Meat-Eating Debate (Relocated Thread)

[Jondalar]

Originally Posted by Pyewacket

Some monkeys do eat meat -- but sparingly. The primary source of food for all primates is vegetation. We are the only primate that consumes so much animal matter.

And the "sciences we guys are talking" are truth. You can say that theories change all the time, sure, but you can't just sweep away all facts by saying that and not coming up with a specific study or fact to refute it. That's like saying "atoms aren't real because there may be a study in the future that says they aren't." C'mon.

And yes, the production of meat takes up far more energy and space and has far more environmental repercussions (not to mention health problems) than farming would for the same amount of nutritional food. Surprise! It's true. Again, find me the accredited study that says it's not. And good luck with that.



I do not mean to come across as a vegan hun (largely because I am not vegan (or even vegetarian) and I am not a hun. I don't even like being preach-y. But facts ARE facts and should be accepted as such. Overpopulation sucks, sure, and there is nothing that can realistically be done to curtail it. However there are simple and fairly easy things we can do to help out with our environment and our health and being less cruel. Not eating meat every time you sit down at a table is one of those things.

No they are not truth. New techniques are developed regulary to evaluate how we lived thousands of years ago. Hell, scientist still go back and forth on Neanderthal man, who basically only ate meat. They are still debating whether or not Neanderthal man actually cross bread with modern humans and is part of our dna. New studies say no. But it's still up in the air. It could change next month. Man only really started to populate the planet when agriculture was developed. Population was not much of an issue, neither was war, which is what happens when people compete for resources.

As far as the data used for the arguement for eating less meat, that can be applied to overpoplulation too. And we can do something about that. As far as Heart Disease, Cancer... Good. I'm glad they are here. (Checks and balances.) If there were no diseases then we would really be screwed. There are 7 BILLION people on this planet. That is way too much. The projection for 2050 is 9 BILLION. If you think animals are being treated cruelly now, wait till they are gone.

[Pyewacket]

Originally Posted by Jondalar

New techniques are developed regulary to evaluate how we lived thousands of years ago. Hell, scientist still go back and forth on Neanderthal man, who basically only ate meat.

Sources please. Or even just singular: source. Just one accredited source from "Anthrology" or wherever it is that you're getting your "facts."

[Jondalar]

Originally Posted by Pyewacket

Sources please. Or even just singular: source. Just one accredited source from "Anthrology" or wherever it is that you're getting your "facts."

I cannot these believe these freaking people.

Here is just one article from the New York Times, but actually there some kind of special about it on tv. Of course, I paid attention since it was a specialization of mine in college.

Neanderthals mated with some modern humans after all and left their imprint in the human genome, a team of biologists has reported in the first detailed analysis of the Neanderthal genetic sequence.
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The New York Times

Max-Planck-Institute EVA
The Neanderthal DNA that Svante Pääbo analyzed came from these three bones.
The biologists, led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have been slowly reconstructing the genome of Neanderthals, the stocky hunters that dominated Europe until 30,000 years ago, by extracting the fragments of DNA that still exist in their fossil bones. Just last year, when the biologists first announced that they had decoded the Neanderthal genome, they reported no significant evidence of interbreeding.

Scientists say they have recovered 60 percent of the genome so far and hope to complete it. By comparing that genome with those of various present day humans, the team concluded that about 1 percent to 4 percent of the genome of non-Africans today is derived from Neanderthals. But the Neanderthal DNA does not seem to have played a great role in human evolution, they said.

Experts believe that the Neanderthal genome sequence will be of extraordinary importance in understanding human evolutionary history since the two species split some 600,000 years ago.

So far, the team has identified only about 100 genes — surprisingly few — that have contributed to the evolution of modern humans since the split. The nature of the genes in humans that differ from those of Neanderthals is of particular interest because they bear on what it means to be human, or at least not Neanderthal. Some of the genes seem to be involved in cognitive function and others in bone structure.

