Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => Hot Topics => Topic started by: carnivore on September 25, 2009, 08:47:25 pm
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An interesting article about the Expensive-Tissue Hypothesis from Dr Eades :
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-library/are-we-meat-eaters-or-vegetarians-part-ii/
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Lots about meat, but IMHO the real difference is fat content of the human diet.
Brains! Marrow!
I think of the effective banning of fat from my diet by government, and wonder if I am wearing a paranoid conspiracy hat.
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I could only last 2 months or raw vegan. And I could only last 2 months or raw fruitarian.
I think many of our diet experimentations which eventually landed us here in raw paleo show that we run optimally on large quantities of raw animal food.
When class picnics happen it is so obvious that people desire meat. Ho hum how they display the starches, the veggies, the fruits... but when someone opens an animal food basket.... zoooommmm everyone just gorges in and the meats are all consumed immediately.
A fellow parent saw my wife and I today and she was raving about how good both of us looked... getting sexy... she asked... you must be avid vegetarians!!! (I think she remembered our vegetarian days). I loudly replied... Absolutely not! The secret is lots of raw fatty meat!
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Interesting piece. Thanx for posting it!
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I'm increasingly unconvinced re the notion that diet is responsible for the vast increase in hominid brain-size. If it had only been a question of eating meat that led to brains, then one would expect many other mammals to have attained human-like boosts in brain-size. And there are plenty of herbivores which are more intelligent than meat-eaters like tigers etc.(a good example is the gorilla which Eades mistakenly mentions).
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I'm increasingly unconvinced re the notion that diet is responsible for the vast increase in hominid brain-size. If it had only been a question of eating meat that led to brains, then one would expect many other mammals to have attained human-like boosts in brain-size. And there are plenty of herbivores which are more intelligent than meat-eaters like tigers etc.(a good example is the gorilla which Eades mistakenly mentions).
Exactly. No one has proven the reasons for various evolutionary changes. It's nothing but theory. The fact of evolution is obvious. The reasons for specific changes has not yet been proven, in my opinion. Perhaps when computers get so fast that they can model extremely complex real-world systems, then questions like this one can be answered with mathematical certainty. Until then, it's really beside the point.
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I'm increasingly unconvinced re the notion that diet is responsible for the vast increase in hominid brain-size. If it had only been a question of eating meat that led to brains, then one would expect many other mammals to have attained human-like boosts in brain-size. And there are plenty of herbivores which are more intelligent than meat-eaters like tigers etc.(a good example is the gorilla which Eades mistakenly mentions).
Yes, it's not only a question of eating meat. And the size of the brain is not proportional to the intelligence, otherwise woman would be less intelligent than man.
Not to mention that they are many kind of intelligences.
Just curious : How do you compare intelligence between herbivores and carnivores ?
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Yes, it's not only a question of eating meat. And the size of the brain is not proportional to the intelligence, otherwise woman would be less intelligent than man.
Not to mention that they are many kind of intelligences.
Just curious : How do you compare intelligence between herbivores and carnivores ?
That's the point, there are hyperintelligent herbivores such as elephants as well as carnivores which are rather stupid. So, it doesn't seem likely that meat is linked to IQ. I suppose the expensive tissue hypothesis came about because scientists assumed that one needed greater brain-power in order to prey on other animals than herbivores which don't have to use their brains so much to get food. The scientists forgot though that there is also evolutionary pressure on herbivores to develop bigger brains so as to be able to ward off predators more effectively.
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So, it doesn't seem likely that meat is linked to IQ.
You are all doing it.
It is fat that is linked to IQ.
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I'm increasingly unconvinced re the notion that diet is responsible for the vast increase in hominid brain-size. If it had only been a question of eating meat that led to brains, then one would expect many other mammals to have attained human-like boosts in brain-size. And there are plenty of herbivores which are more intelligent than meat-eaters like tigers etc.(a good example is the gorilla which Eades mistakenly mentions).
Here is what Eades said on gorillas:
Are we meat eaters or vegetarians? Part II
21. September 2009, 22:32
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-library/are-we-meat-eaters-or-vegetarians-part-ii/
"Take the gorilla, for example, almost pure vegetarians that spend their entire ‘working’ day foraging and eating, which they have to do to get enough calories to maintain their enormous bulk. They have large guts and pay for it by having small brains. Even smaller than that of our most primitive ancestors, the australophthecines.
Gorilla has one of the lowest levels of encephalization of any haplorhine primate, and the much higher level of encephalization of all the australopithecines suggests a diet of significantly higher quality than that of this genus.
Which makes sense when you consider that carbon 13 isotope analysis has shown that Australopithecus africanus (the species that came right after Lucy) consumed meat. As you go up the lineage from Australopithecus and through Homo, you find that more and more meat was consumed the higher up the tree you go."
Eades addressed the big cats vs. gorillas and other primates issue several times in the comments:
Kayaman, 22. September 2009, 6:27
Excellent post, as usual. Thank you.
Why doesn’t the ETH logic apply to other carnivores? Lions eat meat but don’t seem very smart. How do they maintain parity with Kleiber’s law?
Eades: Lions and other carnivores obviously didn’t have the selective pressures to develop larger brains that humans did.
Allen, 22. September 2009, 7:51
If it was meat consumption alone that lead to our increased brain size, then why didn’t other carnivores, especially cats, also develop large brains? Lierre Keith posits in “The Vegetarian Myth” that it is man’s unique ability to crush our prey’s skull and get access to the fatty brain (mostly saturated fat at that) which ultimately allowed our human ancestors to develop their own large brains. BTW, I love this book! Thanks for recommending it.
Eades: The big cats developed through a different line than we did. They may not have had the selection pressures we did – given our relatively small bodies and relative lack of strength and speed – to grow a large brain.
Jeff, 22. September 2009, 9:41
Long time reader, first time commenter. Great article and it makes a lot of sense.
I am apparently the third to pick out carnivorous cats as making this theory questionable. Even though you answered the question earlier regarding cats I am still a bit unsatisfied. Cats may not have had the same selective pressures, but they do have small(er) GI tracts from what I hear. If that is the case then either Kleiber’s law is violated and they have a lower metabolic rate OR there is some other metabolically expensive tissue that makes up for it (instead of brain matter). Is it their musculature that is larger in proportion to their bodies that grew as a result of their selection pressure? I would love to see the chart of a big cat’s actual and expected as in the organ weight chart above. Muscle is my guess but I am not sure since you mentioned it isn’t much of a contributor. I would be curious as to your answer.
Great stuff and keep up the good work,
Jeff(meat and paleoish low-carb eater)
Eades: I don’t have the data on the big cats. The Expensive-Tissue Hypothesis was written to address the rapid increase in human brain size. We are a totally different genus and species from lions and tigers, so what applies to us doesn’t necessarily apply to them. They are on the Kleiber line, but I don’t know what makes up the difference anatomically between their small GI tracts and brain size. Obviously something does – I just don’t know what because I’ve never studied it. Lions do have a considerably larger muscle mass on a per body unit basis than humans, so maybe some of it is there. Since they are in a different genus, maybe their hearts and/or kidneys are larger as well. Aiello and Wheeler compared us to primates, since that is the line from which we descended.
Rebekka, 22. September 2009, 10:10
Back in my anthropology days at school we were lectured about the importance of meat to human evolution, but I don’t recall that our professor talked so much about the GI tract as the quality of the diet, and the chewability. If I remember correctly (not guaranteed!), as the diet grew finer and contained less roughage and coarse plant fibers, there was a corresponding decrease in tooth and jaw size, but the attachment sites on the skull for the jaw musculature also decreased, which allowed the intracranial capacity to increase.
This could be a potential explanation for why other carnivores such as the large cats haven’t evolved human-like large brains – they need their massive jaw musculature for hunting and breaking apart carcasses.
Thoughts?
Eades: Interesting idea, but, as Aiello and Wheeler warned in the ECT, you’ve got to be careful deriving theories from specific anatomical points without looking at the total picture. But, could be the difference between us and the big cats.
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Eades' explanation for why the big cats didn't develop large brains despite a smaller gut is pretty weak, simply claiming that they were different species from humans etc. The claim re smaller jaws deriving from meat is not the only one. There's another claim suggesting simply a genetic mutation causing smaller jaws(and therefore a larger brain):-
http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=887
Also, the gorilla example is a bad one. Didn't you yourself give an example of some small primate species eating mostly or wholly fauna? That species is undoubtedly far lower in IQ than a gorilla, despite its carnivorous diet.
The real problem Eades has is that some wild animal species have increased their brain-size on an evolutionary level without requiring higher amounts of meat, which invalidates the expensive tissue hypothesis. Even worse, Homo Habilis had a brain 50% larger than its Australopithecine ancestors(Homo Habilis started to appear c.2.5 million years ago just at the start when humans began gradually to eat a little more meats in the diet- Australopithecines were mostly frugviorus/herbivorous ).So since Eades cannot explain the increase in brain-size of the Australopithecines or Homo Habilis, it seems far more likely that the cause of the increase in the brain-size of all hominids had nothing to do with diet but some other cause.
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You all still do go on and on and on about meat.
The difference between us and our dimwitted fellow carnivores is FAT consumption.
The broken animal skulls and leg bones at all paleolithic campsites show this clearly. Brains are fatty, so is marrow.
Lions, wolves etc. can't get enough fat to support a big brain; we can.
From a post by delfuego who noticed it too:
"Read Weston Price. He makes a strong correlation between diet and human behavior.
Also look into the insanity of John Harvey Kellogg and his work with canines. By turning their diets from meat to grain he was "able" to create a "docile" more "easily manageable" beast. He followed the same reasoning for children and came up with Corn Flakes. His work led to the creation of a sanitarium where guests were treated to vegetarian diets and yogurt enemas. He made it his life's work to strip males of their sexual desire (his religious belief deemed sexuality as an evil urge) through the consumption of grains and a low fat diet."
When politicians/tyrants create a docile subject/slave population, they do so by convincing them to avoid fat meat. This is the recipe for how to make paleoman into neolithic man.
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There's little point in citing fat as opposed to meat. For one thing, many of the calories in brains cannot be used so that's misleading and brain and marrow fat is not a great deal more than the rest of the fat in the body, being only a fraction of the overall total of body-fat, so that extra fat as an explanation for brain-size increase does not compute either.
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It is hardly opposed to meat, it is rather the component of a human diet that makes the difference between us and the other carnivores.
Not so much the amount of calories as the quality - see Taubes' GCBC.
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It is hardly opposed to meat, it is rather the component of a human diet that makes the difference between us and the other carnivores.
Not so much the amount of calories as the quality - see Taubes' GCBC.
Trouble is that wild animals ate the same sort of food as palaeo humans. Some animals do indeed eat the marrow by cracking open the bones(eg:- wolves, lions and vultures)The vultures crack the bones by dropping them from great heights while lions and wolves use their teeth. I wouldn't be surprised if there are many animals which eat brains as well.
