Study Shows Sasquatch Intelligence Impossible Without Fire.

[Guest]

Actually it took two years assuming your referring to the Japanese study and physical remains of the squid were documated since the 1860s. Also, its easier for an animal to avoid humans in the deep ocean depths.

It's very easy as well for animals to avoid humans in the depths of the wilderness areas of the US, particularly in places like the PNW, Canada, and Alaska.

The ultimate point of all this is that the OP's theory is wrong. Nothing about the reported diet of sasquatches precludes it's intelligence.

[Guest BFSleuth]

I've read a good deal of information suggesting many modern health issues became more abundant with the practice of refining flour alone. Heaven only knows what will come of what we call food today....

.... it is devolving into a series of NFE's (Near Food Experiences).

We didn't get smarter because we ate meat or richer foods. The argument why we needed fire to increase brain size is just more of the flawed logic. It happened because the smarter ones were the ones to survive. There were no special requirement like diet or lack of a sagittal crest that allowed the brain to grow. It was a change in niche. The brain could have grown larger without fire and technology. All it required was the selection for it to happen. Some of those scientists don't seem to understand basic evolution. It is more like they are trying to force data to fit some predefined narrative. Any animal could grow a larger brain if the selection pressure allowed it. It is only difficult because of the great energy demand requires a great deal of extra return from the increased intelligence. It is an energy efficiency equation where the cost of the brain in extra energy required has to be paid by some special advantage. We happened to find it with technology and likely how much more dangerous that made us. None of that means that a bigfoot isn't smart because it doesn't use fire. It is all circular reasoning and flawed logic. They sound like people that look at evolution as goal oriented. They think higher intelligence is a goal. In reality it only evolves if there is a demonstrated benefit compared to the more energy efficient guy with a smaller brain. It is a hard hurdle to overcome.

I think this post nails the issues rather well.

[Guest]

It's very easy as well for animals to avoid humans in the depths of the wilderness areas of the US, particularly in places like the PNW, Canada, and Alaska.

Assuming they only live in the most remote and untouched regions.

[Guest]

Going to fire up the grill.. and hope my brain gets larger, and not my stomach

[southernyahoo]

SY,

What plants are they talking about that don't have the oils that are required for brains. They must be looking at herbivores like grazers and assuming hominids had the same diet if they were vegetarian. Otherwise what they say makes no sense at all. I doubt it makes any sense no matter how you look at it. Even most fruits have nutritious seeds. All ancient hominids are likely going to include seeds and nuts that are high in linoleic acid in their diets. The only possible exception that comes to mind is neanderthals since they were primarily carnivores.

It shouldn't really need an example of foods high in linoleic acid considering the number of cultures that are primarily vegetarian with no diminished brain size. That pretty much falsifies the theory by itself.

Linoleic acid

http://en.wikipedia....d#In_physiology

Even grass seed is probably high. I picked wheat for a random example.

http://www.mountainr...e/wheatgerm.php

Humans populations that get the most ideal amounts of all required nutrients are going to be most successful. Practically every modern human population before modern times combined grains and legumes to get a better mix of the essential amino acids for example. It isn't hard to figure out why. Meat is harder to come by and less reliable as a source of protein so wasn't usually as available as the primary source of calories. It is logical that the ancient culture that uses a healthier combination of foods is going to increase since they compete better. Nutrition has a large effect on their fitness. That isn't going to change in ancient hominids. They still had culture. Even chimps have hundreds of different plants they learned to eat from their culture. Those that chose the best mix of plants sources of food are going to be healthiest. The point there is it isn't going to be hard to find raw plant sources with plenty of linoleic acid and that there was no environmental constraint on any early hominids due to lack of essential oils. Their culture would evolve to learn how to get all the nutrients needed if they didn't eat meat. Just because they ate meat isn't any reason whatsoever to assume that it was required since all the nutrients are abundant in the environment and clearly available from plant sources.

Humans require an energy dense food because we lack the digestive system and jaws required to process less dense food in greater quantity. It isn't the brain that requires energy dense food. It is our inability to chew large amounts of plant materials and digest rough food more efficiently. The only way they come to the conclusion that they required meat is to decide what plant sources they want the hominids to eat. There are plenty of plant sources that have all the nutrients in any land environment where ancient humans could have lived.