“Seven years ago, I really thought that it would remain impossible in my lifetime to sequence the whole Neanderthal genome,” Dr. Paabo said at a news conference. But the Leipzig team’s second conclusion, that there was probably interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans before Europeans and Asians split, is being met with reserve by some archaeologists.

A degree of interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals in Europe would not be greatly surprising given that the species overlapped there from 44,000 years ago when modern humans first entered Europe to 30,000 years ago when the last Neanderthals fell extinct. Archaeologists have been debating for years whether the fossil record shows evidence of individuals with mixed features.

But the new analysis, which is based solely on genetics and statistical calculations, is more difficult to match with the archaeological record. The Leipzig scientists assert that the interbreeding did not occur in Europe but in the Middle East and at a much earlier period, some 100,000 to 60,000 years ago, before the modern human populations of Europe and East Asia split. There is much less archaeological evidence for an overlap between modern humans and Neanderthals at this time and place.

Dr. Paabo has pioneered the extraction and analysis of ancient DNA from fossil bones, overcoming daunting obstacles over the last 13 years in his pursuit of the Neanderthal genome. Perhaps the most serious is that most Neanderthal bones are extensively contaminated with modern human DNA, which is highly similar to Neanderthal DNA. The DNA he has analyzed comes from three small bones from the Vindija cave in Croatia.

“This is a fabulous achievement,” said Ian Tattersall, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, referring to the draft Neanderthal genome that Dr. Paabo’s team describes in Thursday’s issue of Science.

But he and other archaeologists questioned some of the interpretations put forward by Dr. Paabo and his chief colleagues, Richard E. Green of the Leipzig institute, and David Reich of Harvard Medical School. Geneticists have been making increasingly valuable contributions to human prehistory, but their work depends heavily on complex mathematical statistics that make their arguments hard to follow. And the statistical insights, however informative, do not have the solidity of an archaeological fact.

“This is probably not the authors’ last word, and they are obviously groping to explain what they have found,” Dr. Tattersall said.

Richard Klein, a paleontologist at Stanford, said the authors’ theory of an early interbreeding episode did not seem to have taken full account of the archaeological background. “They are basically saying, ‘Here are our data, you have to accept it.’ But the little part I can judge seems to me to be problematic, so I have to worry about the rest,” he said.

In an earlier report on the Neanderthal genome, the reported DNA sequences were found by other geneticists to be extensively contaminated with human DNA. Dr. Paabo’s group has taken extra precautions but it remains to be seen how successful they have been, Dr. Klein said, especially as another group at the Leipzig institute, presumably using the same methods, has obtained results that Dr. Paabo said he could not confirm.

Dr. Paabo said that episode of human-Neanderthal breeding implied by Dr. Reich’s statistics most plausibly occurred “in the Middle East where the first modern humans appear before 100,000 years ago and there were Neanderthals until 60,000 years ago.” According to Dr. Klein, people in Africa expanded their range and reached just Israel during a warm period some 120,000 years ago. They retreated during a cold period some 80,000 years ago and were replaced by Neanderthals. It is not clear whether or not they overlapped with Neanderthals, he said.

These humans, in any case, were not fully modern and they did not expand from Africa, an episode that occurred some 30,000 years later. If there was any interbreeding, the flow of genes should have been both ways, Dr. Klein said, but Dr. Paabo’s group sees evidence for gene flow only from Neanderthals to modern humans.

The Leipzig group’s interbreeding theory would undercut the present belief that all human populations today draw from the same gene pool that existed a mere 50,000 years ago. “What we falsify here is the strong out-of-Africa hypothesis that everyone comes from the same population,” Dr. Paabo said.

In his and Dr. Reich’s view, Neanderthals interbred only with non-Africans, the people who left Africa, which would mean that non-Africans drew from a second gene pool not available to Africans.

[Jondalar]

Oh this one is from the Christian Monitor

Study suggests humans mated with Neanderthals
A study of DNA from humans living today has found signs of Neanderthal genes, suggesting that interbreeding occurred between the two species.

Humans today could be part Neanderthal, according to a new study that found our ancestors interbred with an extinct hominid species some millennia ago.

