Vegans and "blood" sports

[Harnser]

Man didnt spend the last 10 billion years clawing his way to the top of the food chain to eat grass . Harnser .

[Mungler]

I like most people don't like being told what to do or what to think. If you want to be a veggie, vegan or the like then go ahead, go mad at the salad bar. Just don't tell me you are right or what to do.

 

Much the same as religion really - do what you like, just don't expect me to agree or join in (unless it's a hippy free lovin cult that are looking for a new god head).

 

My 2p - you can't argue with nature; we have K9 teeth and our appendix are absolete. Oh yes, and you can't beat a bacon sandwich with the rind burnt.

[Evilv]

Man didnt spend the last 10 billion years clawing his way to the top of the food chain to eat grass . Harnser .

 

Not wanting to be pedantic or anything Harnser (liar - I'm a pedant to my bones) but Man has only been around at tops for about 100,000 years. The planet and the solar system itself is only 4.5 billion years old and the whole observable universe is less than 16 billion years old, so I'm a bit dubious about your suggestion that man has been clawing his way up the food chain for 10 billion years. That would mean he was doing it 5.5 billion years before the earth began to collect out of a dust cloud.

 

Just being a pain in the butt here, and having a laugh.

 

 

Vegans though truly are an evolutionary blind alley. I never saw a healthy vegan yet. They always look like they have cancer to me. (bad taste remark - I know. Switch bad taste filter back on). The development of human intelligence above that of apes is often attributed to the fact that our ancestors moved towards a greater proportion of meat in their diets and the early modern humans ate mostly meat with roots, leaves and fruit that they could add to it as they wandered around with sharp sticks for hunting. The consumption of meat allows better brain development and greater leisure time which means that people can develop technologies like firearms rather than crunching away at straw and grass and wearing out their teeth. Hence, man is nothing if nit a meat eater by his very nature. Even our relatives the apes eat meat whenever they can get it. They become extremely excited at the prospect if they can catch a small animal and eat it. They also kill members of neigbouring troops and eat them.

 

Interesting link on apes, humans and meat eating. All vegetarian freaks should read this:

 

Meat Eating and Hunting are core human activities

 

The Hunting Apes:

Meat Eating and the Origins of Human Behavior

Craig B. Stanford

 

Paper | 2001 | $24.95 / £14.95

262 pp. | 5 x 7 | 3 tables 3 line illus. 10 halftones

 

Shopping Cart | Reviews | Table of Contents

Chapter 1 | Full text online (PDF format)

 

Google full text of this book:

 

 

 

What makes humans unique? What makes us the most successful animal species inhabiting the Earth today? Most scientists agree that the key to our success is the unusually large size of our brains. Our large brains gave us our exceptional thinking capacity and led to humans' other distinctive characteristics, including advanced communication, tool use, and walking on two legs. Or was it the other way around? Did the challenges faced by early humans push the species toward communication, tool use, and walking and, in doing so, drive the evolutionary engine toward a large brain? In this provocative new book, Craig Stanford presents an intriguing alternative to this puzzling question--an alternative grounded in recent, groundbreaking scientific observation. According to Stanford, what made humans unique was meat. Or, rather, the desire for meat, the eating of meat, the hunting of meat, and the sharing of meat.

 

Based on new insights into the behavior of chimps and other great apes, our now extinct human ancestors, and existing hunting and gathering societies, Stanford shows the remarkable role that meat has played in these societies. Perhaps because it provides a highly concentrated source of protein--essential for the development and health of the brain--meat is craved by many primates, including humans. This craving has given meat genuine power--the power to cause males to form hunting parties and organize entire cultures around hunting. And it has given men the power to manipulate and control women in these cultures. Stanford argues that the skills developed and required for successful hunting and especially the sharing of meat spurred the explosion of human brain size over the past 200,000 years. He then turns his attention to the ways meat is shared within primate and human societies to argue that this all-important activity has had profound effects on basic social structures that are still felt today.

 

Sure to spark a lively debate, Stanford's argument takes the form of an extended essay on human origins. The book's small format, helpful illustrations, and moderate tone will appeal to all readers interested in those fundamental questions about what makes us human.

 

Reviews:

 

"A provocative, eminently digestible book. . . . Stanford writes clearly and often deftly, and with admirable concision. . . . [A] marvelous exploration of evolutionary hypotheses . . . fascinating stuff."--Michael Pakenham, The Baltimore Sun

 

"Anyone who would like to review all of the arguments on human origins should read The Hunting Apes. . . . This book will go a long way in explaining why physical anthropologists and their colleagues fight so much."--Deborah L. Manzolillo, Times Literary Supplement

 

"A brave academic endeavour and a fine piece of popular science writing. . . . Stanford's book summarises a huge body of evidence in a pleasing, coherent and non-polemic way. You'll feel that you're talking with a learned . . . dinner companion, rather than enduring a lecture or hectoring sermon from an academic pulpit."--Adrian Barnett, New Scientist

 

"Stanford's ideas, while controversial, are amply documented by behavioral studies of nonhuman primates, anthropological studies of a number of human societies and archeological studies of early and pre-humans."--Publishers Weekly

 

"[A] provocative new look at what made people so smart. . . . This is a fascinating book, written for the nonspecialist."--Booklist

 

"An unabashed celebration of the carnivorous tendencies of early humankind. Virtually every aspect of Stanford's thesis about the importance of meat acquisition and sharing among early humans is steeped in controversy."--Kirkus Reviews

 

"[An] admirable little book. . . . [stanford's] meticulously constructed study is both readable and thought-provoking and gives fascinating insights into the behaviour of our species."--The Tablet

Edited July 25, 2008 by Evilv