You could probably survive eating them raw but cooking makes it easier for us with our reduced jaws and shorter digestive systems. Carbohydrates in particular are made easier to digest. You get much more calories from well cooked onions which are rich in inulin. Many roots contain that so cooking greatly increases the number of foods available and calories available especially in many tubers if you use fire. We are especially well adapted to eat starch which is another primary storage carbohydrate in plants often stored in tubers. We could also eat those raw but cooking makes those easier to digest as well.

We happened to eat more energy rich food because we got smarter. That is a consequence of technology. Digging tools and hunting weapons are examples. We didn't get smarter because we ate meat or richer foods. The argument why we needed fire to increase brain size is just more of the flawed logic. It happened because the smarter ones were the ones to survive. There were no special requirement like diet or lack of a sagittal crest that allowed the brain to grow. It was a change in niche. The brain could have grown larger without fire and technology. All it required was the selection for it to happen. Some of those scientists don't seem to understand basic evolution. It is more like they are trying to force data to fit some predefined narrative. Any animal could grow a larger brain if the selection pressure allowed it. It is only difficult because of the great energy demand requires a great deal of extra return from the increased intelligence. It is an energy efficiency equation where the cost of the brain in extra energy required has to be paid by some special advantage. We happened to find it with technology and likely how much more dangerous that made us. None of that means that a bigfoot isn't smart because it doesn't use fire. It is all circular reasoning and flawed logic. They sound like people that look at evolution as goal oriented. They think higher intelligence is a goal. In reality it only evolves if there is a demonstrated benefit compared to the more energy efficient guy with a smaller brain. It is a hard hurdle to overcome.

I tend to agree Bob, and favor a natural selection process as much as having the supporting digetive system and diet as a vehicle to invade new niches. I would envision Sas being a very resourceful ominivorous apex predator that spreads it's ecological impact out and takes advantage of just about every available food source. That best explains the range of habitats and foods observed, and none of which should preclude great intelligence, but actually demonstrates it.

[Guest]

This would be a blow to the concept of a large wild hominid/primate if the cooking theory is correct. A later quote in the article you sited:

"But "the jury is still out" on whether cooking was responsible for the first dramatic burst of brain growth in our lineage, in H. erectus, Martin says, or whether our ancestors began cooking over a fire later, when the brain went through a second major growth spurt about 600,000 years ago. Hearths show up in the archaeological record 800,000 years ago and the regular use of fire for cooking doesn't become widespread until more recently."

The theory of fire equals bigger brains isn't confirmed yet. I think in order to support this theory you would have to accept that the digestive systems of all primates are the same. For example, if BF has a digestive system that is capable of breaking down roots or tubers efficiently then it precludes the need for fire to "predigest" them. It would not surprise me if we have a BF specimen that we might find their digestive tract is significantly different than ours.

I'm also reminded of the recent study of ancient human coprolites from Antelope Cave in Arizona, which showed that they had diets which had about 10 times as much fiber as modern recommendations for healthy fiber intake. This theory of fire being required to predigest food in part depends on the need to break down plant fibers for full digestion. Apparently ancient humans did quite well with very high fiber diets, much higher than we are used to in our modern age.

Humans have a shorter and less robust digestive tract than other apes.

http://www.beyondveg...p-anat-6c.shtml

"Human gut small compared to apes. Observing that human gut proportions are different from those found in carnivores, herbivores, swine (an omnivore), and even most other primates, including the anthropoid apes, Milton [1987, p. 101] notes that "...the size of the human gut relative to body mass is small in comparison with other anthropoids (R.D. Martin, pers. comm.)." Milton [1987] includes a table (3.2, p. 99) that compares the relative volumes of the different parts of the gut for selected hominid species. The table shows the stomach at 10-24% of total gut volume in humans, while for orangs and chimps it is 17-20%. The small intestine is 56-67% of total gut volume in humans, 23-28% in orangs and chimps. And the colon is 17-23% of total gut volume in humans, while it is 52-54% in orangs and chimps. The percentages quoted in the preceding sentence are unscaled, i.e. are not scaled for inter-specific differences in body size. Despite this, the figures are useful to compare patterns of gut proportions, and the general pattern is clear: humans have "large" intestines, while chimps and orangs have "large" colons."