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Eades' explanation for why the big cats didn't develop large brains despite a smaller gut is pretty weak, simply claiming that they were different species from humans etc. The claim re smaller jaws deriving from meat is not the only one. There's another claim suggesting simply a genetic mutation causing smaller jaws(and therefore a larger brain):-
http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=887
Yes, but if that hypothesis is true, then what enabled that mutation to survive and replicate in those who had it? One of the study's scientists, Minugh-Purvis, argues in the article you cited that it may have been a change from "eating chewy leaves all day long to snacking on smaller portions of meat" that enabled this mutation to survive and spread.
Also, the gorilla example is a bad one. Didn't you yourself give an example of some small primate species eating mostly or wholly fauna? That species is undoubtedly far lower in IQ than a gorilla, despite its carnivorous diet.
I'm wasn't claiming that Eades had responded to all possible questions re: the hypothesis, just thought it was fair to point out that he had responded to the questions you raised about the big cats. It's still an area of much speculation and I don't know what all the answers are. I am neither convinced that meat/fat is the whole answer, as he seems to suggest, or that cooking is the whole answer. I think that the answer is probably more complex and multifactorial, as with most biological processes. It may involve both cooking and meat eating and other factors, such as sexual selection of neotenized traits. The tarsiers vs. gorillas question is an interesting one you could raise with Dr. Eades.
The real problem Eades has is that some wild animal species have increased their brain-size on an evolutionary level without requiring higher amounts of meat, which invalidates the expensive tissue hypothesis.
Remind me again please of an example of this and if you have a hypothesis re: the mechanism behind it, and are you talking about increases in brain/body ratio, or just plain increases in brain size?
Even worse, Homo Habilis had a brain 50% larger than its Australopithecine ancestors(Homo Habilis started to appear c.2.5 million years ago just at the start when humans began gradually to eat a little more meats in the diet- Australopithecines were mostly frugviorus/herbivorous ).So since Eades cannot explain the increase in brain-size of the Australopithecines or Homo Habilis, it seems far more likely that the cause of the increase in the brain-size of all hominids had nothing to do with diet but some other cause.
Quite the contrary, Eades and others have argued that Australopithecines ate more meat than earlier primates, and Eades directly addressed this in his article:
<<Take the gorilla, for example, almost pure vegetarians that spend their entire ‘working’ day foraging and eating, which they have to do to get enough calories to maintain their enormous bulk. They have large guts and pay for it by having small brains. Even smaller than that of our most primitive ancestors, the australophthecines.
| Gorilla has one of the lowest levels of encephalization of any haplorhine primate, and the much higher level of encephalization of all
| the australopithecines suggests a diet of significantly higher quality than that of this genus.
Which makes sense when you consider that carbon 13 isotope analysis has shown that Australopithecus africanus (the species that came right after Lucy) consumed meat. As you go up the lineage from Australopithecus and through Homo, you find that more and more meat was consumed the higher up the tree you go.>>
Trouble is that wild animals ate the same sort of food as palaeo humans. Some animals do indeed eat the marrow by cracking open the bones(eg:- wolves, lions and vultures)The vultures crack the bones by dropping them from great heights while lions and wolves use their teeth. I wouldn't be surprised if there are many animals which eat brains as well.
Didn't you write favorably of the scavenger hypothesis, which is based on the inability of any major predators beyond hominids other than giant cats and hyenas that went extinct around half a million years ago to access the brains and marrow of an intact skeleton? Have you abandoned the scavenger hypothesis?
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Yes, but if that hypothesis is true, then what enabled that mutation to survive and replicate in those who had it? One of the study's scientists, Minugh-Purvis, argues in the article you cited that it may have been a change from "eating chewy leaves all day long to snacking on smaller portions of meat" that enabled this mutation to survive and spread.
This is a bad claim as hominids had already moved away from a largely herbivorous(leaf-eating etc.) diet to a more frugivorous one. Raw fruit does not require massive jaws in order to be eaten.
I'm wasn't claiming that Eades had responded to all possible questions re: the hypothesis, just thought it was fair to point out that he had responded to the questions you raised about the big cats. It's still an area of much speculation and I don't know what all the answers are. I am neither convinced that meat/fat is the whole answer, as he seems to suggest, or that cooking is the whole answer. I think that the answer is probably more complex and multifactorial, as with most biological processes. It may involve both cooking and meat eating and other factors, such as sexual selection of neotenized traits. The tarsiers vs. gorillas question is an interesting one you could raise with Dr. Eades.
I would never dare to argue with a guru after one or two unfortunate experiences in the past. They are all of necessity extremely dogmatic, as they are defending their own turf etc. As for the issue of cooking and bigger brains, given that the advent of cooking(250,000 years ago) happened long after the really big increases in hominid brain-size, that makes the theory dead in the water. Perhaps cooking led to a further slight decrease in jaw-size at the tail-end of the Palaeolithic(with no effect on the brain), but that's about it.
Remind me again please of an example of this and if you have a hypothesis re: the mechanism behind it, and are you talking about increases in brain/body ratio, or just plain increases in brain size?
I was just talking about plain increases in brain-size of herbivores via evolution, such as elephants.Brain-size does have to increase with body-size as the larger body requires more brain-matter dedicated to breathing and other basic functions. The brain-size/body ratio is controversial with some claiming that brain-size/lean-mass ratio is more accurate, and others claiming that even that is wrong.
Quite the contrary, Eades and others have argued that Australopithecines ate more meat than earlier primates, and Eades directly addressed this in his article:
<<Take the gorilla, for example, almost pure vegetarians that spend their entire ‘working’ day foraging and eating, which they have to do to get enough calories to maintain their enormous bulk. They have large guts and pay for it by having small brains. Even smaller than that of our most primitive ancestors, the australophthecines.
| Gorilla has one of the lowest levels of encephalization of any haplorhine primate, and the much higher level of encephalization of all
| the australopithecines suggests a diet of significantly higher quality than that of this genus.
Which makes sense when you consider that carbon 13 isotope analysis has shown that Australopithecus africanus (the species that came right after Lucy) consumed meat. As you go up the lineage from Australopithecus and through Homo, you find that more and more meat was consumed the higher up the tree you go.>>
If Eades made this claim, he's being deliberately misleading. Any cursory check online shows that the recent data claiming an omnivorous diet for Australopithecines is controversial at best(much like that seriously flawed study some time back which claimed that Neanderthals only ate meats and was later disproven), and even those claims admit that the majority of the Australopithecine diet was still mainly consisting of fruits, tubers etc., with meat being only a lesser component(given that chimpanzees already eat c.7%(?) of their diet in the form of animal food, low intakes of meat can be largely discounted as an issue. And, of course, it doesn't explain either that meat-intakes were even lower the further one goes back before the Australopithecines, and yet brain-size increased as time went by despite those ancient hominids not eating meats at all.
Didn't you write favorably of the scavenger hypothesis, which is based on the inability of any major predators beyond hominids other than giant cats and hyenas that went extinct around half a million years ago to access the brains and marrow of an intact skeleton? Have you abandoned the scavenger hypothesis?
In that paragraph, I was only talking about wild animals scavenging, not humans. As for the hominid scavenger theory, I viewed it as a possibility in the past, but I now simply don't believe that just eating brains or marrow as a preference leads to bigger brains as if that were the case, wild animal-eaters of marrow and brain would be significantly more intelligent, and that's not the case. On the other hand, it's possible that scavenging forced humans to grow bigger brains as it required bigger brain-power than standard consumption of fruits.
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This whole discussion is moot, as it depends on evolution which is not even a theory, given the "Missing Link".
It is neither possible to define paleofood nor determine its function by observing the antics of a bunch of monkeys.
Off topic.
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This is a bad claim as hominids had already moved away from a largely herbivorus(leaf-eating etc.) diet to a more frugivorous one.
It may be a "bad claim," but it is nonetheless a claim from the article you felt confident enough in to cite. Are you having second thoughts about that citation? What was the immediate predecessor of Australopithecines that you are saying was frugivorous?
I would never dare to argue with a guru after one or two unfortunate experiences in the past. They are all of necessity extremely dogmatic, as they are defending their own turf etc.
You could pose it in the form of a question. I would do so myself, but I would probably be less likely to think of follow-up questions on the subject than you.
As for the issue of cooking and bigger brains, given that the advent of cooking(250,000 years ago) happened long after the really big increases in hominid brain-size, that makes the theory dead in the water.
The majority yes, but not all of them. I think you've argued in the past that cooking had an effect on human morphology (such as contributing to neoteny) in the last 10,000 to 40,000 years or so, and you could be right.
Perhaps cooking led to a further slight decrease in jaw-size at the tail-end of the Palaeolithic(with no effect on the brain), but that's about it.
As we've discussed before, human total body size, along with brain size, declined during the last 35,000 to 70,000 years (depending on the source), IIRC.
I was just talking about plain increases in brain-size of herbivores via evolution, such as elpehants.
Yes, we those of us who have confidence in evolutionary biology know it's evolution (with certain exceptions, like William), but the question is, do you have any hypotheses re: the mechanism that triggered the evolutionary change of increasing brain size among elephants?
If Eades made this claim, he's being deliberately misleading. Any cursory check online shows that the recent data claiming an omnivorous diet for Australopithecines is controversial at best
Controversial is not quite the same as deliberately misleading. Perhaps he should have noted that there is disagreement on the evidence for increased meat eating among Australopithecines, but I have read about that myself and he may have discussed it in earlier blog posts.
even those claims admit that the majority of the Australopithecine diet was still mainly consisting of fruits, tubers etc., with meat being only a lesser component(given that chimpanzees already eat c.7%(?) of their diet in the form of animal food, low intakes of meat can be largely discounted as an issue.
Eades only said that meat intake increased with Australopithecines (and continued to increase among every following hominid up to Cro Magnon), for which there is evidence (I won't bother to cite it, as it seems you've already decided you don't accept it), not that it was a major part of the diet.
And, of course, it doesn't explain either that meat-intakes were even lower the further one goes back before the Australopithecines, and yet brain-size increased as time went by despite those ancient hominids not eating meats at all.
I would be interested in your references on that, as I don't think I've seen the research on this and would be interested to read it. As usual, I'm open-minded on this subject.
As for the hominid scavenger theory, I viewed it as a possibility in the past, but I now simply don't believe that just eating brains or marrow as a preference leads to bigger brains as if that were the case, wild animal-eaters of marrow and brain would be significantly more intelligent, and that's not the case. On the other hand, it's possible that scavenging forced humans to grow bigger brains as it required bigger brain-power than standard consumption of fruits.
