"Martin Willett" > wrote in message ...
> S. Maizlich wrote:
>
> >
> > It is UNDISPUTED by evolutionary biologists that meat played an
> > indispensable role in human evolution. Meat's role was both direct and
> > indirect. The direct role was in providing the massive amount of
> > protein needed for brain development. The indirect role is as an
> > organizing principle of human activity.
>
> The organizational role is absolutely critical. There is no reason for a
> vegetarian species to develop sophisticated communication because they
> don't have anything sophisticated to communicate. Fruits and tubers
> don't require teamwork or sophisticated tools to subdue, but our
> ancestors brought down mammoths, give them some respect.
>
> Belittling the role of meat and hunting in evolution is as much
> pseudo-science as creationism is. The collection of snippets of research
> here and there that seem to offer some suggestion of support for a pre
> decided stance is the antithesis of the scientific method.
>
> Human evolution required meat eating and hunting. That is not to say
> that man was ever exclusively carnivorous, the only largely carnivorous
> hominid was /Homo neanderthalensis/, who was almost as carnivorous as a
> polar bear. But as far as anybody can tell all our direct ancestors were
> omnivorous but more carnivorous than modern chimpanzees and that change
> in diet was significant for the development of larger brains both in
> allowing expansion and requiring it.

"It is highly probable that plant foods were indeed the major part
of the early hominid economy, and unequivocal evidence for hunting
as against scavenging carrion does not appear until relatively late in
the fossil record, probably not earlier than half-a-million years ago."
Leakey, The Making of Mankind

Frugivory is an intellectually demanding feeding behaviour demanding
the development of strategic planning, whereas the folivores feeding
behavior engages relatively simple tactics. According to Caroline E. G.
Tutin et al. 'Allometric analyses suggest a relation between brain size
(relative to body mass) and diet, with frugivores having relatively larger
brains . . . Maintaining a frugivorous diet presents huge intellectual
challenges of memory and spatial mapping compared with the relative
ease of harvesting abundant foliage foods.' Tutin et al. also say that:

"Studies of frugivorous communities elsewhere suggest that dietary
divergence is highest when preferred food (succulent fruit) is scarce,
and that niche separation is clear only at such times (Gautier-Hion &
Gautier 1979: Terborgh 1983). "
Foraging profiles of sympatric lowland gorillas and chimpanzees in
the Lopé Reserve, Gabon, p.179, Philosophical Transactions:
Biological Sciences vol 334, 159-295, No. 1270
....'
http://tinyurl.com/dahps