On Thu, 2 Jul 2009 09:09:50 -0500, Robert Kesterson 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>On Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:45:00 -0500, Cooley, Brad
><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> ...
>> How do you explain the Inuit, plains indians, etc that ate a
>> predominantly meat-based diet? Maybe they lost their way and simply
>> ignored all the fruit  trees in favor of hunting animals.  Ever had a
>> frozen orange in the arctic?
>>
>> Even paleo tribes nearer in the tropics such as the Pygmies and Yanomamo
>> ate mostly meat.
>
>I can't speak for the original poster, but the Inuit, Plains Indians,
>Pygmies, and Yanomamo are all examples of modern man.  When I think of our
>paleo ancestors, I think back before recorded history.  Whatever our
>ancestors did a million years ago has long since faded from the memory of
>even the most primitive modern humans.
>

Yes! Exactly Robert Kesterson you've said it. People seem to have this idea 
that the way to look at what paleo man did is to look at modern tribes. Modern 
tribes are NOTHING like paleo man, if they have so much as bows and arrows 
they're completely different. Also social-wise, people think that tribes or as 
they put it sometimes "primitive peoples today" are similar to paleo man.... 
absolutely not! Tribes today, even supposedly untouched ones, speak 
languages very similar to ones around them. Even if the last time they touched 
on humanity was 200 years ago, it means essentially nothing. I think paleo 
man had no language for a very, very long time. If you can find a tribe that 
wears no clothes, has no language similar to any of ours and have no 
equipment apart from what they made themselves THEN I'll believe that maybe 
they could be similar to paleo-man. Otherwise it's the same as looking at 
monkeys and thinking they're the same or very similar to our common 
ancestor. 

>As to the "fruit in winter" issue, remember that modern humans first
>appeared in Africa, in tropical climates.  Winter wasn't the issue it is
>in temperate climates, and there was fruit (and eggs and insects) all year.

Of course. Fruit and vegetables survived through the ice ages as well as did all 
kinds of vegetation, if there were no plant food then there'd be no animals!!! 
By eating animals humans consume far MORE vegetation as a lot of the energy 
is lost. Maybe all of that vegetation wasn't/isn't edible by humans, but grasses 
in particular were not a very common thing before modern agriculture. If we 
did eat wild animals, it would have been mainly insects, eggs, things like that.