On Thu, 8 Feb 2001 13:56:51 -0500, Philip Thrift cited:

>  ... dentition of our ancestors decreased from Australopithecus to
>  Homo erectus, coincident with the development of stone tools and
>  increasing consumption of meat (hence decreasing consumption of
>  coarse vegetable foods)...

Decreasing size of the teeth indicates that less chewing was necessary.
Chewing coarse vegetable foods is necessary to break the cellulose cell
walls - like of leaves.
When switched to denser food like tubers or nuts, the teeth don't break much
cell walls, they grind the food that digestion can occur.

Did you ever look at the teeth of a dog?
They look like knifes, they act as knifes. They are used to *cut* peaces of
the meat away.

Human teeth developped to smaller teeth of the grinding type.
The surface if human teeth is flat with a rough surface,
ideal to grind seeds (like nuts) into smaller peaces.
This indicates that food which needs to be grinded was important.
You can't grind meat, can you?
Human teeth developped, but not towards cutting teeth, it was towards
grinding teeth.
This underlines the importance of seeds as food.

>  ...The cooking of food (meat) in earth ovens can be
>  dated back over 200,000 years ago...
>
>  Meat cooked in such a fashion can become quite tender indeed,
>  and in such condition it requires less chewing to render it
>  swallowable than would be the case if it remained uncooked.

I have been told that cooking doesn't change the tenderness of meat.
It becomes tender by beating it and by aging it, but not by cooking.
A cooked steak should be as easy to eat as a raw one. Or easier.
Now, cooks what do you report?

I think cooking loosens joints, skin and connective tissue of animals,
therefore the leg of a chicken can be drawn away from the body more easily
as if the chicken was raw (is this right?).

Given this, cooking of food items would have no impact on dentition in the
case of meat (seperating meat parts is done with tools).

Ok, cutting meat done with stone tools.
If you had a dead cow (wolf, buffalo, craw) and a stone tool (cutter).
Could you gain something appetizing out of it? Without a pan?

Cooking of meat eases the digestion of meat by breaking the cell walls, and
killing off parasites. IMO this enables eating of greater amounts of meat.
Hmm but the only  culture on the world which eat meat only, Inuit, they eat
the meat raw.
...??..

Amadeus