X Woman: Not human, not Neanderthal, what is she?
Jewelry: so easy a cave man can do it
Fossil DNA tells tales of red-haired Neanderthals
Neanderthals walked the Earth between about 130,000 and 30,000 years ago. While they co-existed with modern humans for a while, eventually they went extinct and we didn't. There has been intense scientific debate over how similar the two species were, and whether they might have mated with each other.

"The issue has been highly contentious for some time," said University of New Mexico genetic anthropologist Keith Hunley.

Last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Albuquerque, N.M., Hunley and colleagues presented the results of a new study that found evidence for interbreeding between modern humans and some other extinct ancient human species – either Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) or another group such as Homo heidelbergensis. The research was first reported by NatureNews.

The researchers looked at DNA samples from humans living today, and found signs of leftover Neanderthal genes introduced from this interbreeding. They looked at genetic data from almost 2,000 people around the world, and calculated how much genetic variation existed between samples. The results indicate that some extinct group of hominids mixed their genes with ours at two points in history, Hunley said.

One period of interbreeding probably occurred shortly after Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa around 60,000 years ago. The researchers found an excess of genetic diversity in all modern people except Africans, suggesting that the influx of Neanderthal-like DNA came after the exodus from Africa.

A second period of interbreeding is suggested by the fact that the researchers measured even more genetic diversity among people of Oceanic descent – people from Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and other Pacific islands.

"I think we show there's clear evidence in the genome of living people of this mixture," Hunley told LiveScience. "The fact that there's a clear signal implies that there was some significant amount" of interbreeding, he said.

This work is the first time scientists have used DNA from living people to look at this question, Hunley said.

In an earlier study, Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis found suggestions of Neanderthal and modern human interbreeding by comparing ancient bone fossils from the two species.

Trinkaus said the new work fits into his findings, though he hasn't reviewed the details yet since Hunley's paper has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. "The conclusion makes sense and fits with the majority of the data available," Trinkaus said.

Another anthropologist who has studied Neanderthal anatomy agreed.

"I have been arguing for this position throughout my career, ever since I began to study Neandertals and other populations," said Milford Wolpoff of the University of Michigan. "It has always seemed clear that some Neandertal anatomy appears in living populations."

Not everyone, though, will be easily convinced yet, Hunley said.

[Pyewacket]

"I cannot freaking these believe these people..." for what? For being so incendiary as to ask for sources, and not about Neanderthals, who, are completely irrelevant to this conversation and are likely 98% irrelevant to our lineage?

Are you so attached to your happy meal that you must keep creating diversions to what is essentially a simple equation? World overpopulation? Sure it's a problem -- not sure what you're going to do about it in say, China or Latin America, where it's epidemic. Neanderthals? Or course they ate meat and so did our primary ancestors, the Cro-Magnons (they drew it on their cave walls), but what about before that?

We have always been primarily a vegetarian species -- overwhelmingly so -- until the stone age, and even then, we simply added a little meat when we could. But we don't need to now. We have simply become used to it, because now we don't hunt...we just buy. And buy, and buy, in huge Costco portions that are making us fatter and ruining our environs. At least when we hunted, we didn't cause the animal lifelong discomfort, or in many cases, agony. We should pay attention to what we are eating and why we are eating it. This is all I am saying. If you choose to eat an extra bit of burger today out of spite, so be it. But why not cut down? It simply makes a lot more sense.

[HejiraNYC]

Originally Posted by Pyewacket

"I cannot freaking these believe these people..." for what? For being so incendiary as to ask for sources, and not about Neanderthals, who, are completely irrelevant to this conversation and are likely 98% irrelevant to our lineage.

Our you so attached to your happy meal that you must keep creating diversions to what is essentially a simple equation? World overpopulation? Sure it's a problem -- not sure what you're going to do about it in say, China or Latin America, where it's epidemic. Neanderthals? Or course they ate meat and so did our primary ancestors, the Cro-Magnons (they drew it on their cave walls), but what about before that? What

Regardless of Man's origins, guess what? We evolved. Enough said. I don't see what some thick-skulled, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal has to do with us today. They didn't have the intellectual capacity to prevent their own extinction, so why should they be held up as an example of how modern humans should live their lives today?

