LOL
 

LC Sponge,

That made me snort my decaf coffee (with cream!)!

Thanks for making my day!

Jilly

As an anthropology instructor, I run into the same misconceptions about human evolution as VeggieMax has. While it is completely true that chimpanzees and humans share over 98% identical genetical material, making them our closest living relative, fully anatomically modern humans did not evolve from them or even in the same environment as them. About 5 million years ago, living on the edge of a mixed forest-grassland environment lived a species of primate. Over hundreds of thousands of years, some members of this population moved deeper into the forest, and through many transitional phases, evolved into chimpanzees, perfectly adapted to life in a forest eating fruit and leaves, termites and the occasional monkey. The rest of this ancestral ape population moved farther out onto the savannah, adapting to eat the grasses, roots, shoots and other vegetable matter available on the plains. This was not enough to sustain them or their ever increasing brains and upright posture. So they began to scavenge on the carcasses of animals that were brought down by predators. Through time, these early "transitional" humans, became more and more reliant on the fat and protein obtained through animals. Their big brains lead them to invent tools and with that they began hunting. Fossil evidence and archaeological digs clearly show that humans hunted and ate meat. The seemingly pointless and often dangerous, human appendix is a vestigel organ that probably helped early humans digest the massive quantities of raw meat they consumed (other hypotheses exist). With the innovation of cooking meat, the appendix function has become unnecessary and the energy required for the body to maintain it has been better diverted elsewhere. We are not evolved from chimps, our ancestors were homo neanderthalensis ("cave men"), home erectus, homo habilis, and a slew of australopithecines. All of which lived in an environment that required them to exploit animals as food.

Thank you Speck for that very interesting contribution. Our paths have not crossed before, so let me welcome you very warmly to this Forum. I hope we will be seeing many more posts from you - you clearly have a lot to offer!

Andy

Just to clarify for readers' benefit -- my original argument was not that humans simply need fatty acids. Such need could be met adequately through the consumption of nuts, seeds, oily fruits and other vegetative sources.

My assertion is that humans require two specific fatty acids, DHA and EPA, which are found in nature ONLY in animal sources. While many people are able to convert some vegetable-derived fatty acids to DHA in a rather inefficient but adequate manner, a significant percentage of the human population lack the enzyme necessary to carry out this function. This strongly indicates that humans were designed to acquire nutrition from animal sources, and the ability to convert vegetable fatty acids has developed as a survival adaptation.

Doreen

Do we have to act like chimps as well? I recently watched a documentry where wild chimps murdered another chimps baby and ate it.

In my mind the reason there are no fat chimps in the wild is because they have to expend a lot of energy in the collection of food, no jumping in the car and driving to the corner shop for them, they are out climbing over trees looking for their din dins. I could go out and do that here, but the only trees I got are Gum trees, look what they do to Koalas. I'd not only be fat but drugged too.

Cheryl

Imagine there was a sudden mass extinction and our "closest living ancestor" turned out to be ant-eaters, should we then start eating ants? :p Caveman, who are genetically more similar to us than the chimps, actually ate more meat than we do! Ofcourse, it was in the form of deer and elk and the such, not farm-fed cows and pigs. As for the milk thing, if you're lucky enough to have the "mutant gene(s)" that can tolerate lactose, why pass up enjoying an ice-cream every now and then?

Why the preoccupation with dieting? Isn't it obvious? (oh, pardon me if it's not for someone who's 6'2 and 160lbs) Socially, people who are over-weight (or, nowadays, even just a bit chubby) face very unpleasant discriminations. Moreover, the media gives added pressure, REAL and powerful pressure. Ironically, so do advertisers of food products. We are surrounded by easily accessible (not to mention many processed) food, a very "unnatural" environment. Even dogs and cats could become obesed in this environment. It is actually "natural" for animals (including humans) to give in to temptation and overindulge given a chance (not to mention enough "conditioning trials"). And not everyone can (genetically) "afford" to eat alot and remain at a healthy weight. Most importantly, preoccupation with weight has to do with health issues. I don't need to spell out the adverse effects of being overweight now do I?.....

And by the way, you ARE on a "diet" too, just a different one and at a different stage. You may not be counting anything (calories or carbs or whatever) but it sounds as if (if you're eating like a chimp) you are staying away from certain foods and not eating whatever is out there, no? Well, many here are basically doing the same thing, only a little differently. If you have no trouble or interest in giving in to temptations, and/or if you naturally have a high metabollic rate, and/or if you enjoy exercising, if you've managed to make healthy behaviours automatic then good for you! Congratulations on your accomplishment! The rest of us are only trying to built a healthier life for ourselves too, and "preoccupation" with dieting is usually the starting point. Whether or not you approve of the means, well, that's really none of your business..... :) Take care!