I would think that hunting, and the social cooperation and communication it produces, would require even more brain power than scavenging, and thus might have been an even bigger factor in brain development. Thus, increased hunting could explain the increase in brain size that accompanied increased meat eating without meat eating necessarily being itself a causative factor. The hunting hypothesis has been proposed by several highly respected scientists, as I recall. My own view, as I mentioned, is that there are probably multiple causes, which complicates matters.
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It may be a "bad claim," but it is nonetheless a claim from the article you felt confident enough in to cite. Are you having second thoughts about that citation
Not at all. One can quote scientific claims in an article without believing other (more tentative) claims.
What was the immediate predecessor of Australopithecines that you are saying was frugivorous?
There were plenty such as Ardipithecus etc.
Ultimately, of course, we split from chimpanzees c. 5 million years ago, who are/were mainly frugivores.
The majority yes, but not all of them. I think you've argued in the past that cooking had an effect on human morphology (such as contributing to neoteny) in the last 10,000 to 40,000 years or so, and you could be right.
No, I argued that cooking might have led to smaller jaws from around 250,000 years ago. Some rawists, like Aajonus, like to claim that cooking only became a major thing c.10,000 years ago(which I doubt).
As we've discussed before, human total body size, along with brain size, declined during the last 35,000 to 70,000 years (depending on the source), IIRC.
Never heard of the 70,000 figure. Where did you get that from?
Yes, we those of us who have confidence in evolutionary biology know it's evolution (with certain exceptions, like William), but the question is, do you have any hypotheses re: the mechanism that triggered the evolutionary change of increasing brain size among elephants?
I don't know. I do know that elephants have been shown to grow smaller when living on islands isolated by oceans(this dwarfism effect is common to such stranded species). Perhaps, elephants grew larger as it became more evolutionarily advantageous to pick leaves etc. from the tops of trees - who knows?
Controversial is not quite the same as deliberately misleading. Perhaps he should have noted that there is disagreement on the evidence for increased meat eating among Australopithecines, but I have read about that myself and he may have discussed it in earlier blog posts.
Eades only said that meat intake increased with Australopithecines (and continued to increase among every following hominid up to Cro Magnon), for which there is evidence (I won't bother to cite it, as it seems you've already decided you don't accept it), not that it was a major part of the diet.
Here's a scientific paper which points out how the isotope-testing which claimed that meat-consumption was endemic among the Australopithecines was likely flawed and might have indicated plant-consumption instead:-
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/25/13506.full
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Their thick-enameled, flattened molars would have had great difficulty propagating cracks through tough foods, suggesting that the australopithecines were not well suited for eating tough fruits, leaves, or meat. The dental microwear data agree with this conclusion, as the australopithecine patterns documented to date are most similar to those of modern-day seed predators and soft fruit eaters. "
I would be interested in your references on that, as I don't think I've seen the research on this and would be interested to read it. As usual, I'm open-minded on this subject.
See above report in full and any online references re Ardipthecus and other types. I think we can agree that there was very likely minimal consumption of meats(5-7%?), much like with chimpanzees(after all, hominids ultimately split from the ancestors of chimpanzees c. 5 million years ago or so). However, claims re higher-meat-intake are highly suspect so that alternatives to the meat-brain theory are more likely.
I would think that hunting, and the social cooperation and communication it produces, would require even more brain power than scavenging, and thus might have been an even bigger factor in brain development. Thus, increased hunting could explain the increase in brain size that accompanied increased meat eating without meat eating necessarily being itself a causative factor. The hunting hypothesis has been proposed by several highly respected scientists, as I recall. My own view, as I mentioned, is that there are probably multiple causes, which complicates matters.
I tend to favour the notion that tool-use enhanced intelligence or that some unusual genetic mutation developed due to extreme predation, leading to bigger brains.
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I think you guys missed the point.
Eating meat didn't magically cause larger brains. Eating meat allowed for larger brains. Also, "larger" is the wrong thing to focus on. "More metabolically active" is correct in terms of Kleiber's law.
To reduce the argument to a strict syllogism:
1) Kleiber's Law establishes that animals of a given total size will have some maximum amount of metabolic activity.
2) If, over evolutionary time, one organ decreases its metabolic requirements, the others must pick up the deficit. If one organ increases its metabolic requirements, the others must decrease theirs.
3) Therefore, for humans to evolve more metabolically active brains, they must have decreased their metabolic expenditure elsewhere.
So, left with that conclusion, the next question that is "what did we give up?" Again, a syllogism:
1) The above syllogism establishes that for humans to increase the metabolic expenditure of their brains, other organs must have given up some metabolic activity.
2) The organs that appear to have given way are those related to digestion. This is evidenced by the fossil record and contemporary comparisons.
3) Therefore, for the human brain to increase its metabolic expenditure, a change in diet must have taken place.
Finally, we ask ourselves what change in diet:
1) The previous syllogism establishes that a change in diet must have taken place for the human brain to expand.
2) The most widely available food which was calorically and nutritionally dense enough to enable humans to live with smaller guts is meat.
3) Therefore, for the human brain to increase its metabolic expenditure, humans must have started eating meat in preference to other foods.
Notice the causal links here. Our brains were expanding, so we had to eat meat. Not, we ate meat so our brains magically grew.
The selective pressures that lead to humans evolving active brains are not considered by this theory. Those selective pressures demanded humans develop more active brains. As those pressures selected for those brains, humans that ate meat were able to support them, by giving up their large digestive tracts. The more meat you ate, the less you need to use your guts, the more you could use your brain, and the more likely you were to survive whatever selective pressure existed that was pushing you towards using your brain more. Thus selective pressure for meat-eating due to its ability to support active brains.
That pressure or pressures could have been anything. The claim is that eating meat enabled or was necessary for us to evolve large brains, not that it was the sole factor in our development of large brains.
EDIT:
Here's an important quote from the article:
Any or all of these hypotheses may be valid, but the problem isn’t really as much a matter of why as it is a matter of how. Other primates deal with groups and have complex foraging strategies; and many deal with social problems within their groups, and some even hunt. Yet they still have small brains. (Granted, their brains are larger for their size than those of other mammals, but primates sport small brains as compared to humans.) How did the human brain grow?
Note the emphasis on how as opposed to why.
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Never heard that one before, everything reads reasonable except law 2: "If, over evolutionary time, one organ decreases its metabolic requirements, the others must pick up the deficit. If one organ increases its metabolic requirements, the others must decrease theirs."
Can't the organism increase it's overall metabolic expenditure, or decrease it?
Even without that part of the concept though it still makes sense as a possible link between meat eating and getting smarter.
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Yes, but then it changes in size. Kleiber's law has held for many observed organisms (hence its status as a "law"). You can't be the size of a human with an elephant's metabolism. You'd need to be roughly the size of the elephant to have the same overall expenditure.
If you increased in size while also increasing the relative expenditure of your brain, your gut would be proportionally smaller when you settled at your larger size. The end result would be the same as if you had stayed the same size overall and just traded off between the two, with a smaller gut relative to overall body.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiber's_law
No one has a good theoretical explanation as to why this is, but the observations are too consistent to dismiss the law.
And again, I must stress that the link between the two goes more like "brain growing -> meat eating" than the other way around. We ate meat to support larger brains - those brains didn't magically appear due to eating meat.
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The trouble with Kleiber's law seems to be that even the 3/4 model has exceptions to it. It's unsurprising, therefore, , some biologists discount the theory.
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Perhaps it's wrong for those exceptions, but for humans it holds true.
It's actually not that important to the case being made here. It establishes the theoretical framework of why our brains didn't just start sucking energy while everything else remained the same: we only had a certain energy budget and something had to give. The observational framework, which is fairly well established, is that our guts shrank while our brains grew. From there it's easy to derive meat-eating as being an enabler along that path.
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Notice the causal links here. Our brains were expanding, so we had to eat meat. Not, we ate meat so our brains magically grew.
Non sequitur.
The cause is not linear, so wording it this way is incorrect. The phenomenon is cyclic & mutualistic. Whether we started eating meat BECAUSE our brains were growing or whether our brains were growing BECAUSE we started eating meat is something we can never know (though the latter is more likely, or at least more logically convenient by way of explanation because without it, one still has the hanging question of WHY brains started growing).
What we DO know is that once the first step was taken and brains were growing, they grew with the help of all that extra fat & protein...and that all that fat & protein helped those brains grow.
The effect was that the GI tract began to shrink.
But it would be hard to prove that GI tracts mysteriously began to shrink and so our bodies' response was to increase the size of the brain by some equally mysterious process.
Eating meat doesn't make brains magically grow, it allows more resources for brains (and other organs) to grow. But if there were exceptional demands on the brain in conjunction with extra nutritional resources, then...
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What we DO know is that once the first step was taken and brains were growing, they grew with the help of all that extra fat & protein...and that all that fat & protein helped those brains grow.
The effect was that the GI tract began to shrink.
But it would be hard to prove that GI tracts mysteriously began to shrink and so our bodies' response was to increase the size of the brain by some equally mysterious process.
Eating meat doesn't make brains magically grow, it allows more resources for brains (and other organs) to grow. But if there were exceptional demands on the brain in conjunction with extra nutritional resources, then...
Eating rawpaleo zero carb does result in less weight, and IIRC the gut shrinks as well in time, so we don't need to drag in evolution to make sense of this. The decrease in brain size since paleo time looks to be because the neolithic diet does not support the paleo-sized brains.
We differ from the apes, we don't know why, and evolution is moot.
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Eating meat doesn't make brains magically grow, it allows more resources for brains (and other organs) to grow. But if there were exceptional demands on the brain in conjunction with extra nutritional resources, then..
This summarizes the argument made by the article pretty well. I'm not sure what your disagreement is... this sentence is exactly what you called a non sequitur at the top of your post. I'm also not sure why you point out that this leaves "why" unanswered; yes, it very explicitly leaves "why" unanswered because that's outside the scope of the argument.
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Like I said, Kleiber's Law is too controversial to be labelled a law. Here's a paper which criticises some aspects of Kleiber's Law:-
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18978222
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Eating rawpaleo zero carb does result in less weight, and IIRC the gut shrinks as well in time, so we don't need to drag in evolution to make sense of this. The decrease in brain size since paleo time looks to be because the neolithic diet does not support the paleo-sized brains.
We differ from the apes, we don't know why, and evolution is moot.
The position is not that eating meat shrinks the GI tract of the individual, but that eating meat causes an evolutionary change in humans where the size of the GI cavity shrinks, along with the organs and the like.
An increase in brain size (or a decrease in gut size) is only evolutionary if it effects the species. Evolution, in the scientific sense, does not effect individuals. Thus, we ARE talking about evolution, not changes to an individual.
This summarizes the argument made by the article pretty well. I'm not sure what your disagreement is... this sentence is exactly what you called a non sequitur at the top of your post. I'm also not sure why you point out that this leaves "why" unanswered; yes, it very explicitly leaves "why" unanswered because that's outside the scope of the argument.
