if we all grew our own food, built our own homes, and manufactured our own machines from metals we extracted and prepared ourselves, why would we need money?

Not one person in the history of mankind has been able to do all these things by him/herself. If we all went back to doing self-sustaining things, the level of technology we would enjoy would be absolutely dismal. I'm gonna fudge some numbers here but its purely for illustrative purposes. The division of labor has basically allowed ten people who specialize their industry to provide for a thousand more. By comparison, in unspecialized economies, if the produce of ten people working separately were added up, it probably wouldn't even be enough to support half of them. Ricardo, Smith, Turgot, the Spanish Scholastics have been dealing with these things for centuries and its basic economic theory.

Money doesntmake sense to me.

Money was a natural out-growth of ever-widening trade. When you trade with people you do not intimately know, there is no way of telling how much of his product you get for his, because neither of you were there to witness each other's contributions to your respective communities. Money serves the purpose (among others) as being a store-house or value.

Honestly, it strikes me as a survival mechanism invented by people who couldn't take care of themselves.

This couldn't be further from the truth. Money was not invented by anyone in particular, and especially not by government decree. In point of fact, considering that all economic transactions are mutually-beneficial, if you were to add up all voluntary purchases and sales throughout all of history, you would find that everybody was properly remunerated. I exclude "sales" to governments because they are coerced (taxes) but you could readily argue that taxes (even horrible ones) are the fair price for living in a particular society.

Maybe because they were too busy managing the peons...

This sounds like a reference to either bureaucrats or greedy corporate types or both. As far as bureaucrats go, let me assure you, the vast majority of government agents have absolutely no capacity to innovate. They are the epitome of inefficiency and stagnation. Such a useful device as money--which has allowed civilization to flourish to the point it is at--would've never been developed by one of them. And as far as greedy corporate types go, remember they only get to keep their jobs and get rich if they do their job well. That is, if they satisfy consumer demand better than their competitors.

Not to pick on you Python, but many people are under the assumption that doing everything for yourself is "better" than the current system. What they lack is an understanding of comparative advantage and opportunity costs, which sadly, most college professors barely cover. Think of it this way: without money we would probably still be stuck in some crappy neolithic farming village eating nothing but tubers for our entire lives. No sanitation, no internet, no hope, and a guaranteed death at 30 from something silly like arthritis.

Dr. Blake F. Donaldson in a book called Strong Medicine, says: during the millions of years that our ancestors lived by hunting, every weakling who could not maintain perfect health on fresh fat meat and water was bred out. I can’t escape my fate…

The only advice I can offer here is to tell you not to buy into bad genetics so soon. If the statement you attributed to Dr. Donaldson is true, then you should be fine because anyone with faulty genes would have died long ago before becoming a (distant) ancestor of yours, or anyone else. There shouldn't be a person on Earth who can't digest meat and fat with a reasonably healthy digestive system.

Your criteria for ruling out other factors is very vague and the example does not prove your point.

To be honest, there wasn't a point I was trying to prove, only a family of variables to eliminate for the sake of scientific study. People who kill to survive are certainly bad people, but they are at least responding to a biologically viable stimulus: i.e., don't die. Never mind if they will or will not survive based on the crime they commit, as long as they perceive a threat to their own survival and a need to commit that crime. Despite their willingness to commit crimes we can (arguably) say that their brains are reacting rationally to some sort of valid stimulus: I am poor. I need money. I will steal money from someone and kill them if I have to to get it would be an understandable (though not forgivable) line of reasoning. What is more difficult to understand is why someone would kill simply for the sake of killing, with little or no payoff.

We can just as easily assume that the armed robber killed the clerk for fun and that the money is just a prize.  In giving the criminal a motive we've created and accepted a non-testable hypothesis.

If our hypothetical armed robber's primary motivation for killing the clerk was fun and not money, then there would be no reason to exclude him from this study as his (or her) ability to reason is probably impaired. Also, the idea is not necessarily to assign motive, but to glean it from study of these types of individuals. Motives that have economic rationale, IMO, would not be suitable for the study because their brains are working fine (although they are still jerks); crimes without rationale and that suggest some sort of synaptic misfiring would be perfect.