The colon is used for extracting nutrition from fibrous material such as foliage and roots. The much smaller proportions in humans has often been used to suggest that we are supposed to be more carnivorous than other apes. Cooking however can help our guts extract more nutrition from fibrous foods with shorter intestines thereby saving energy and even materials for the production of greater amounts of brain matter and the infrastructur necessary to maintain it. These improvments were made slowly in small measures. With cooked food we alsono longer needed huge powerful jaws for mastication which granted a little more material and room for a bigger brain in the skull.

As for the antelope cave remains, it is entirely possible the people who left these remains were eating something not normally consumed. Perhaps there was a famine and they were reduced to eating raw foliage or perhaps they were eating something meant for a ritual. Most poo-remains for humans show similar amounts of fiber as modern human populations.

You are assuming the metabolism is the same, but if you go with that assumption, then you are looking at probably an average of 6000 calories per day for a sasquatch. Now combine that with constant movement looking for food and the caloric intake increases. What food source provides the most calories? For us that would be fatty foods but for a sasquatch it might be leafy green vegies like cat tail roots and watercress, nuts, insects, rodents, grubs, things that might not get noticed as missing if taken in abundance. In other words, there are plenty of things in the wild that would meet a sasquatch's needs if he is omnivorous and not picky.

None of these things are especially useful for a animal of several hundred pounds except perhaps for the cattail roots and they would still be more nutritious cooked. The broken down fibers release minerals and protein making absorption faster and more thorough. Elk and moose can use them because they have huge guts filled with bacteria to break these fibers down. The resulting carbohydrates supply fuel in addition to the protein and minerals. Gorillas eat food like this and they are not human-level intelligent. Still quite bright and bigfoot is likely similar perhaps a little smarter due to the likelihood of more meat in the diet than gorillas usually have. Edited October 31, 2012 by antfoot

[Spader]

The only enzymes in our system are the ones that we were born with. We may lose some or overproduce some due to disease or system malfunction but we do not spontaneously produce new or varied enzymes because of any change in diet.

Yes we are born with the only enzymes we will ever have, but the foods we eat contain their own enzymes that produce different chemicals. If we are able to eat certain foods that a Sasquatch can not eat, different chemicals will be produced. And believe me, I have bombarded my gut with as many possible combinations that are possible, and I cannot see in the infrared, or stealthily steal a Zagnut bar. Ever see that Gillagan's Island where they got hold of a crate of radioactive seeds? Anything is possible. But I doubt our choice in foods are the reason we are so different from Bigfoot.

[Guest]

Assuming they only live in the most remote and untouched regions.

Not necessarily. A lot depends on what you class as "remote and untouched". There are plenty of rural/semi-rural places where human habitation and "untouched" land lie side by side.

As several have pointed out in various threads, humans tend to stick to paths and near paths so "human penetration" of an otherwise wild region is a matter of degree and interpretation.

It has also been pointed out in various threads that it doesn't take more than a few yards in particularly dense wilderness to completely lose contact with a trail.

[Guest]

From what I've been reading, it has the large major brain capacity increases 1.8 MYA whereas fire use didn't become all that universal until 250,000 years ago. i.e. many groups might have been on mostly raw diets still.

Something that I have noticed is that many human food crops/plants especially in their undomesticated form, are not very palatable to other creatures. They have anti-herbivore enzymes that mess with appetite. Particularly of note is the brassica family. Then there's other plants with natural insecticides that are distasteful raw. Anyway, seems fire allowed us to exploit food resources that weren't popular with herbivores, due to cooking rendering plant defense systems inoperative. Also use of fire just for heat reduces calorie needs in cold climates. So, figure that HSS population explosion was partly due to opening up of vast expanse of food resources that there was not much competition for. Sure we've got agriculture figured out now, but I figure in early times it was only worth planting what you could defend, and if it was highly palatable to everything else, it took too much effort. Later when communities got larger, agriculture got bigger, and we figured out fences and projectile weapons (i.e. slings) then it became easier to grow more of the "popular" stuff.