My apologies, then, for being less than clear.
Non sequitur because your statement was "Notice the causal links here. Our brains were expanding, so we had to eat meat. Not, we ate meat so our brains magically grew.", to which I respond two-fold:
1) WHY were our brains expanding? They don't just magically (to use your words) expand and so we magically figure out we need to eat meat.
2) WHY did our guts shrink? They don't just magically shrink and so our brains magically respond by growing.
There is no linear causality as you suggest. The effect is emergent from a variety of both linear & cyclic pressures.
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"Why" is not relevant to the argument made in Eades' article. It does not attempt to explain why. It attempts to describe one theory of how it was we were able to develop larger brains, which it then uses to attack vegetarians. Again, we know we developed larger brains (for whatever reason - it's totally irrelevant to the argument and thus ignored). How did we do so? How were we able to support the larger energy requirements? Well, we ate meat, and in fact had to eat meat or else we are left unable to explain how early man survived with a growing brain and shrinking gut. Thus, vegetarian claims about early man's diet are wrong. That's it. That's the argument. There's nothing in there about why anything because that's not the intent.
This thread focused entirely on the "brains + eating meat" step of the argument, but managed to invert it. The claim, as I state in your quote, is not that eating meat causes larger brains. The claim is that it enables larger brains, and would have been necessary to support larger brains. You saw the word "causal" and assumed that I was claiming that larger brains caused meat eating, but this is not so. Read the sentence again. "Our brains were expanding, so we had to eat meat". The first clause is a condition we know to be true, and the second is a logical deduction from it. I think the tense is screwing you up, let me restate it more clearly:
"Our brains were expanding, so we had to be eating meat."
Better? Eating meat was necessary to support expanding brains at that time in our evolution.
Although, now that I think about, you could argue that brains growing would cause more meat eating, if only because those populations that ate less meat would be selected away. But that's indirect, and again, not really the point of the argument being made.
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Fair enough.
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It's like Gary Taubes said, kids going through growing spurts don't grow because they eat a lot, they eat a lot because they're growing. Their hormones make them grow. So in kind, if a species had individuals who had hormones for larger brains, and those larger brains had to be fed more of certain nutrients, and they couldn't get them, they wouldn't survive. But if they could, then they would have all the advantages that larger brain could afford them.
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I like that Taubes analogy. Dr. Mark Hyman says that human brains contain about 60% omega 3 animal fats (we are animals, after all :) ), so it makes intuitive sense that unprocessed omega 3 animal fats would be a good source of nutrition for human brains. As Dr. Hyman put it, "become a fat head." :)
Wrangham's hypothesis that cooked starches are the real brain food makes less logical sense to me.
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Wrangham's hypothesis...makes less logical sense to me.
You could put almost anything in the middle of that sentence, in the ellipse, and I would agree. The man seems determined to be wrong, loudly, publicly, and in print, as much as one man can. He's setting new standards for factual wrongness. Guinness Book of World Records is going to have to start a new category to describe his wrongness. He's setting records.
Seriously, cooking makes bigger brains?
WTF? My degree is in flipping MUSIC, and even I see how that requires waaaay the heck more support than the fossil record and archaeological record show.
I think it's obvious what "brain food" is, for humans. Fat builds the brain, and carbs run the brain. You need some of both. Some people can get by with almost no carbs, but almost everyone needs some good-quality fats.
Brain food is species-dependent. Large-brained creatures eat all kinds of diets. Whale sharks are small-brained, but they eat the same food that large-brained blue whales do. Giant centipedes have almost no brain, but they are definitely meat-eaters, and eat a similar diet to tarsiers, which have much larger brains. Brain food can be anything. Some primates eat a lot of meat, relatively, some eat almost none, and instead eat mostly fruit.
Seriously, who is bribing Wrangham to say this crazy crap? LOL
I just don't get it. Why would our pre-human ancestors need cooked food to develop larger brains? Their ancestors didn't need it. I'm not saying there's no way it could have had an influence, I'm just saying that the proof is far, far, far from solid. In a case like this, I'm going to have to say that it's an "innocent until proven guilty" situation, where humans are innocent of needing cooked food to develop large brains, until proven guilty. In other words, given the general evolutionary tendency toward larger brains in vertebrate evolutionary lines, the burden of proof lies with Wrangham, not me.
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I heard him on a radio talk show. He's smarter than it appears. He actually has live with native tribes in Africa before some of us were born. His point is more about how cooking creates a social structure and how cooking/smoking can preserve meat such as an entire elephant way longer than not cooking/smoking. Thus allowing less periods of hunger.... Haven't read his works but he is 'convincing' on radio, and I imagine in person.
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Wrangham's hypothesis that cooked starches are the real brain food makes less logical sense to me.
Actually, Wrangham isn't so keen on mentioning cooked tubers any more. This is because he was savaged by many Palaeoanthropologists because they pointed out how eating more cooked starches in the Neolithic coincided with a decrease in human brain-size. As a result, he now mostly focuses on the absurd claim that consumption of cooked foods in general led to bigger brain-size, with a slight emphasis on cooked meats as the main instigator.
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I heard him on a radio talk show. He's smarter than it appears. He actually has live with native tribes in Africa before some of us were born. His point is more about how cooking creates a social structure and how cooking/smoking can preserve meat such as an entire elephant way longer than not cooking/smoking. Thus allowing less periods of hunger.... Haven't read his works but he is 'convincing' on radio, and I imagine in person.
Successful hunting requires a social structure, and drying preserves meat better than cooking. Maybe he got rid of his virginity in Africa? Could that explain his nuttiness?
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Wrangham has come up with a hypothesis, and is looking for justifications. That's all well and good if it's an area that you have studied for decades, but he is a primatologist. That's like someone who designs passenger jets having a "brilliant" idea about sports car design, and then trying to run around convincing people that it's brilliant.
Complex social behavior occurs in many species. There's complex mating behavior in some bird species, complex pecking orders in other species, and the list goes on.
Wrangham's theory just doesn't pass the test of "the simplest explanation is often the truest one". In this case, boys and girls, the simplest explanation is that human brains got bigger for the same reason(s) that brains have gotten bigger in pretty much every other vertebrate lineage.
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Actually, Wrangham isn't so keen on mentioning cooked tubers any more. This is because he was savaged by many Palaeoanthropologists because they pointed out how eating more cooked starches in the Neolithic coincided with a decrease in human brain-size. As a result, he now mostly focuses on the absurd claim that consumption of cooked foods in general led to bigger brain-size, with a slight emphasis on cooked meats as the main instigator.
Wow, that's quite a switch on his part. Quite surprising for him to point to meats as the main instigating food, given his near-vegetarianism (he doesn't eat mammals).
...the simplest explanation is that human brains got bigger for the same reason(s) that brains have gotten bigger in pretty much every other vertebrate lineage.
Which is?
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Which is?
I don't know. I am willing to wager a guess that it has nothing to do with cooking.
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1 thing we shouldn't forget is that human brains have increased cortical thickening. For example, if our frontal lobes increased in thickness/number of neural connections during the Neolithic that might compensate or even exceed the intelligence of our Palaeolithic ancestors, even after taking into account the 8% decrease in brain-size.
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If you feel that way then why are you eating a raw PALEO diet? Wouldn't a raw NEOLITHIC diet promote superior brain functioning?
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If you feel that way then why are you eating a raw PALEO diet? Wouldn't a raw NEOLITHIC diet promote superior brain functioning?
If you feel that way then why are you eating a raw PALEO diet? Wouldn't a raw NEOLITHIC diet promote superior brain functioning?
You're missing the point. I was trying to suggest that there might be wholly different, non-dietary reason for why our brains grew larger. 1 thing's for sure, if brain-size really were the main or only criteria, then one would reasonably expect the Eskimos, who reportedly have the largest skulls on the planet, to be outperforming every other group at University etc.
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You're missing the point. I was trying to suggest that there might be wholly different, non-dietary reason for why our brains grew larger. 1 thing's for sure, if brain-size really were the main or only criteria, then one would reasonably expect the Eskimos, who reportedly have the largest skulls on the planet, to be outperforming every other group at University etc.
Elsewhere in this forum the point has been made that paleoman ate brains (the right fat); they contain enough of the nutrients needed to grow and maintain large competent brains.
Simple enough that I like it, and it might even be true.
The Inuit are going through culture shock (depression, high suicide rate); if they survive it they will out-perform all others. Other aboriginals have not survived well.
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True, William, right now most of the Inuit are not eating too well, but an even bigger factor in their not dominating the world's universities is that there are so few of them and they live in the Arctic, for crying out loud. Expecting the Eskimos to outperform every other group at the world's top universities would be a little like saying, "Londoners can't be too smart, they know very little about whaling or sledding and they don't dominate Bone Puzzle (Inukat) competitions." Heck, there are way more Londoners than Eskimos, so even that comparison is unfair to the Eskimos.
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The Inuit do not necessarily live in the back of beyond any more. I mean it's not like the Stefansson era. Now the Inuit have their own country(Nunavik?) so can hardly be considered primitive.
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Regardless, it's extremely unfair to compare them to the university cities of the world, especially given their puny population numbers. The sheer odds you ever even meeting an Inuit college student in London are enormous and most of them aren't even eating their fully traditional diet any more, as has been pointed out more than once in this thread and others. I find your expectation that Eskimos should outperform every university in modern Western academic matters unconvincing to the point of absurdity and below your normal standards of argument. You seem to be really reaching with this one.
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Regardless, it's extremely unfair to compare them to the university cities of the world, especially given their puny population numbers. The sheer odds you ever even meeting an Inuit college student in London are enormous and most of them aren't even eating their fully traditional diet any more, as has been pointed out more than once in this thread and others. I find your expectation that Eskimos should outperform every university in modern Western academic matters unconvincing to the point of absurdity and below your normal standards of argument. You seem to be really reaching with this one.
On the contrary, you are the one who is reaching. I would certainly expect Inuit to feature prominently in Canadian universities(and the high-meat eating Nenets of Siberia among other similiar groups). These current peoples no longer live in a silly idealised Noble Savage environment of the 19th century, with Inuit on traditional diets for example commonly resorting to modern weapons such as rifles to hunt their usual prey.
At any rate, it's difficult to argue that brain-size is a relevant issue when one of the main features of enhanced overall human intelligence in the first place involves a larger frontal lobe and enhanced cortical thickening(as opposed to just big brains which feature in other animals). To give you an example, what if the larger brain of the Inuit meant a larger frontal lobe, but with fewer neural connections than other groups? That would balance out.
