On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Amadeus Schmidt wrote:

> 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.

This makes sense.  It also makes sense that increasing tool use
for preprocessing foods made it possible for teeth to become
smaller -- perhaps to facilitate speech?

> 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.

Yes, I doubt that humans ever used this technique much, except
with hand-held tools.

> Human teeth developped, but not towards cutting teeth, it was towards
> grinding teeth.
> This underlines the importance of seeds as food.

I think it underlines the importance of 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?

Definitely.  You can use that stone cutter to strip away the
skin, to detach cuts of meat from bones and cartilage, to cut it
into strips for sharing, and to cut into pieces for eating.
There is simply no question that a sharp cutting tool makes it
easier to eat meat.

Todd Moody
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