To some extent agriculture was symbiotic with hunting on the plains, as hunting was a way of keeping down the competition as well as a food source... likewise the use of fire and need for wood drove back the forests and gave us more open territory to thrive on. Were we outcompeted in the forests until we came back in with fire and edged weapons??? Possibly before that, we had superior communication and co-ordination in numbers, but that might only have allowed bare survival rather than thriving abundantly.

[Guest thermalman]

Mankind's DNA is what makes us different and on top of the food chain. It's been that way for as long as we've walked the earth. Fire has been around for just as long or longer. Only human intelligence has allowed us to make use of it like no other creature.

[Guest BFSleuth]

Humans have a shorter and less robust digestive tract than other apes.

http://www.beyondveg...p-anat-6c.shtml

"Human gut small compared to apes. Observing that human gut proportions are different from those found in carnivores, herbivores, swine (an omnivore), and even most other primates, including the anthropoid apes, Milton [1987, p. 101] notes that "...the size of the human gut relative to body mass is small in comparison with other anthropoids (R.D. Martin, pers. comm.)." Milton [1987] includes a table (3.2, p. 99) that compares the relative volumes of the different parts of the gut for selected hominid species. The table shows the stomach at 10-24% of total gut volume in humans, while for orangs and chimps it is 17-20%. The small intestine is 56-67% of total gut volume in humans, 23-28% in orangs and chimps. And the colon is 17-23% of total gut volume in humans, while it is 52-54% in orangs and chimps. The percentages quoted in the preceding sentence are unscaled, i.e. are not scaled for inter-specific differences in body size. Despite this, the figures are useful to compare patterns of gut proportions, and the general pattern is clear: humans have "large" intestines, while chimps and orangs have "large" colons."

The colon is used for extracting nutrition from fibrous material such as foliage and roots. The much smaller proportions in humans has often been used to suggest that we are supposed to be more carnivorous than other apes. Cooking however can help our guts extract more nutrition from fibrous foods with shorter intestines thereby saving energy and even materials for the production of greater amounts of brain matter and the infrastructur necessary to maintain it. These improvments were made slowly in small measures. With cooked food we also no longer needed huge powerful jaws for mastication which granted a little more material and room for a bigger brain in the skull.

As for the antelope cave remains, it is entirely possible the people who left these remains were eating something not normally consumed. Perhaps there was a famine and they were reduced to eating raw foliage or perhaps they were eating something meant for a ritual. Most poo-remains for humans show similar amounts of fiber as modern human populations.

None of these things are especially useful for a animal of several hundred pounds except perhaps for the cattail roots and they would still be more nutritious cooked. The broken down fibers release minerals and protein making absorption faster and more thorough. Elk and moose can use them because they have huge guts filled with bacteria to break these fibers down. The resulting carbohydrates supply fuel in addition to the protein and minerals. Gorillas eat food like this and they are not human-level intelligent. Still quite bright and bigfoot is likely similar perhaps a little smarter due to the likelihood of more meat in the diet than gorillas usually have.

Thank you for providing the link to the gut size comparison of primates. This makes a lot of sense. If a species is eating a diet high in fiber and needs to break down the fiber to useable nutrition it makes sense their evolution would develop a digestive system to handle breaking down the fiber. Longer intestines, especially a longer colon, would be expected.

Again, I think the article sited in the OP is rather simplistic in its attempt to equate the use of fire with higher nutrition and the causative factor in growth of brain capacity. The OP is then wanting to take that article to theorize a very narrow definition of what is required in order to have large brain capacity and intelligence .... fire. IMHO this is simply taking a half baked idea and barely rewarming it enough to be slightly palatable (pun intended).

Edited November 1, 2012 by BFSleuth

[bipedalist]

Thom Powell weighs in on Sasquatch intelligence vis-a-vis the Falcon Project in his latest blog. Edited December 8, 2012 by bipedalist

[Guest]

How did Gorillas evade disovery untill 1902 with out the use of fire? This thread should come with a jump to conlusions mat. How did other large non primate mammals evade detection untill the last decade with out the use of fire?

[Guest SquatchinNY]

I would love to give a answer to this thread, but it can only be done via PM, because of forum rules. If you want my opinion, shoot me a PM.

[JDL]

It's clear to me that Squatch must sustain their intelligence by eating things that eat cooked food.