Plus, given the decided lack of Inuit high-level academics/Nobel prize winners indicates pretty strongly that in the very remote likelihood that they were more intelligent than other humans, that the difference would be so negligibly small as to clearly not give them a competitive advantage. In other words, having significantly enhanced greater intelligence means more opportunities created for you and a competitive advantage, regardless of whether you're an Inuit tribesman or a son of a not too bright working-class family with the only prospect of a career in the coal-mines(I'm thinking of, in the latter case, a man who became a prolific successful British writer despite having initially no prospects whatsoever, simply by having a significantly enhanced IQ compared to others in his immediate social background).
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I am not totally a vegetarian yet. But I stooped eating meat and other meat based products though sometimes I eat fish and egg.
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I am not totally a vegetarian yet. But I stooped eating meat and other meat based products though sometimes I eat fish and egg.
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Why are you going to become a vegetarian? You're giving up milk, rice, honey and poultry flesh too?
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On the contrary, you are the one who is reaching. I would certainly expect Inuit to feature prominently in Canadian universities(and the high-meat eating Nenets of Siberia among other similiar groups). ...
As I recall, the Bushmen eat the highest level of plant foods of all the hunter gatherers in the ethnographic atlas. There are reportedly twice as many Bushmen as Inuit, yet the Bushmen also don't feature prominently in African universities, nor do any of the other remaining hunter-gatherer peoples in the world--unless you can point to some. So the lack of HGs in universities is universal, and does not appear correlated to the level of plant foods they consume and singling out the Inuit or Nenets doesn't make sense. It appears to have much more to do with their puny numbers as compared to modern societies, and the fact that they choose to live in remote areas that often don't have universities or modern transportation or even books and many of them have no interest in attending universities where they could not live their lifestyle.
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Not a valid comparison. The Inuit already have their own nation within Canada, unlike the Bushmen, and are far less primitive(for example, the Inuit hunters are described as using rifles nowadays). So, the fact that Inuit aren't far more prominent in Canadian universities by comparison to other groups is a solid sign that they don't have any such advantage.
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Not a valid comparison. The Inuit already have their own nation within Canada, unlike the Bushmen, and are far less primitive(for example, the Inuit hunters are described as using rifles nowadays). So, the fact that Inuit aren't far more prominent in Canadian universities by comparison to other groups is a solid sign that they don't have any such advantage.
But if they're far less primitive, ie, more modern, then they're probably eating more modern foods, which William and I repeatedly mentioned has been reported. The fact that most Inuit have adopted very unhealthy, substantially modern diets (a trend that Dr. Jay Wortman is trying to help reverse) is fairly common knowledge in Paleo dieting circles. So that actually makes the Inuit less likely to have higher intelligence than other more traditional HG groups, although differences in levels of plants, carbs and fats could offset that some.
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But if they're far less primitive, ie, more modern, then they're probably eating more modern foods, which William and I repeatedly mentioned has been reported. The fact that most Inuit have adopted very unhealthy, substantially modern diets (a trend that Dr. Jay Wortman is trying to help reverse) is fairly common knowledge in Paleo dieting circles. So that actually makes the Inuit less likely to have higher intelligence than other more traditional HG groups, although differences in levels of plants, carbs and fats could offset that some.
I'm afraid that's an incorrect assumption. I was specifically referring to those Inuit who still hunted traditional prey(such as whales, seals etc.), for their food . These are described as using modern rifles to kill whales etc., not the traditional harpoon. They're one of the few people who can still get around anti-whaling laws.
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I'm afraid that's an incorrect assumption. I was specifically referring to those Inuit who still hunted traditional prey(such as whales, seals etc.), for their food . These are described as using modern rifles to kill whales etc., not the traditional harpoon. They're one of the few people who can still get around anti-whaling laws.
My understanding from articles, videos, etc., is there are only about 50,000 Inuit in the world today. All Inuit do not eat only traditional foods. Even among those that still hunt, most (not all) also eat crap like canned foods (which is why some are fat as hell). For example, this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGVdYiM5IXw shows Inuit who hunt with rifles and eat some traditional foods like raw seal (BTW, notice that they savor the organs too, eating nearly everything, and one granny mentions that the brains are her favorite part). The elders are all overweight (though not the worst I've seen by a long shot). They didn't get that way by eating only traditional foods.
Dr. Wortman has had to struggle just to get a tiny minority of Inuit and other First Nations people to eat only or mostly a traditional-type diet again (with splendid results among those who do it). If you do much research on the Inuit, reading about Dr. Wortman's work and stories on their current lifestyle and the problems they face, you'll find what I and William have been talking about--since first contact, and especially since the late 1970s, there has been increasing reliance on and consumption of imported processed foods, etc., resulting in increasing rates of the diseases of civilization.
I'm not convinced by your claims. If what you say is true, then Gray-Hawk's genius IQ is merely coincidence. I'm skeptical of that. I would need more evidence than just your assertion that the Inuit should be well-represented in the world's top universities. Most of the Inuit are eating a lot of crap, so I don't expect their current IQs to necessarily even match the avg American IQs today. I would expect the first-contact Inuit to have had higher intelligence than the avg American (although standard IQ tests would probably be too laden in modern culture to have been accurate measures for them), and Upper Paleolithic Stone age hunters to have had even higher intelligence. Unfortunately, it will be difficult if not impossible to prove this and I think the only way people will be convinced is if thousands of people eat RPD and many have children with above-avg IQs, like Gray-Hawk.
I guess Michael's child could be a test of this. If his wife stays mostly meat/fat-based-RPD during pregnancy and the child does during his/her early years, then if I'm right, we should expect the child to turn out with an above-avg IQ. If Tyler is right, then it will more likely have an avg IQ.
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I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned this in the discussion, but it's worth mentioning again. The idea's not so much that being a carnivore leads to big brains, as it is that being a carnivore allows for the reduction of the gut size.
Dr. Eades introduces us in Part II to the idea that BMR is determined solely by body weight. So IF selective pressures favor a growth in brain size (that was his argument against other carnivores), something else that uses the calories has to shrink. In other words, the brain just can't grow and everything else stays the same. (And turning into giants might not have raised our intelligence either, according to the "encephalization quotient" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio).) Meat (being filled with fats, whether it looks fatty or not) is the most dense source of both calories and nutrients. This allowed our guts to shrink, so our energy hungry brains could grow (something like 20% of our total energy, vs the expected 8%, based on body size).
Of course, we see around us that refined carbohydrates can also be very calorie dense, so people can survive on them. Regarding the cooked food idea, I can believe the idea that vegetables would have to be cooked in order to derive any amount of calories at once, them being easier to digest than raw vegetables. (Think beyond enzymes to what are you going to absorb more easily-- a soup of vegetables or the raw vegetables?) I think all the native peoples Weston Price visited cooked their vegetables. Because they are still calorie poor and labor intensive, not to mention hard to come by in the ice ages, paleolithic man probably only considered vegetables as a last resort. And this is why raw vegans probably suffer the worst calorie deficiencies (not to mention nutritional), unless they are constantly juicing.
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I'm not convinced by your claims. If what you say is true, then Gray-Hawk's genius IQ is merely coincidence. I'm skeptical of that. I would need more evidence than just your assertion that the Inuit should be well-represented in the world's top universities. Most of the Inuit are eating a lot of crap, so I don't expect their current IQs to necessarily even match the avg American IQs today. I would expect the first-contact Inuit to have had higher intelligence than the avg American (although standard IQ tests would probably be too laden in modern culture to have been accurate measures for them), and Upper Paleolithic Stone age hunters to have had even higher intelligence. Unfortunately, it will be difficult if not impossible to prove this and I think the only way people will be convinced is if thousands of people eat RPD and many have children with above-avg IQs, like Gray-Hawk.
I guess Michael's child could be a test of this. If his wife stays mostly meat/fat-based-RPD during pregnancy and the child does during his/her early years, then if I'm right, we should expect the child to turn out with an above-avg IQ. If Tyler is right, then it will more likely have an avg IQ.
Firstly, from what I understand, the remark re "Gray hawk" having genius intelligence seems to come from his father, which makes me very much doubt the claim. I mean, most parents think their child is superior/special in some way, without evidence.
Secondly, like I said before, having a higher intelligence means that you have a much higher competitive advantage compared to others(I'd imagine even a 5 points difference would be noticeable).There is no evidence of that in the Inuit in pre-Contact times(and one would assume that explorers like Stefansson would have noticed any such difference in the 19th to early 20th century). Also, intelligence on an overall basis is partly linked to stimulation, and use of your brain. In other words, it's quite possible that neolithic-era peoples were more intelligent than their palaeo-era ancestors simply because their whole culture was infinitely more complex than in palaeo times, requiring greater levels of organisation, more complex art/science etc.
Another reason for suspecting that the Inuit weren't significantly more intelligent is that their diet consisted partially of cooked food. I mentioned a while back re animals on cooked diets having a lower brainweight than their wild counterparts(re Dr Howell etc.)
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Secondly, like I said before, having a higher intelligence means that you have a much higher competitive advantage compared to others(I'd imagine even a 5 points difference would be noticeable).There is no evidence of that in the Inuit in pre-Contact times(and one would assume that explorers like Stefansson would have noticed any such difference in the 19th to early 20th century).
Compete against whom? I'm not aware of any evidence for competition, and the available records indicate that they were even recently far more socially ept than we.
I suggest that it is the stupid who compete, while the wise cooperate.
Also, intelligence on an overall basis is partly linked to stimulation, and use of your brain. In other words, it's quite possible that neolithic-era peoples were more intelligent than their palaeo-era ancestors simply because their whole culture was infinitely more complex than in palaeo times, requiring greater levels of organisation, more complex art/science etc.
Intelligence is shown by language complexity, and it has been said by Inuit that they no longer understand the words of their hunter forbears. Note also the degeneration of most European languages mentioned by linguists.
We are not on the average becoming better.
Agrarian culture is not more complex than that of hunters.
Another reason for suspecting that the Inuit weren't significantly more intelligent is that their diet consisted partially of cooked food. I mentioned a while back re animals on cooked diets having a lower brainweight than their wild counterparts(re Dr Howell etc.)
I won't believe this without evidence of pre-contact cooking, and AFAIK there isn't any.
Dr Howell's animals ate cooked evil carbs; what else could we expect?
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Firstly, from what I understand, the remark re "Gray hawk" having genius intelligence seems to come from his father, which makes me very much doubt the claim. I mean, most parents think their child is superior/special in some way, without evidence.
That's fine, I am merely in the hypothesis stage at this point and we don't have to agree. I didn't expect you to be convinced by the anecdotal evidence provided by Ray Audette about his son Gray Hawk or by Jared Diamond about the HGs he has studied. Like I said, it is essentially impossible to prove either way at this time, given the limited evidence we have to draw on. That's why I suggested keeping an eye on Michael's son's progress and let's see who's hypothesis bears out. Granted, it will still be mere anecdotal evidence, but it should be interesting.
