RE: No indigenous (sp?) cultures around the world are vegan

August 30, 2004

I would like to add to this just a couple little bits.

Ian is right to say Vegan might be slightly overstating

Vegetarian by all means

omnivore only by chance or in lean times

as for the skins and meat that may have been eaten in the early stages

they were scavengers not hunters

they were the 2 legged vultures who waited for the lions to have their fill

maybe the skins were salvaged for a rotting corpse

the hunting came much later

and if man had to rely on hunting he probably would have starved to death

on another note I just finished watching "super size me"

and well..... I am glad I am Vegan....

all the best

Craig

Ian McDonald [ian]Tuesday, August 31, 2004 1:50 AM Subject: Re: No indiginous (sp?) cultures around the world are veganJo: > I don't think our ancestors were omnivores. The oldest human remains found were tested, and > found to be vegan. This, frankly, sounds too good to be true. It also sounds very hard toquantify. (How do you verify that a two-million year old dead body wasvegan? You can look for coprolites and rubbish, but that doesn't confirmanything.) What's your source for this?> We are told that> we are related to apes - they don't eat meat. Actually, we *are* apes. But some do eat meat; the first example thatpops into my head is chimpanzees digging insects out with a stick.> OUr intestines are too long to have been intended for meat, but not long enough to live> on grass, so our intended diet is berries, nuts, seeds, fruit and some leaves. That sounds very simplistic to me. All I can say with confidence,though, is that we've got the enzymes (I'm a biochemist, so I'm going tofocus on those) for cooked meat and a whole bunch of plants.> I cannot remember which way round it is, but our> saliva is not suitable for eating meat.Saliva doesn't deal with much of digestion anyway.> It does not matter however, what our ancestors did, or what other people do. We are evolving all > the time, and vegans are just more> evolved than others. There's no other way to exlain it really.Ahh, progress pushing forward. Social and biological change conflatedinto one. Ironically, that's terribly Victorian . But I know what youmean, and agree.To send an email to -