Also, it might not be that difficult to establish correlation. For the very worst offenders, serial killers, serial rapists, etc., getting good clean data is probable I should think, considering that many of these types are very methodical to the point of pathological OCD in everything that they do (especially crime). They are liable to eat the same things, at the same times, with very little variation. Self-reporting should not be an issue either, since there are no awards to win, and telling the data collector the "right" combinations of foods gets him out of prison no sooner. I would think someone asking a serial killer what they ate would seem extremely mundane. And even if they wanted to lie about what they ate, what criteria would they use to base their fabrication on? To be safe, a data collector could just omit what he really wants to know about the criminal (i.e., dietary habits).

I agree in advance that I am generalizing the serial killer/rapist mental state. Obviously I am aware that the possibility exists of just such a criminal without OCD tendencies. But I would hazard to say that most fit the general mold. After all, many of them are caught on the basis of not being able to vary their routines enough, therefore ultimately giving themselves away. But given an extreme propensity for obsessive tendencies as well as acting to such violent extremes, often without any rational reason, these types of people would be perfect for studying possible links between poor nutrition and anti-social behavior, IMO. Hell, submitting to such a study is the least they can do for society anyway ...

So I guess my hypothesis is: Poor nutrition causes varying degrees of anti-social behavior; furthermore, good nutrition may play a role in mitigating anti-social behavior.

And I liked that article!

More than a few nutritionists believe that nutrition plays an important role in brain chemistry, almost to the point of determining whether a particular individual will function normally in society or whether that individual will have a hard time "playing nice" with others. Even between these, though, you'll find a division between those who believe that nutrition has the greatest impact during childhood and those who say nutrition throughout all life is significant in determining sanity.

What I thought would be interesting is looking for correlations between poor nutrition and violent criminals. I must clarify though, that we should factor out non-psychological factors as much as possible. For instance, a scenario involving an armed robber killing a convenience store clerk for whats in the cash drawer would probably be better classified as economically motivated, i.e. stealing money in that person's opinion was easier than simply working for it. Correlations should be looked for in those violent offenders who appear to commit crimes for the sake (or thrill) of committing crimes and not simply for the payoffs.

Anybody got any stories, articles, etc.?

Cannibalism was, apparently, very much a part of the Palaeolithic Diet that our ancestors practised.(though there are other claims that the bones were either eaten by other mammals, not humans, or that humans simply scraped and cleaned the bones of the dead prior to burial).

This is something I've never come across in literature. I've read of modern primitives engaging in cannibalism in isolated areas as a ritualistic practice tied to warfare, but never as a widespread phenomenon. Do you have links regarding the paleolithic practice of it?

I do not believe that an all carnivorous diet is one that we have evolved on for any length of time as a species.

I think "all-carnivorous" should probably be qualified better. Strictly speaking, I'd say your statement is right, Satya. We certainly do have the ability to easily digest and assimilate small amounts of plant and fruit matter. But whether a member of a paleolithic society was all-carnivorous or omnivorous probably had more to do with season. In areas with harsh winters, I would imagine that in wintertime the daily staple was some form of preserved meat/fat ration, possibly intentionally left over from big-game hunts in the fall. Then in the spring and summer, the diet would have switched to omnivorous as small game proliferated and berries were ripe. Mind you, this example better fits the setting for northern Europe/Canada, than say savanna hunters in Africa. But I feel safe saying that wide swings in diet were conditional on seasons and that with few exceptions, no society was 100% carnivore.

I don't think it would be a bad pursuit to follow something akin to this either: changing dietary styles with the season. However, I also don't think that one should consider just the season. If some paleolithic societies were exclusively carnivorous during harsh winters, it could just have been due to much lower activity levels. What is there to do really when you can't hunt or gather? I seem to keep coming across a growing body of anecdotal evidence saying that all-carnivorous diets do wonders for preventing muscle wasting. Consequently, the same societies may have eaten considerably more berries (not apples, bananas, or oranges) and possibly tubers in less lean times, when they would have been more active. Maybe tailoring dietary swings would be better off according to activity levels? But then it might be prudent to give your system a "break" occasionally in the form of an artificial "season". I don't know if we have a physiological calendar regarding a rhythm in seasons, but if we do, being exclusively omnivorous or exclusively carnivorous all of your life may be problematic (but not as bad as being exclusively anti-carnivorous )

now, here's my own theory:
the overgrowth of yeast, mold, or other fungi in high meat results in some sort of gluconeogenesis, whereby high meat ends up being high in carbs

by ingesting a lot of any kind of carb, fluid or solid, the body becomes serotonin resistant... & depression ensues

You are suggesting that the body will become high-meat resistant then? Has anybody who eats high meat on a regular basis noticed a building resistance and/or depression?

