Or maybe the Inuit got great teeth merely because they ate an all-meat diet, not because of any chewing. Incidentally, never heard of that claim, any articles you can link to?
<<The degree to which muscle function affects craniofacial form is a complex topic. There is a large range of variations in human skull morphology, which is multifactorial. Hypermuscularity may be one factor involved. According to Collins’ "hard chewing hypothesis", the distinctive shape of the Inuit (i.e., Eskimo) skull is related to vigorous chewing. The Inuit skull is adapted to produce and dissipate large vertical and biting forces [Hylander, 1977. The adaptive significance of Eskimo craniofacial morphology. In: Orofacial growth and development. Dahlberg AA, Graber TM, editors. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter Inc., pp. 129–169.]. The Inuit skull is characterized by a large mandible, larger muscle attachments, and palatal and mandibular tori. The masseter muscles are also positioned more anteriorly, which may help generate larger forces.>>
(Craniofacial Morphology in Myostatin-deficient Mice,
http://jdr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/full/86/11/1068?ck=nck)
This is interesting in that it suggests that it wasn't so much the nutrients in meat/fat that promoted the development of unusually large jaw muscles and large, unusually-shaped craniums in the Inuit as it was the chewiness. It's only one source, of course, so I'm not saying this is conclusive. Plus, I think it was reported in this forum that others have contrarily hypothesized that it was actually the
reduction in food chewiness that led to the development of larger craniums and brains in humans vs. other primates (such as by Wrangham, I think—though both you and I generally find his hypotheses to be suspect and worse).
Here are some more sources:
"According to the Guiness [sic] book of world records, one man achieved a bite force of 975 pounds for two seconds once - he was of inuit (eskimo) [sic] descent."
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_hard_can_a_man_bite"The average biting force of an adult male human (male because, in general, we lugs are bigger and have proportionately thicker masseter muscles than females) varies between 45 and 68 kg — although forces as great as 159 kg have been recorded for Inuit males"
http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/topics/r_bites.htm"The French cranium measurers ran into serious problems in Greenland. They were working from the theory that there was a linear relation between a person's intelligence and the size of his skull. They discovered that the [Inuit] Greenlanders, whom they regarded as a transitional form of ape, had the largest skulls in the world." --Peter Hoeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow, pp. 17-18
If it were just the nutrients of the diet, and nothing to do with chewing, I don't think we'd get the result of smaller Inuit with no greater bone density still having more powerful jaws and larger skulls:
“Andersen et al. reported average differences of 10 kg in body weight and 12 cm in height in the smaller Inuit compared to Caucasian women living in Greenland. After adjustment for body size, the bone density of the Inuit women was the same as in the Caucasian women (1). Even with height and weight controlled however, there is not universal agreement that adjustment of BMD for these variables equalizes values in different ethnic groups. Actually, Finkelstein et al. found higher bone density in the lumbar spine and femoral neck in African-American, Japanese and Chinese women than in Caucasian women after adjusting for covariates of age, height and weight (2). Russell-Aulet et al. also found higher BMD in premenopausal Asian than white women when factors known to influence bone mass (height, weight, steroid use, and smoking) were controlled (3). More frequently, however, bone density is reported to be lower in Asians than Caucasians.” ("Bone Density same in Inuit Women as Caucasian after adjusting for Body Size,"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2144915/)
On the other hand, the study authors say "there is not universal agreement that adjustment of BMD for these variables equalizes values in different ethnic groups" and the data was taken from a study was published in 2005, so modern foods may have affected the Inuit data.
As for bears, there is a danger of playing fast and loose with definitions. Technically, the only bear that HAS to eat raw meat is the polar bear which is an obligate carnivore. All other bears , except for the giant panda, are quite adapted to their mostly plant-filled diets(given the fact that their molars and pre-molars are modified to grind vegetation).
You're intermixing two different concepts here: carnivorous physiology and carnivorous diet. Giant pandas eat 99% bamboo yet are nonetheless physiologically classified as carnivores. What any animal, including humans, actually eat or have the capability to eat does not necessarily determine what the scientific classification of their physiology is (else giant pandas would be categorized as herbivores), nor does it necessarily fully indicate what combination of foods is optimal for them.
As for humans, given our descent from fruit-/veg-eating ancestors, a far stronger case can be made for humans being facultative herbivores who just happen to eat meat rather than facultative carnivores.
And some of the best evidence I have seen yet is the less-carnivorous nature of our teeth and chewing habits as compared to bears and other facultative carnivores, so yes, I'm still on the fence on this and was leaning back toward omnivore until you expounded on this bolting business. If humans are meant to bolt meat that would tilt me back again in the facultative faunivore direction, for bolting seems to be found only among carnivores like canids, bears and carnivorous birds and perhaps meat-eating omnivores, and not among animals that eat little or no meat. In other words, bolting appears to be associated with meat eating. The only exception I can think of is birds that swallow seeds, but they have an adaptation in which they swallow sand or stones to grind the seeds in their gizzards. We don’t do that. Plus, even those birds tend to eat worms and insects too, and we are quite different from birds anyway.
Do any primates bolt meat? Primates would seem to be more relevant examples as regards human eating techniques than birds, bears, or canids. Granted, our digestive physiology is similar to that of canids and bears, but if bolting is natural for humans, then why do I never hear of people anywhere doing it? Not even HG tribes. Do you know of any human societies in the past or present that bolted their food?
I was suggesting that if chewing was biologically necessary in order to properly digest raw meats, then birds would have evolved teeth etc. designed for chewing. Instead, meat-eating birds appear to do quite well without chewing their food.
OK, so carnivorous birds don’t need teeth to digest meat, but that doesn't necessarily mean that humans shouldn't use the teeth they have to assist in digesting meats.
As for citing hunter-gatherers, that is almost always a bad example(though there are sometimes unique cases where there are the only example, given lack of data for the Palaeolithic era). HGs have long adopted Neolithic-era practices so cannot really be considered natural. Wild animals are still subject to natural selection, so are a better example to follow.
Devil's Dictionary definition of "unique cases": those that support Tyler's points.
