words, cooking could not have
> become common activity for man until after his
> nervous system had developed
> beyond that of the chimps.   Hence, cooking must
> have come after man became
> "smart"--in other words, man did not become "smart"
> by cooking, he started
> cooking after becoming "smart".

It's another chicken-agg thing. I have also read
studies that propose man became "smart" because of
language. But the question in those studies was -
which came first, the language or the brain size? Some
believed the brain capacity increased, leading to a
rudimetary language, which lead to a further increase,
more language, an increase, and so on. All caused by a
necessity to understand more complex ideas, thoughts,
etc. Same could be true in this case.

We have the tendency to assume "use of fire" means
full fledged cooking when it may have been only a tiny
bit for the first few hundred thousand years, a little
more during the next few hundred thousand years,
perhaps "half" during the next few hundred thousand,
and so on.
I have no doubt the greatest gains in intelligence
occured with the help of animal foods in the diet, but
that doesn't negate the possibility of *very* early
use of fire. Referring back to your first theorum, if
hunting leads to brain growth, and chimps hunt, then
why is their brain development not on par with humans?
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