Geoff wrote:
> Part of the trouble with above claims re tubers is that they 
> are mostly based on the rather unlikely "Scavenger-Theory" 
> which, in turn, is primarily based on the prejudice that 
> apemen like the Neanderthals and Homo Erectus were merely 
> stupid brutes incapable of working out the kind of 
> complicated hunting strategies that modern humans can. Yet, 
> further studies have shown that the Neanderthals, for 
> example, had complex religious and cultural rituals.


About the time that grain agriculture was getting started in the Fertile
Crescent, most of the large mammals that had been roaming through Europe
were endangered or newly extinct. There is good evidence to suggest that
pre-agricultural humans hunted them to extinction. Pre-agricultural humans
had larger brains than we do, and they probably needed them to be able to
kill the enormous herbivores of their time.  The assumption that humans are
merely stupid brutes may have some merit. I think it is pretty stupid to
destroy your own food supply --- and we haven't stopped doing that.
(desertification, genetic modification, feed lots, feeding meat to cows,
etc., etc.) Maybe we are still stupid brutes? :-)

Best Wishes,
Ron Hoggan, Ed. D.
co-author Dangerous Grains ISBN: 978158333-129-3 www.dangerousgrains.com 
author: Get the Iron Edge: a complete guide for meeting your iron needs
ISBN: 978-0-9736284-4-9 www.ironedge.info
author Smarten Up! ISBN: 978-0-9736284-3-2 www.smartenup.info           
editor: Scott-Free Newsletter www.celiac.com

"Objectivity is the prerogative of objects."