[Jondalar]

Originally Posted by HejiraNYC

Regardless of Man's origins, guess what? We evolved. Enough said. I don't see what some thick-skulled, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal has to do with us today. They didn't have the intellectual capacity to prevent their own extinction, so why should they be held up as an example of how modern humans should live their lives today?

Because people keep talking about origins and science.

Neanderthal man could be part of our DNA. Many vegans claim that what we evolved from creatures that did not eat meat. Well, I highly doubt that is true. Many animals that are considered carnivores eat plants and vice versa. Anyway, Neanderthal ate very little plants (if you believe the science). They basically lived off meat. If they are part of our DNA then man may be even more inclined to eat meat.

It doesn't really matter. Humans are neither a herbivore or carnivore.

"They didn't have the intellectual capacity to prevent their own extinction." Modern man doesn't seem to have it either. No checks and balances. Hell, 9 billion in 2050. In 2100 will it be 12 Billion. UGG!

[chiliD]

Originally Posted by HejiraNYC

Regardless of Man's origins, guess what? We evolved. Enough said. I don't see what some thick-skulled, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal has to do with us today. They didn't have the intellectual capacity to prevent their own extinction, so why should they be held up as an example of how modern humans should live their lives today?

And, you're saying modern man DOES know how to prevent their own extinction? I seriously doubt that...especially if you watch Fox News for more than 10 minutes. We're on a collision course with our own species demise...have been for as long as we've been on Earth. (assuming we came from elsewhere in the Universe) Humans have basically been the "cancer cell" lifeform on this planet. We've grown in population totally unchecked like a malignancy. But, we'll get our due in time...not my lifetime, maybe not even our great-great-great-great grandchildren's, but eventually, humans will not exist on this planet. Gone like a cool breeze.

[bluefox4000]

Originally Posted by chiliD

And, you're saying modern man DOES know how to prevent their own extinction? I seriously doubt that...especially if you watch Fox News for more than 10 minutes. We're on a collision course with our own species demise...have been for as long as we've been on Earth. (assuming we came from elsewhere in the Universe) Humans have basically been the "cancer cell" lifeform on this planet. We've grown in population totally unchecked like a malignancy. But, we'll get our due in time...not my lifetime, maybe not even our great-great-great-great grandchildren's, but eventually, humans will not exist on this planet. Gone like a cool breeze.

Reminds of one of my fav George Carlin pieces.....The planet is fine.....The people.....ARE FUKED

Mick

[APerfectLie]

Originally Posted by chiliD

And, you're saying modern man DOES know how to prevent their own extinction? I seriously doubt that...especially if you watch Fox News for more than 10 minutes. We're on a collision course with our own species demise...have been for as long as we've been on Earth. (assuming we came from elsewhere in the Universe) Humans have basically been the "cancer cell" lifeform on this planet. We've grown in population totally unchecked like a malignancy. But, we'll get our due in time...not my lifetime, maybe not even our great-great-great-great grandchildren's, but eventually, humans will not exist on this planet. Gone like a cool breeze.

"Especially if you watch Fox News"

Eventually, nothing will exist on this planet.

[KarmaContestant]

Originally Posted by mezzoforte

I've always wondered why there's so much vitriol directed at celebs who wear fur. I don't so much mean here, but it feels like every picture of an actress in a fur coat is followed by 50 comments criticizing it. I'd argue that eating sushi daily and supporting the fishing industry is more harmful than owning a mink coat, no? Certainly I don't *love* the idea of fur, but I own leather boots and jackets--I don't feel like I'm in a position to judge.

I agree, although ultimately I see very little difference between wearing animal fur/skin and wearing human skin...even though I wear leather shoes as well. Have you seen The Cove? The Japanese fisherman say they have to slaughter all those dolphins every year because they are eating too much fish. Seriously.