One reason I like this hypothesis favored by Ray Audette, Jared Diamond, Michael Eades and others about (raw and/or low-cooked) meat/fat eating contributing to higher intelligence and perhaps brain/body ratio growth (largely via gut shrinkage--quite right) is it's fairly simple, doesn't require a lot of caveats, it fits in with many other things we've learned about the physiology of humans and other animals, and it would answer a lot of questions. That doesn't mean it's necessarily correct, partly or wholly, but it does have many of the characteristics of a useful and correct hypothesis and the circumstantial evidence up to this point is encouraging. Another more unscientific reason I like it is that I'm eating lots of raw meats and fats myself, I've been experiencing mental improvements and I'm selfishly hoping these will continue and advance further. :) If they don't, then I may end up reconsidering my hypothesis and try putting an alternative one to the test.
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That's why I suggested keeping an eye on Michael's son's progress and let's see who's hypothesis bears out. Granted, it will still be mere anecdotal evidence, but it should be interesting.
I doubt Michael's son's progress would be relevant. The only real way one could prove this claim is if there was a father on this diet who was slightly retarded(not due to accident) and who then managed to produce children who were all of well above average intelligence.
One reason I like this hypothesis favored by Ray Audette, Jared Diamond, Michael Eades and others about (raw and/or low-cooked) meat/fat eating contributing to higher intelligence and perhaps brain/body ratio growth (largely via gut shrinkage--quite right) is it's fairly simple, doesn't require a lot of caveats, it fits in with many other things we've learned about the physiology of humans and other animals, and it would answer a lot of questions. That doesn't mean it's necessarily correct, partly or wholly, but it does have many of the characteristics of a useful and correct hypothesis and the circumstantial evidence up to this point is encouraging. Another more unscientific reason I like it is that I'm eating lots of raw meats and fats myself, I've been experiencing mental improvements and I'm selfishly hoping these will continue and advance further. :) If they don't, then I may end up reconsidering my hypothesis and try putting an alternative one to the test.
I agree re certain mental improvements on diet. I myself have experienced things like improvement in concentration/alertness over the years due to this diet, plus my memory improved etc. Now, these things can, indirectly benefit me, and my brain has almost certainly increased in weight over the years(certain conditions like anxiety(which is what I had) apparently cause decreased brainweight etc., but that isn't really the same as boosting one's innate IQ.
One reason I'm taking all that cod liver oil and krill oil is because I'm hedging my bets and hoping the omega-3 theory re bigger brains is correct. You never know.
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I doubt Michael's son's progress would be relevant. The only real way one could prove this claim is if there was a father on this diet who was slightly retarded(not due to accident) and who then managed to produce children who were all of well above average intelligence.
It's not solid scientific evidence, but I don't know why it would be completely irrelevant from a lay person's perspective. After all, most of us based our dietary choices more on our own anecdotal experience than on solid scientific evidence.
It's not likely we'll ever have a case to follow of a retarded father eating RPD and then producing a genius child, so I guess it will remain an eternal mystery for you. I suspect you're afraid that Michael's son may turn out to be a genius, so you're not willing to put your money where your mouth is. :) Most children do not have IQs well above avg, obviously, so I've even stacked the odds in your favor. Why not have a little fun and take the bet? We don't even have to put money on it. Of course, definitions of "genius level IQ" vary, so I'll bet that Michael's son's IQ turns out to be 140 or higher if he sticks to a meat/fat-based RPD.
Your standards for evidence on this one are higher than mine. Scientific standards, such as a sufficiently large random sample of RPDer children showing IQs one or more standard deviations above the mean would be sufficient evidence for me, especially in the context of a scientific model that explains how it could happen and predicts the general result of higher IQs. In the meantime, Michael's son and two of my nephews are all I've got (unless Jared Diamond or someone else provides more evidence), so I'll be keeping my eye on them. Unfortunately, my nephews weren't Paleo from conception and they haven't tried RPD yet, so they're of less potential anecdotal value than Michael's son, but their diets are superior to the SAD, so I think they'll turn out with higher than avg IQs, but maybe not 140 or more.
I agree re certain mental improvements on diet. I myself have experienced things like improvement in concentration/alertness over the years due to this diet, plus my memory improved etc. Now, these things can, indirectly benefit me, and my brain has almost certainly increased in weight over the years(certain conditions like anxiety(which is what I had) apparently cause decreased brainweight etc., but that isn't really the same as boosting one's innate IQ.
Maybe we're just using different semantics. I'm just using "IQ" as a lazy shorthand for cognitive intelligence and because there are numeric measurements of it that can be compared. I doubt it would even be very applicable to a HG population, but for Michael's son I think it would be a decent, though imperfect, indicator.
One reason I'm taking all that cod liver oil and krill oil is because I'm hedging my bets and hoping the omega-3 theory re bigger brains is correct. You never know.
Smart thinking.
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It's not likely we'll ever have a case to follow of a retarded father eating RPD and then producing a genius child, so I guess it will remain an eternal mystery for you. I suspect you're afraid that Michael's son may turn out to be a genius, so you're not willing to put your money where your mouth is. :) Most children do not have IQs well above avg, obviously, so I've even stacked the odds in your favor. Why not have a little fun and take the bet? We don't even have to put money on it. Of course, definitions of "genius level IQ" vary, so I'll bet that Michael's son's IQ turns out to be 140 or higher if he sticks to a meat/fat-based RPD.
The reason why your bet re Michael's son is ridiculous is because Michael is himself hardly a slow thinker, and therefore rather likely to have children of above average intelligence, regardless of diet.So, that's kind of illegally stacking the deck to your advantage. You might have a point re diet and IQ if the guy ends up the Nikola Tesla of his generation, but otherwise not.
Anyway, I deeply mistrust modern IQ tests. For one thing I noticed that I did even better with them the more IQ tests I did(implying that the tests really determined education rather than IQ) and now that there are claims that people are doing ever better on IQ tests than in previous generations, I am doubly convinced(yes I know there are some fools that claim that the rise in modern IQ is due to increased intelligence but this is clearly scientifically invalid,it's just because of better education).
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The reason why your bet re Michael's son is ridiculous is because Michael is himself hardly a slow thinker, and therefore rather likely to have children of above average intelligence, regardless of diet.So, that's kind of illegally stacking the deck to your advantage. You might have a point re diet and IQ if the guy ends up the Nikola Tesla of his generation, but otherwise not.
All right, then what if I make the bet that his son's IQ will be say 10 or more points above the avg of his parent's scores (almost one standard deviation--15 points--difference)? The Nikola Tesla example seems ridiculously extreme, though I don't know what his IQ was. Tesla was a one in a billion kind of person, it seems to me.
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All right, then what if I make the bet that his son's IQ will be say 10 or more points above the avg of his parent's scores (almost one standard deviation--15 points--difference)? The Nikola Tesla example seems ridiculously extreme, though I don't know what his IQ was. Tesla was a one in a billion kind of person, it seems to me.
Like I said, I deeply distrust IQ testing so I don't see it as a valid way to test intelligence. After all, all he'd need do is practice them a lot and he'll quickly up his score(In my own case, I experienced differences as high as 35 points(ranging from 135 to 170 - same for my brother who simply studied IQ tests ad nauseam until he consistently scored 170). I'd only be impressed if he entered University at the age of 12, or something like that. I mean if eating meat, raw or cooked, really helps that much, there ought to be some impressive results as well.
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Your standards for evidence on this one are higher than mine. Scientific standards, such as a sufficiently large random sample of RPDer children showing IQs one or more standard deviations above the mean would be sufficient evidence for me, especially in the context of a scientific model that explains how it could happen and predicts the general result of higher IQs. In the meantime, Michael's son and two of my nephews are all I've got (unless Jared Diamond or someone else provides more evidence), so I'll be keeping my eye on them. Unfortunately, my nephews weren't Paleo from conception and they haven't tried RPD yet, so they're of less potential anecdotal value than Michael's son, but their diets are superior to the SAD, so I think they'll turn out with higher than avg IQs, but maybe not 140 or more.
My family are hardly RPD'ers, most eat thoroughly cooked store bought meat and vegetables from what I see. We have geniuses among these. So I don't think it's necessary to eat raw paleo to be genius, but I do think clearer eating RAF than not eating it. Also, being vegan, I know this may sound strange and may not have been what was happening to it, but I felt like my brain was shrinking a little. I do not feel that now, I feel better.
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Like I said, I deeply distrust IQ testing so I don't see it as a valid way to test intelligence. After all, all he'd need do is practice them a lot and he'll quickly up his score(In my own case, I experienced differences as high as 35 points(ranging from 135 to 170 - same for my brother who simply studied IQ tests ad nauseam until he consistently scored 170). I'd only be impressed if he entered University at the age of 12, or something like that. I mean if eating meat, raw or cooked, really helps that much, there ought to be some impressive results as well.
So in other words, you accept the possibility that a RPD may indeed raise IQ by as much as 35 points over the average American IQ and you're not willing to bet against the RPD unless I make astronomical claims for it.
I deeply distrust IQ tests as well. If you have a better datum that we could use to measure intelligence by so that we can make alternative forecasts that we could compare and justify, let me know. I'm not interested in excuses as to why you can't do it, come up with something, no matter how flawed and we'll have fun with it. Maybe we'll lose interest in the future, but at least it will give me some idea where you're coming from now, because it's hard to pin down just what you're trying to say when you don't put it in concrete terms and keep varying it to suit your point of the moment.
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Well, guys! I've been missing out on this particular conversation!! Nice to see the betting has begun on Charlie's progress!! :)
My opinion? I tend to agree with you both (I'm a Libra after all!) ;) I think Charlie's IQ - or more accurately, cognitive intelligence - will be a useful barometer of RPD effectiveness in this regard. However, I also tend to agree with Tyler's comments about the inadequacies of actual IQ tests as well as the importance of any inherited intelligence that may factor. IQ tests I did myself 10yrs ago (when vegan and in a poor state of mental & physical health) put me in the top 1%. My partner also has reasonable intelligence.
I have an 11yr old daughter from a previous relationship too. She is very advanced at her school in numeracy & literacy as well as being a talented musician. She has a good chance of getting into one of the top girl's grammar schools in the country when she takes her 11+ later this month. She's no Tesla but this is despite an absolutely AWFUL diet!! Her mother and I were vegetarian throughout her conception/pregnancy and for the first years of her life. Her mother (who recently died of breast cancer age 35!) fed her a terrible SAD diet for most of her life after we separated. My point being - inherited intelligence is a BIG factor!
Good luck with the betting though. My money is on Charlie being highly intelligent! :)
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I also agree with Tyler that IQ tests suck and it was never my point that they're any good. They're just the only measure I know of that we could easily make differing forecasts/bets on.
Let's try this, Tyler: no matter how flawed you think IQ tests are and assuming all things are equal, what would you expect an American eating a SAD diet from conception to end up with an IQ of when they reach say ten years old? Would the current avg be a good estimate?