This is something that I have wondered about, too. I do think that some changes are possible, however slight. I don't believe that any large changes have had a chance to occur, though.

If there is enough time for physical changes on the outside. There is enough time for internal changes too. Correct? Enough time for humans to get diverse on the outside, but not on the inside? That doesn't make sense.

I understand the temptation of equating these two types of changes: digestive and appearance. One change involves elements of the metabolic system: stomach, intestines, etc. The other involves skin. We are talking about organs, but we can't necessarily say that if one organ can change over short periods of time, then other (all) organs can do the same. This might be the case, and it might not, but making an external change and an internal change interchangeable (pun intended) because they sound the same is a logical fallacy. IMO, much more research needs to be done in this arena. If people are susceptible to different genetic tolerances of food, then that's something we would all be better off knowing about.

There are, however, some decent arguments regarding short-term digestive changes. Like Kristelle pointed out, some people can digest lactose. She also alluded to chronic disease being the result of these kinds of dietary changes. One argument along these lines is that early in the Neolithic period, the massive dietary shift away from carnivorism and toward grain eating might have resulted in a large number of deaths of people who absolutely could not handle the new foods. As long as they died before reaching the age of reproduction (ie. problematic birth, childhood issues, etc.) then they would not have had a chance to pass this massive food intolerance on to future generations. Those that did survive to reach reproductive age would have been our ancestors, and thus, most people tend to have some measurable tolerance to "unnatural" foods, at least for awhile. I guess you could call this Artificial Selection. Note, however, that chronic diseases that can kill you at the age of thirty (due to sub-par nutrition) would not have been bred out, and would have been passed down as most people tend to reproduce when they're young (and apparently) healthy. Tolerance might have been passed down but complete adaptation would probably take far longer to achieve.

And as far as skin goes: remember that its the organ that takes the most beating on a consistent basis. Unlike the digestive system which could depend on the same foods for millions of years long ago, the skin was always and is always exposed to vastly different environments. It seems logical that if anything were going to change in the short term, it would be the skin, eyes, hair, etc.

Good luck on asking this girl out! I'd like to offer any tips I can, but really its just a matter of confidence ... and experience, lol. Just don't tell her about how much you love those raw lamb hearts  .

Legumes are forbidden on a paleo diet, whether cooked or raw, for a reason.

But what's the reason, though?

incidentally, here's my own experience with high meat:
~ i tried it for a couple of months
~ i never got around to liking it, but wanted to believe it was advantageous for all raw paleo eaters/devotees/experts/connoisseurs in the know
~ in the us -- so i was told by a sales person at both a meat & a fish shops -- all meat for lawful retail sale is devoid of blood, oftentimes pre-frozen (by usda regulation, liver is always previously or currently frozen), & always thoroughly washed at least with chlorinated water (if not also with detergents or who knows what) >> is it high-meatable at all?
~ eventually i found apparently reliable scientific info which convinced me, at least for the time being, that meat fermentations are deleterious

I've yet to create high meat, but from what I've learned on here liver doesn't end up being so much high "meat" as it ends up being a high soup ... if you can picture a fermented soup of dissolved organ parts (and now picture the smell). It would be high in bacteria but I'm not sure even the inuit could stomach that. Someone should dare Aajonus to drink some of that on Ripley's Believe or Not lol.

Also I believe Tyler said that he's tried using frozen meat for high meat and that he did not get the same effect. I would imagine the quality (grass-fed vs. grain-fed) might also play into it, but I'm no expert. Good high meats might actually be the result of being highly selective amongst the various options.

When I start making high meat, I'd like to chew as much of it as possible, although I won't hesitate to bolt it if my gag reflex starts clicking in!

I'm curious. Did you suffer any negative effects while consuming high meat coco?

goodsamaritan,

http://www.thunderbolts.info/

I like this site, too! I remember when I was a kid and learning about astronomy was so fun. Then it just kinda stagnated until I found that site. Its like I'm a kid again!

Is the object to follow your exact format, or to just list 25 things about yourself?