Paleogal wrote:
>  Todd, where are you?  Oliva
>   
I'm sitting right here!

In the U.S., the term "yam" is used to refer to sweet potatoes; 
elsewhere it isn't.  They are two different species.  Most yams contain 
fairly high levels of toxins that must be removed or neutralized by 
soaking and cooking, so their paleo status depends on where you stand on 
the paleoness of cooking.  Sweet potatoes are edible raw.  Sweet 
potatoes, however, were first found in South America, making them a New 
World food.  Actual yams originated in tropical Africa.  So it all 
depends on your definition of "paleo."  One reason why I don't post much 
anymore is that I got tired of arguing about that definition, because 
the various positions (including mine) are so underdetermined by the 
available facts.

1. If paleo = edible raw, then yams are not paleo (but sweet potatoes are).
2. If paleo != any New World food, then sweet potatoes are not paleo.
Therefore, if 1. and 2. are true, then neither yams nor sweet potatoes 
are paleo.

Personally, I am very impressed by the Aiello/Wheeler "expensive tissue 
hypothesis." (Nice article, 
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0100-84551997000100023&script=sci_arttext)  
The basic idea, that the growth of the hominid/human brain required a 
higher "quality" diet, i.e., more calorically dense, is consistent with 
both the increased consumption of meat (preferably fatty) and Wrangham's 
tuber hypothesis.  I don't see the two as in competition.  I imagine 
paleo people exploited edible tubers, rhizomes, etc, starting with those 
that are edible raw.  The invention of cooking (certainly a paleolithic 
invention) would have made other tubers, such as yams, exploitable.

Off-topic:  I have a student who is from Singapore, who was telling me 
about some of the exotic foods she has tried.  She's quite 
"Americanized" and so had to be tricked into trying some of these 
foods.  One such food was fried bees, which her grandmother got her to 
eat by telling her they were peanuts.  She said they actually tasted 
like peanuts, but were more brittle.  I don't know if they were 
deep-fried or wok-fried, but they certainly sound interesting.  I never 
heard of eating bees before.  I asked her if she would eat them again, 
and she said they tasted good but now that she knows what they are, no.

Todd Moody