My apologies to Doreen. Strangely enough, what I had in mind when writing that post was "dietary fat from red meat", but I must have been distracted at the point of posting. And just to reinforce the point, the dietary fat the two volunteers were deprived of was the fat that came with red meat.

Andy

I have to admit that when I follow a higher protien eating process like this one, I feel much better about myself, I don't crave sugar, and I have more energy. Trying a vegetarian one just doesn't work for me at all. And I have to admit have a reference to chimps is not a complimentary comparison. HMMMM.
:(

:dazzle:
Note to Speck. Where do you teach? I went to Cal St. Northridge and was a Paleanthropology major back in the late 60s and very early 70s. My undergraduate degree was in Anthropology. I'm very interested in the new stuff that has come down the pike since then. Questions: 1. You say that we evolved from Homo Neandertalensis...really? Back in the "old days" we were of the belief that Homo Sapiens Neandertalensis was a race of Homo Sapiens that died out, or was overtaken by Homo Sapiens Sapiens (us, and what we call, "Cro Magnon Man"). I thought they quit calling old Neanderthal a separate species about thirty five years ago. 2. All of what I was taught said that Australopithecus (most of its' various forms, except one) was a separate division on the scale of evolution and most were not really our ancestors. Although, Homo Habilis was thought to have evolved from one branch of them. I'm trying to remember the species name we called it...Australopithecus pithecus (?). Very interested to read your further posts.

Hey Capt, thank you for pointing that out... I get so used to lumping them all together as relatives/ancestors of ours for simplicities sake, I should have been more clear. There are always differing opinions about which hominid was the direct ancestor of which. The most popular family tree seems to be ardipithecus ramidus -australopithecus anamensis - australopithecus afarensis - australopithecus africanus (with the robusts branching one way and dead ending) - homo habilis - homo erectus - homo ergaster (may or may not be a side branching dead end) - archaic species (like neanderthals, h. antecessor, h. heidelbergensis, etc.) - anatomically modern homo sapiens (first Cro-Magnons then us, more or less). Neanderthals have been pretty much ruled out as a direct ancestor, more of a cousin, but sharing a common ancestor probably with h. erectus, although some still hold to Neanderthals as direct predecessors of amhs, it's less popular.
And to answer your question I teach at a Cal State campus (not Northridge ;) and a very large community college in So. Cal.

afarensis!!! Lucy, Yes! And africanus...
 

:p
Hey Speck! It's all starting to come back to me, now! Thank you! Once a teacher, always a teacher, eh? I'm a teacher, too, up here in Klamath Falls. But, I teach emotionally disturbed adolescents in high school, and then I am a divorce/child custody court mediator and a psychotherapist in the evenings...kind of goes along with primitive Man...don't you think? Anyway, thanks, so much for the update...Thirty years ago we hadn't (at least, I hadn't) heard of ardipithecus ramidus or australopithecus anamensis. Is ramidus what we used to call Ramapithecus? Not sure of the spellings, anymore. Who was anamensis? This is great! An anthropology teacher in our forum! Being as how I am on Neanderthin, I am very interested in the early hunters and gatherers and I'll bet you can answer many questions some of us have in this regard. Looking forward to more of your posts.

Chimps do eat a lot of meat. As well as hunting monkeys they fish for and eat termites and other insects. They also eat roots, vegitables nuts and fruit. They do not eat large amounts of cellulose (leaves) because like us they can't digest it.

What chimps do NOT do is grow wheat, bake bread, eat pizzas and pasta, and crush sugar cane to get out the sucrose and then add it to everything.

I would suggest that the majority of people who use this board eat a diet much more similar to a chimp's one than to a vegitarian's.

I'm a reformed vegitarian myself. I gave it up when I realised I was living a lie. All life is sacred and we all kill to eat. How far removed that life is from humanity is irrelevant. Boiling a cabbage is killing as sure as any animal is killed to eat it. Life and death are all intertwined.

Just my two pence worth.

Robert

Hi Robert,

I agree with you. You make a logical and sensible case, and it certainly has my vote.

Best wishes,

Andy

Robert, I especially appreciate your point that we must consume other life, no matter what we eat.

Absolutely right. It's what's inside that counts. Please read this comparison of the digestive tracts of the sheep, wolf, and human. We are much closer to the wolf than the sheep (but you would only have to watch the news to know that.) ;)

http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/ca...comparison.html

BTW, I knew that chimps would eat meat when they could, but I was fascinated recently to watch a nature film of chimps hunting monkeys. A couple of chimps would select hiding places and the other chimps in the group would chase some monkeys into the ambush. Pretty effective, but our ancestors must have been even better, because we are the ones who developed the big brains.