Tom Bri wrote:
> I have one big problem with your arguments, Geoff, and that is that
> all over the Earth, the vast majority of people cook their foods, and
> have so for as long as we have record.

The vast majority of people are self-destructive in other ways; that
merely shows that we are degenerate.



  We also have plenty of evidence from scorched bones
> etc that paleo people did cook at least some of their food.


That so-called evidence is evidence that they had no garbage pick-up to
remove stinking stuff that attracts pests such  as hyenas, bears and
other unwelcome visitors to their camp.
They were not stupid.


> 
> I think Wrangham exaggerates in order to make a name for himself, but
> that doesn't mean he is all wrong.

If it is true that he is a vegetarian, no more need be said. Crackpot.



> 
> Very primitive people made quite nice stone tools, showing that they
> were pretty darn clever.

Primitive /= stupid.



> Humans do use fire and do cook their food. The groups that don't cook
> their food are so rare as to almost be legendary, Eskimos eat a lot
> of raw food, but cook some.

Self-destructive moderns, all.



> Perhaps you have trouble understanding why people would bother to
> cook, but simply the smell and taste difference between cooked and
> raw meat explains it all to me.


Probably a lifetime of conditioning. Everyone ignores their own symptoms 
of illness, that caused by eating cooked meat would be no different, but 
clearly paleoman was not so conditioned.


  Even wild carnivores are trapped
> using cooked meat. Why would they come by at all if it didn't smell
> good?


There isn't enough smell to fresh raw meat to reliably attract a 
carnivore. I have seen this in person with polar bears which have keen 
noses. The trapper must wait until the meat is rotten enough to smell 
strong.


The endless insistence that paleoman ate cooked meat looks more like a 
religion than anything else in the face of all the evidence against it, 
and it is what I hold against Wrongham & Cordain - the creation of new 
faithful and deception of those who so desperately need a way out of 
their troubles.

William