In contrast to that, what would you expect an avg American who eats an RPD from conception to end up with for an IQ at age ten? Any difference?
Here's another way of putting it, if you don't like that one. Do you think Michael's son's IQ will equal, exceed or be lower than his parents' and why?
I agree with your bet, Michael and I'm betting that if your son is RPD throughout that his IQ will exceed yours significantly, if it's possible to measure and contrast them at that high a level, no offense intended to you. In other words, I am inclined to believe Jared Diamond's claim that the HGs he observed were more intelligent on avg than the avg moderner and I am not inclined to believe Tyler's claim that Neolithic people were possibly more intelligent than the HGs of that time. Sorry, Tyler.
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Hearing about michaels son growing up is really exciting. A first hand account of a child eating in such a way from birth is incredbly interesting.
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If he's not eating inflammatory foods like milk and wheat he will grow up to be good looking too because he will be a nose breather and his face will grow wide and healthy.
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If he's not eating inflammatory foods like milk and wheat he will grow up to be good looking too because he will be a nose breather and his face will grow wide and healthy.
True store bought milk will do that, and does it to people all the time.
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I also agree with Tyler that IQ tests suck and it was never my point that they're any good. They're just the only measure I know of that we could easily make differing forecasts/bets on.
Let's try this, Tyler: no matter how flawed you think IQ tests are and assuming all things are equal, what would you expect an American eating a SAD diet from conception to end up with an IQ of when they reach say ten years old? Would the current avg be a good estimate?
This is arbitrary. I mean, like I said, IQ is largely hereditary and people all follow different kinds of SAD diet, some very highly processed some doing home-cooked meals mostly etc.
Here's another way of putting it, if you don't like that one. Do you think Michael's son's IQ will equal, exceed or be lower than his parents' and why?
There are too many other confusing factors. For example, there is regression to the norm.
Realistically speaking, given my own experience of IQ tests(re a 35 point IQ improvement due to knowing more about how to do IQ tests(these tests were all done long before this diet, incidentally), I reckon that I would require some form of alternate, more solid proof, such as going through education at a faster rate than his parents or maybe better university grades or whatever.
I agree with your bet, Michael and I'm betting that if your son is RPD throughout that his IQ will exceed yours significantly, if it's possible to measure and contrast them at that high a level, no offense intended to you. In other words, I am inclined to believe Jared Diamond's claim that the HGs he observed were more intelligent on avg than the avg moderner and I am not inclined to believe Tyler's claim that Neolithic people were possibly more intelligent than the HGs of that time. Sorry, Tyler.
Well, we shall have to agree to disagree on that. I certainly don't find that HGs have any kind of superior intelligence as, if that were the case, they would have dominated/devastated settled communities most of the time rather than the other way round. In short, higher intelligence gives one too great a competitive advantage, so either there is no difference in IQ or the more settled communities are brighter.
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Well, we shall have to agree to disagree on that. I certainly don't find that HGs have any kind of superior intelligence as, if that were the case, they would have dominated/devastated settled communities most of the time rather than the other way round.
One can hardly agree with that.
There were by far more settled agriculturists than HGs, by the time the latter were dominated/devastated. As Jared Diamond put it: 1 HG, whatever his intelligence, will finally be dominated when facing 100 agriculturists who need the land he lives from, to further proliferate and expand. The caracteristic feature of agriculture is precisely that it permits very rapid growth of the settled communities as compared to HGs. That's just elementary darwinism.
And success in terms of darwinian natural selection does by no means imply superior intelligence nor superior health.
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The point I made was that settled societies had more opportunity to use their brains due to living in more complex social systems - after all HG communities are essentially static while settled communities were more vibrant and changing. Also, one could argue that having higher intelligence means one is more inclined to search for strategies promoting one's survival, so that being a HG would be a less intelligent choice in view of lower birth-rate etc.
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Yes indeed, living in settled communities certainly stimulated various kinds of creative work and promoted the invention of new survival strategies as compared to HGs.
I read this thread with great interest and it seems to me there are various forms of intelligence and intelligence is obviously not just a matter of diet but also for instance depends on the challenges we have to face.
As to the HGs lower birth-rate it was certainly a less "intelligent" choice in terms of immediate darwinian survival.
But isn't it ironic that 10000 years or so later we in this forum must acknowledge that in many respect, in particular diet, HG's way of life was by far more "intelligent" that the agriculturist's one ?
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I read this thread with great interest and it seems to me there are various forms of intelligence and intelligence is obviously not just a matter of diet but also for instance depends on the challenges we have to face.
But isn't it ironic that 10000 years or so later we in this forum must acknowledge that in many respect, in particular diet, HG's way of life was by far more "intelligent" that the agriculturist's one ?
While vegetarian, part of the time most of what I ate was what I gathered and foraged. I liked that, plus it made sense. I still haven't hunted. It would be great to have a hunting party, I guess.
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There seems to be an unwritten assumption that HGs for hundreds of thousands of years were too dull to choose to be anything else, and that their survival with low breeding rate was accidental.
Odd, because they did so choose, apparently when they deemed it necessary.
IMHO they could have invented the neolithic anytime, but saw no reason to do so until ~12,000 years ago.
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Not a valid comparison. The Inuit already have their own nation within Canada, unlike the Bushmen, and are far less primitive(for example, the Inuit hunters are described as using rifles nowadays). So, the fact that Inuit aren't far more prominent in Canadian universities by comparison to other groups is a solid sign that they don't have any such advantage.
They were very recently just as primitive as the Bushmen. An example of how far and how fast they have come is Leona Aglukkaq, federal Minister of Health, whose ancestors ate a higher proportion of fat meat than any Bushman
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/minist/index-eng.php
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Well, we shall have to agree to disagree on that. I certainly don't find that HGs have any kind of superior intelligence as, if that were the case, they would have dominated/devastated settled communities most of the time rather than the other way round. In short, higher intelligence gives one too great a competitive advantage, so either there is no difference in IQ or the more settled communities are brighter.
OK. If you're interested in how it is that Hunter Gatherers could possibly be more intelligent, on avg, than Neolithic people, I recommend Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.
There seems to be an unwritten assumption that HGs for hundreds of thousands of years were too dull to choose to be anything else, and that their survival with low breeding rate was accidental.
Odd, because they did so choose, apparently when they deemed it necessary.
IMHO they could have invented the neolithic anytime, but saw no reason to do so until ~12,000 years ago.
Correct, William. Dr. Cordain and others have written about the Paleoanthropological and historical research that found that multiple societies tried Neolithic agriculture, didn't like it, and returned to hunting/gathering. The Lakota/Dakota/Nakota are a famous example in North America. When the Spanish brought horses to the continent, these First Nations peoples used them to hunt buffalo (bison) and thus return to the HG lifestyle that they had never forgotten and longed to return to.
Over the years as I've investigated the derogatory claims of Moderners (among whom I don't include Tyler, though he has cited research, opinions, etc. from this school of thought--which I am grateful for, actually, because he has provided a very useful counterpoint to posit my speculations and ramblings up against without having to deal with the really harsh critics like PETA-type folks) about the Stone Agers and HGs in general I've found that most of them are based on false assumptions, fictions, and falsehoods. Manthropology is just the latest compilation of revelations about the fallacies of the Moderners, revealing that the abilities of even recent HGs were superior in multiple ways to moderners. The usual knee-jerk response is to engage in ad hominem and claim that the scientist or layman who reports these phenomena is just promoting the "noble savage myth" or longs for a primitive utopia.
What never gets mentioned is that the critics (and their claims that others cite) are sometimes influenced by a utopianism of their own, often unbenownst to them, that infected academia decades ago, which is a sort of Utopian Progressivism. It's dogma is endless progress, man as machine, and the perfectability of man. That which is new is considered "improved," and that which is old is assumed inferior unless widely publicized mountains of evidence make it impossible to ignore the obvious. The dogma of endless progress is far, far, far more common than noble savage mythology (how else explain the endless advancement of "new and improved" technologies, foods and drugs, almost without restraint?). It claims to be scientific, but much of it's original source material comes from fictional or misguided sources like Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes and it seems built on scientific reductionism and consensus. Assumptions are rarely questioned; instead, the same old fallacies (such as "the diet-acne connection is an old wives' tale") and faulty studies (such as the bogus 1960s study that claimed to refute the diet-acne connection) get cited over and over again ad nauseum and then Modernism's defenders point to the piles of rehashed articles and say "See, there is a scientific consensus backed by the weight of the evidence," when in reality it all teeters precariously on one or two bogus studies or maybe some snippets of 17th century philosophy.
"But wait a minute," you say. "Hobbes was a Monarchist, not a Progressive." True, but some of his concepts made an impression on the masses and were misinterpreted and reshaped over time (such as the "nasty, brutish, and short" quip, which Hobbes used to describe agrarian Englishmen, but which was transformed into an archetype of the HG) eventually infecting academia and the Progressives, deep into their psyches like an invasive cancer, probably setting science back several centuries. Plus, some Progressives replaced the despotism of monarchy with a new form of despotism: an all-knowing Mother Culture led by a cultural elite that sought to "help" the "savages" and "underclasses" by "civilizing" them.
Luckily, there have been and are reformers amongst the Progressives and the academics who have recognized where things went wrong and have been shedding light on this, such as Margaret Meade, Richard Leakey, Daniel Quinn, Jared Diamond, Art De Vany, Boyd Eaton, Loren Cordain, Michael and Mary Eades, and Nicholas Taleb. These and other academics, intellectuals and Progressives put various pieces of the puzzle back together that make up the ancient storehouse of knowledge and experience: man is not perfectible, everything new is not necessarily improved, many of the assumptions on which current scientific consensus is based are faulty, and beginning around 10 thousands years ago there was a "Great Forgetting," as Quinn called it, about ancient knowledge that we have only begun to re-learn within the past century or so.
Assumptions are being questioned, studies re-examined, paradigms shifted, and we are witnessing the dawn of a scientific revolution. I call it The Great Remembering.
"But hold on!" you say. "You did what you criticized others for doing--engaged in ad hominem about Progressives." Not all Progressives. Many would call me one, actually (others might claim I'm a Positivist or Libertarian--I don't think I fit neatly into any philosophical or political slot at present). Notice also that I didn't single any one out and was careful to explain that I'm not including Tyler in my critique. It was more of a general critique of the basic school of thought that seems to underlie the source materials that critics of RPD and HGs have relied upon, based on an impression I've garnered from years of watching Paleo dieters and advocates get attacked. Notice that I instead singled out some Progressives and likeminded academics for praise. I hope that I've managed to critique the message and its underlying underpinnings more than the messengers.
