Ken Stuart wrote:
The major point is:
" The data that human brain size has fallen 11% in the last 35,000
years--with the bulk of that decrease (8%) coming in the last
10,000 years.... that increasing brain development earlier in
human evolution is correlated positively with the level of animal
food in the diet.

Amadeus wrote:
> Why did then human brain size fall (by 3% according to your
numbers)  in a time, where animal consumption increased a lot,
 in the time between 35000 to 10000 BC.

Ardeith writes:
Amadeus, that's not what it says........it says that earlier in
human evolution, human brain size *increased* in proportion
to the meat consumed, 'way back.....500K to a million years
ago.  The human brain kept on increasing in size....skulls kept
on getting bigger.  The decrease in brain size, as well as a decrease
in overall skeletal size, occurred in the last 35K years, with the
most decrease occurring in the last 10K years, after the
development of agriculture and the increased consumption
of grains........

Amadeus wrote:
> My guess is as follows:
> The really big encephalisation happened in doubling and threefolding
> the brain size from 2-1 million years ago. Caused by better
availability
> of a superior high energy brain food: carbohydrates of savannah USOs
> (tubers).

Ardeith writes:
Sorry, that's not what the anthropologist of the world think.....
The anthropologists say our brains increased in size with the
eating of meat as a regular part of our diets.......we had tubers,
fruit, leaves, etc all along.....but the brain size increased with
the availability of more meat and the ability to hunt that meat.

Amadeus wrote:
> Brain size reached a peak in neanderthals (which are not known to
> hav had particular intelligence - few developements in 100000's of
years).

Ardeith writes:
The Neanderthals survived 100K years during the Ice Ages,
which modern humans probably could not do......and the
Neanderthals did it eating a lot of meat, along with the
root, tubers, leaves, etc available during very short summer
seasons......which isn't very much......

Amadeus wrote:
> >Finally, in what will be
> >controversial to raw-fooders, Aiello and Wheeler, after arguing
> that the first major increase in encephalization was due to increased
> consumption of animal foods, next propose that the second major
increase in
> brain size (with the appearance of archaic Homo sapiens) was due to the
> >appearance of cooking practices.

Ardeith writes:
When I was taking anthropology courses, in the 1980's, they
were teaching that the earliest evidence of "controlled" use
of fire was only 40K years ago, at a place called "Terra
Amata"........I think that date has been moved back a
couple of 100K years lately.

Amadeus wrote:
> Energetically animal food is not a good deal.

Ardeith writes:
Go take another look at gorillas and orangutuans.....
they have bit paunches....big guts.....of the sort
required to digest masses of plant materials.  Chimps
have lesser paunches, but still more than the average
human.   Look at monkeys.....Spider monkeys which
eat fruits are slim active little buggers.....because fruits
are concentrated sources of energy.  Other sorts of
monkeys that eat mostly leaves have the big paunches
that resemble chimps.....because a diet of mostly
leaves is low in energy and they have to eat huge
masses of leaves just to live.....and they are not
near so active as the fruit eaters.   Leaf eating apes
such as gorillas and orangs are not nearly as active
as fruit eating animals or meat eating animals.

Now take that one step further.......meat is an even
more concentrated source of energy.....no predator
has the big paunch of the grass and leaf eaters.......
The human gut is more like the predator gut that the
leaf eater's gut.......designed to digest and draw energy
from meat, primarlily, but able to handle plant foods
too.   And all the predators eat plant foods too........
lions and wolves will eat the stomach of grazers such
as deer and antelope, including the half digested plant
foods the grazers ate.    And predators will seek out
and eat other plants from time to time......perhaps
instinctively knowing they need "some" roughage
to keep the hair they lick from their own bodies
moving along.......

Sorry, Amadeus.  While I appreciate your desire to
be vegetarian, you can in no way make a valid argument
that humans developed their body design and brain
size on a vegetarian diet.   There is just too much
anthropological data out there to refute such an idea.
Then when you add in the improved health of so many
people, including me, who have decided to cut grains
from their diets, it is even more unlikely that we evolved
as vegetarians.   Even today, in a basically vegetarian
culture such as in India, you can see the loss of skeletal
size that anthropologists find in the bones of earlier
agriculturists......   You just don't grow people the size
of our European ancestors on grain-based diets.  The
Norse and Germanic tribal warriors of 2K years ago
were awesome......and they weren't vegetarians!

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