Using This as a Standard....

[Minimalist]

I know some people who haven't evolved at all!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/200 ... dapeabrain

Higher primates such as humans are considered the brainiacs of the mammalian world. But a 29-million-year-old fossilized skull suggests that one of our remote ancestors was a bit of a “pea brain,” sporting a noggin smaller than that of a modern lemur.

The skull belonged to a common ancestor of humans, monkeys and apes.

"This means the big-brained monkeys and apes developed their large brains at a later point in time,” said lead study author Elwyn Simons, a Duke University primatologist.

[Leona Conner]

I remember seeing a TV show not to long ago that said our brains became larger when we stopped being vegetarians. They claimed that it was the protein from meat and animal fat the helped the brain grow larger.

[Minimalist]

I remember that one, Leona. I always have to laugh at these Vegan types who claim that the human body was designed to live on a 'caveman' diet of nuts and berries.

Actually....they ate raw meat that they ripped off their own kills or carrion that they found.

The Vegans never like to hear that!

[Forum Monk]

Actually....they ate raw meat that they ripped off their own kills or carrion that they found.

Like scavengers, eh? So how do you know what they ate? As I recall there are very few bones which show tool marks and it doesn't necessarily mean they were cleaned for eating. Humans don't have the same kind of teeth as most true carnivores.

And then there is the legend of the appendix.

[Minimalist]

http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/storie ... ution.html

2. Diet: Foley & Lee (1991), and Gibons (1998) have argued that the change in cranial capacity during the course of hominid evolution required dietary and developmental strategies that would sustain the cost of a large brain. Milton (1993) discusses the behavioural and physiological adaptations concerned with plant-eating, fruit-eating and meat-eating diets. The latter two diets require the development of mental skills such as memory for food locations and increased social co-operation for hunting and food sharing. The Australopithecine�s (judging by the size of their dentition) were herbivores and small brained. As the early hominids moved from plant eating to fruit and meat eating their teeth became smaller and the brains increased in size.

http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~ENVS2/kuy ... essay.html

Tools are also valuable evidence of behaviors. Tools have been encountered in association with fossils. And because the earliest hominid tools are associated with scavenging, they are our most valuable behavioral evidence in relation to carnivorous activity. The first hominid tools provided a technology that added a first stage to digestion, preprocessing foods and giving early hominids access to a wider range of nutritional resources, imparting a survival advantage. Stone tools are extensions of the forelimb and hand for breaking down or processing tough foodstuffs (Larick and Ciochon).

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S01 ... ci_arttext

Dietary quality has played a prominent role in theories of human evolution in general and the evolution of the human brain in particular. One of the most memorable of these theories is the Man the Hunter (Ardrey, 1961; Washburn and Lancaster, 1968). This theory argued that increasing amounts of meat in the hominid diet lead to increasing levels of cooperation among the males in the hunt, which lead to brain expansion and the associated development of cognition, language and symbolic culture. This hypothesis was fuelled by the realisation that an increase in the apparent consumption of meat correlated with the increase in brain size seen in Homo habilis and Homo erectus.

This is hardly a new idea.

[Forum Monk]

Perhaps they are not new ideas but it doesn't make them correct. Now, I am not saying early man did not eat meat, but I think his primary source of food was vegetation. The conclusions drawn in the referenced commentaries are not necessarily logical. For example, claiming that meat eating caused dentation to grow smaller does not address the fact the vegetation may have changed requiring less grind surface. Further the many types of social and cooperative behaviours the authors associate with meat eating leading to large brains are also exhibited by most carnivorous pack animals and it does not seem to have increased their brain size. Conversely some of the largest brained mammals in the world including most species of whales are strictly plant eaters.

Plant eating requires far less energy than hunting down and killing game and so is more favorable to the species. In addition, since the body mass of humans is much less than the common herd animal, the amount of calories required to maintain health and sustain a large brain was far less so vegetation was suitable food for long term survival. Not to mention the fact that gathering greens was a lot less risky so women and children could do it too. (and this from a dedicated meat eater )

[AD]

Thought(?) for the day: "If God had not meant for humans to eat cows, He would not have made them out of meat."

[Digit]

And no matter how we work this information we keep coming back to my question of what connection is there between brain size and intelligence and what makes us think that that equals survival?
The argument seems to run thus_ we are the most intelligent species, we have a large brain_ ipso facto_ brain size equals intelligence equals survival.
As pointed out by Monk, diet doesn't seem to work for other species the same way as the experts confidently say it did for us. Seems flawed to me.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Actually....they ate raw meat that they ripped off their own kills or carrion that they found.

Like scavengers, eh? So how do you know what they ate? As I recall there are very few bones which show tool marks and it doesn't necessarily mean they were cleaned for eating. Humans don't have the same kind of teeth as most true carnivores.

Exactly! "Humans don't have the same kind of teeth as most true carnivores". That's where you find the answer to what they ate! In the teeth! Look at 'm. Humanoids have a mix of 2 teeth types: carnivorous teeth (incisors and canines), for grabbing, cutting, tearing and shearing meat, and vegetarian type (pre)molars, for grinding fibrous foodstuffs. So they ate meat and berries. They were omnivores. They ate everything remotely edible.
We still are omnivores!
No different from our close cousins the chimps who live on a diet of fruits and berries, insects, and once a week a nice, freshly hunted and killed Colobus monkey...

Sad to consider how incredibly far off the mark all those pathetic vegetarians and veganists are.
They're bona fide loonies.

[Forum Monk]

It may surprise everyone to know that the common horse also has incisors, canine teeth, premolars and molars. In addition, a few teeth called 'wolf' teeth.
http://www.hanne.com/teeth-anatomy.html

Thank God, horses don't eat meat.
Dentation is apparently an unreliable indicator of diet.

[Digit]

I might disagree with that as well Monk, one or two have had a good chunk out of me over the years, a Zebra as well!

[Forum Monk]

I might disagree with that as well Monk, one or two have had a good chunk out of me over the years, a Zebra as well!

I won't ask how you got bit by a zebra, but it must be an interesting story.

[Rokcet Scientist]

It may surprise everyone to know that the common horse also has incisors, canine teeth, premolars and molars. In addition, a few teeth called 'wolf' teeth.
http://www.hanne.com/teeth-anatomy.html

Thank God, horses don't eat meat.
Dentation is apparently an unreliable indicator of diet.

Whoaa, Monk. Not so fast. "The common horse" has canine teeth sometimes! That is fairly rare. Usually they don't have canine teeth!
Exactly like humans often have wisdom teeth. But definitely not always.
Canine teeth in horses – sometimes present but mostly absent – are probably a remnant of a previous evolutionary phase (like our appendix). A previous evolutionary phase in which the horse's predecessors ate meat . . . !

So dentation IS – at present – the most reliable indicator of diet. No better indicator has been identified yet.

[Minimalist]

Wait. Wait. Back up a minute.

I want to know how Digit got bit by a zebra in Wales!!!!

[Charlie Hatchett]

Wait. Wait. Back up a minute.

I want to know how Digit got bit by a zebra in Wales!!!!