One thing I also try to remember is that all variations of Paleo diets, raw diets, and low carb diets are regarded as heresy worthy of ridicule by the powers that be. Based on their criticisms, they apparently regard us all as idiots or devils to be straightened out or silenced. So I try to remember not to criticize too harshly folks from similar ways of eating, but like a dumb, dumb I sometimes forget. So I apologize to any such I have offended in the past, and proactively apologize to the folks in the future I will likely also offend when I let my words get ahead of my brain.
For ten thousand years we have been blinded by The Great Forgetting. The Great Remembering has only just begun. Imagine what amazing revelations await.
Good luck and good eating.
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While vegetarian, part of the time most of what I ate was what I gathered and foraged. I liked that, plus it made sense. I still haven't hunted. It would be great to have a hunting party, I guess.
Yes, gathering, hunting or fishing are fun in nice biotopes. Agriculture is (hard) work in dull landscapes :)
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Assumptions are being questioned, studies re-examined, paradigms shifted, and we are witnessing the dawn of a scientific revolution. I call it The Great Remembering.
Very nice post, Phil
Progressivism is an ideology backed up by bad science that is by far more dangerous and misleading than noble savage utopianism and actually it is just utterly wrong . Good science is indeed witnessing a formidable revolution, even the most arrogant one, namely Physics, forced to abandon his traditionnal ambitious reductionist-constructionist program for a much more modest but very promising emergentist approach.
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OK. If you're interested in how it is that Hunter Gatherers could possibly be more intelligent, on avg, than Neolithic people, I recommend Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.
I really don't see the point in reading Jared Diamond's book. I've already read numerous detailed reviews commenting on the various fatal flaws in his "geographical determinism" theory(which I gather is the main point of the book?). Simply put, I view the more dominant notion that events such as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, among other aspects, helped fuel Eurasian dominance as being the correct one. There's just too much evidence in favour of the latter theory.
Luckily, there have been and are reformers amongst the Progressives and the academics who have recognized where things went wrong and have been shedding light on this, such as Margaret Meade, Richard Leakey, Daniel Quinn, Jared Diamond, Art De Vany, Boyd Eaton, Loren Cordain, Michael and Mary Eades, and Nicholas Taleb.
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I'm afraid Margaret Meade was exposed quite some time ago as a fraud by Derek Freeman in this seminal work:-
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fateful-Hoaxing-Margaret-Mead-Historical/dp/0813336937
Basically, she tried to portray Samoa as symptomatic of a libertarian society, when in fact Samoa was very puritannical in scope. The fraud was the biggest one in the field of anthropology, and it seems Meade had a nasty habit of just altering the data to reflect her views.The word "Hoax"in the above book is not the correct word to use , really, but Derek Freeman was probably more keen to just demolish Meade's dodgy claims rather than indulge in more serious, claims which might have taken years in the libel courts to be resolved.
Interesting mention of Daniel Quinn. Never heard of him before.
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Yes, gathering, hunting or fishing are fun in nice biotopes. Agriculture is (hard) work in dull landscapes :)
Yes :) also I think hunting would be better for good eyesight health than farming.
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Yes :) also I think hunting would be better for good eyesight health than farming.
Carbs are poison for some growing eyes. Myopia for me, but there may be some improvement in eyesight while on raw zero carb.
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Carbs are poison for some growing eyes. Myopia for me, but there may be some improvement in eyesight while on raw zero carb.
Well, not for me. Though there is scientific evidence linking myopia to consuming grains.
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Yes :) also I think hunting would be better for good eyesight health than farming.
I agree, RawZi. And also the other way around: good eyesight health would be better for good hunting...
William, I eat some raw fruits and even sometimes honey and my eyesight is 20/20. Yet, you're right, carbs, in particular cooked ones, may damage the eyesight. Mercury poisoning from dental fillings is also an often overlooked culprit.
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I really don't see the point in reading Jared Diamond's book. I've already read numerous detailed reviews commenting on the various fatal flaws in his "geographical determinism" theory....
I see, you've read his critics so you don't need to read his side of the story. OK. ???
I'm afraid Margaret Meade was exposed quite some time ago as a fraud by Derek Freeman in this seminal work:-
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fateful-Hoaxing-Margaret-Mead-Historical/dp/0813336937
That's a good point and I'm glad I have you to bounce this off of. I hesitated to mention her, but did for historical reasons, as she was one of the early influential scientists to regard primitive culture as being able to make a contribution to modern Western society rather than just the reverse. It's been many years since I read some of her articles for school, but my understanding is that while her methods would not be practiced today and she made untrue claims about the Samoans, who I believe when they said she was wrong (historically, the word of so-called "primitive" peoples has tended to be more reliable than the scientists who studied them or the governments that interred them) and whose culture I find particularly fascinating, her influence is still regarded as important from a historical perspective and her work was not necessarily entirely misleading. However, if you feel that just the mention of her name is too distracting, similar to WAP, I may forego using it.
BTW, Freeman's views are also highly controversial and have been harshly criticized, but I don't want to get off track on a Mead vs. Freeman debate, since I have no dog in that hunt.
Basically, she tried to portray Samoa as symptomatic of a libertarian society,
Just an aside: I don't find portraying a society as libertarian to be an insult in today's world, perhaps because I am a former Libertarian and still libertarian-leaning. :D I assume you mean libertine.
when in fact Samoa was very puritannical in scope.
Hmm, now THAT I consider an insult of the Samoans, or of anyone else for that matter, unless they call themselves puritanical, and I suspect they have a variety of views on that, like any people. Frankly, I'd rather hear from the Samoan people themselves on this (and I don't mean one or two Evangelical Christian converts) and have little interest re: what Mead or Freeman said about whether Samoans were libertine or puritanical. Samoans have many English speakers now and modern communications, so we don't need to rely on anthropologists anymore in this matter.
Interesting mention of Daniel Quinn. Never heard of him before.
Read Ishmael.
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I see, you've read his critics so you don't need to read his side of the story. OK. ???
I have read several attempts by Jared Diamond trying to counter the many valid criticisms made by his opponents. Since those attempts were extremely weak, I can only possibly conclude that reading his book would be a tragic waste of my time. If I read every book recommended to me, I would by now have wasted my life on such truly unreadable authors as George Eliot, Jane Austen, or James Joyce etc., and we live in a time-poor environment these days so can't afford such luxuries.I'll try the Ishmael book, though.
That's a good point and I'm glad I have you to bounce this off of. I hesitated to mention her, but did for historical reasons, as she was one of the early influential scientists to regard primitive culture as being able to make a contribution to modern Western society rather than just the reverse. It's been many years since I read some of her articles for school, but my understanding is that while her methods would not be practiced today and she made untrue claims about the Samoans, who I believe when they said she was wrong (historically, the word of so-called "primitive" peoples has tended to be more reliable than the scientists who studied them or the governments that interred them) and whose culture I find particularly fascinating, her influence is still regarded as important from a historical perspective and her work was not necessarily entirely misleading. However, if you feel that just the mention of her name is too distracting, similar to WAP, I may forego using it.
BTW, Freeman's views are also highly controversial and have been harshly criticized, but I don't want to get off track on a Mead vs. Freeman debate, since I have no dog in that hunt.
Just an aside: I don't find portraying a society as libertarian to be an insult in today's world, perhaps because I am a former Libertarian and still libertarian-leaning. :D I assume you mean libertine
Given that Mead's ideas were considered part of Establishment doctrine, it took many years for Freeman's debunking to become accepted, but Freeman's debunking of Meade is now almost universally accepted. As for Mead, it seems that the Samoan incident was not an isolated one. Basically, she tried to continuously claim that HGs embodied all the things she wanted in modern society, and routinely altered evidence.
Just an aside: I don't find portraying a society as libertarian to be an insult in today's world, perhaps because I am a former Libertarian and still libertarian-leaning. :D I assume you mean libertine
I'm sorry, Liberals have hijacked the term "libertarian", I was merely inadvertently quoting from texts criticising Mead which used that term as well as the term "puritannical" to describe Samoan society. Perhaps I should have used the term "Marxist" instead of libertarian to describe Mead's views as that would have been more accurate.I have nothing against genuine libertarians.
Hmm, now THAT I consider an insult of the Samoans, or of anyone else for that matter, unless they call themselves puritanical, and I suspect they have a variety of views on that, like any people. Frankly, I'd rather hear from the Samoan people themselves on this (and I don't mean one or two Evangelical Christian converts) and have little interest re: what Mead or Freeman said about whether Samoans were libertine or puritanical. Samoans have many English speakers now and modern communications, so we don't need to rely on anthropologists anymore in this matter.
At the time, Samoan women lived in restricted circumstances, with women being tested to see if they were virgins before marriage, and the like.You're right, though, "puritannical" is too judgemental a word.
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I'll try the Ishmael book, though.
Good choice. I see Ishmael as essential reading, but not so much Guns, Germs and Steel. My guess is you'll disagree with Quinn on a lot of stuff too, but he does a good job of summarizing some key points from the rarely heard perspective that much of what is new is not improved and he does it in a more readable way than Diamond and other academics. In my experience people have tended to either love Ishmael or hate it, with far more in the former camp. His other books are less impressive.
Given that Mead's ideas were considered part of Establishment doctrine, it took many years for Freeman's debunking to become accepted, but Freeman's debunking of Meade is now almost universally accepted.
Well, I'll take your word for it, because I only read one or two articles on it years ago and am not up-to-date on the controversy. Thanks for the heads up.
I'm sorry, Liberals have hijacked the term "libertarian", I was merely inadvertently quoting from texts criticising Mead which used that term as well as the term "puritannical" to describe Samoan society.
No prob. I'm a bit skeptical of any source that views "libertarian" as an insult and "puritanical" as praise. I'd at least want to get opinions from other perspectives, if I were investigating it.
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the body is made for meat. Our instistnes are short like a dogs, our teeth have enamel and cannot normally regrow after you become an adult. Cows and horses continually grow teeth ans all they eat is vegetable matter and herbs.
The stomach is also acidic, this is needed to digest meat. meat digests in an acid environment, vegetables require alkine(sp) environments.
We are carnivores with the ability to digest all foods.
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the body is made for meat. Our instistnes are short like a dogs, our teeth have enamel and cannot normally regrow after you become an adult. Cows and horses continually grow teeth ans all they eat is vegetable matter and herbs.
The stomach is also acidic, this is needed to digest meat. meat digests in an acid environment, vegetables require alkine(sp) environments.
We are carnivores with the ability to digest all foods.
I would clarify one thing: herbivore teeth have enamel too, but tend to have rough surfaces spiked with ridges of enamel (lophs), whereas carnivorous enamel is uniform.
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I've heard every pro-vegan and pro-carnivore argument re our digestive system, and both camps are wrong. Humans are omnivores, there are so many anomalies(for example, there's the ability to digest starch in humans re the enzyme amylase etc.
Here's a pro-vegan stance:-
http://www.celestialhealing.net/physicalveg3.htm
Here's a standard pro-omnivore page:-
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may2000/959372412.Ot.r.html