Call on me!!!! 

Just finished finals including - Anthropology 101, Introduction to Physical Anthropology.

Tah-Dah!

So, do we have evidence people ate meat?  We have bones with stone tool marks on them and bones obviously broken to get at the marrow.  We know it is stone tools and not teeth because of the shape, size, and location of the marks.  Leopards and other toothy predators leave two parallel cuts that match the size and shape of their fangs.  Here are some articles and pictures.

http://archaeology.about.com/b/2010/08/11/stone-tools-and-afarensis.htm

This article is much more technical, if you want.  http://umanitoba.academia.edu/HaskelGreenfield/Papers/334114/Slicing_cut_marks_on_animal_bones_diagnostics_for_identifying_stone_t...

Chimps are vegetarians?  I don't think so.  Here is a youtube video about chimps - warning - graphic images of a band of chimps pulling apart a monkey and eating it are in this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpYViR9MqrU

Search on chimpanzees hunting monkeys for more videos.  Send links to your vegan friends.

So we have evidence from bones that people ate meat, and current evidence of chimps who hunt and eat meat.  What is with the teeth?

Contrary to what the raw food vegan types will tell you, it is from cooking.  We have solid evidence that Homo erectus had control of fire 400,000 years ago and burned bones earlier than that.  Humans have been cooking their food long enough, it has changed the shape and size of our jaw and teeth. 

It has also changed the shape and size of our chewing muscles.  Because we eat mostly cooked food, we do not need large chewing muscles.  Compare Australopithecus robustus, A. africanus, and early Homo skulls.  Robustus has huge zygomatic arch (also called process) and a distinctive sagittal crest, africanus smaller, and Homo habilis has a skull shaped much like a modern human if over all a lot smaller.  This is the bone that makes an arch over the jaw muscles on the skull just below our cheek bones.  Modern humans have a very small arch and no sagittal crest along the top of the skull for the jaw muscles to attach to. 

Therefore, we have eaten cooked, soft foods long enough to change the shape and size of our jaw, zygomatic arch, sagittal crest, and teeth. 

Human brains are expensive caloric/energy wise.  Because our brains are so much larger than is expected for our overall size compared to other mammals, we need a lot more calories per pound.  Approximately 25% of the calories you consume are exclusively used to fuel your brain.  If you are a hunter gatherer, the only way to do this is by hunting meat and preferably the fat ones.  Fat is the most calorie dense of all foods.  We are spoiled in our modern world.  It is possible to get enough calories to support our brains without having to hunt or even eat meat.  Our ancestors didn't have supermarkets.

Humans are omnivores which means we will eat that which does not outright kill us including meat, and we are adapted to eating cooked foods.

Welcome back CJ

What about our appendix? Doesn't it show somewhere back a common ancestor was plant eating?

Vaset, what did they do to you?

How did they force you? Is this friends, family or government?

Will they have to rip that t-bone from your cold dead hands?

Since we were concentrating on ancient stone tools and fossils, we didn't discuss soft tissue very much.  It is sometimes preserved, but not in the million+ year old fossils - of the ones we have found so far anyway. 

But according to this website, it is not useless or vestigial as we may have been taught in high school biology.  Instead, it has very active functions for our immune system.

http://coloncancer.about.com/od/glossaries/g/Appendix.htm

But yes, our family tree includes many cousins that were strictly vegetarian, some of whom might be direct ancestors.  Still too many different fossils to determine which ones were our ancestors and which were cousins.  But it is not disputed that human ancestors cooked various grains and meat, that they scavenged meat before they hunted it (we were top scavengers at one time), and that our closest living primate relatives also eat meat when they can.

I grew up in Romania, until I immigrated to Canada at 15 I have not met a vegetarian, let a lone a vegan.  I have heard of them but never actually spoken with one.  The reality is that in an underdeveloped country, a vegetarian would starve to death.  We grew 50% of the stuff we ate, and the only things that you could find to buy was stuff that was in season.  Sometimes I still walk into a supermarket and shake my head at all the fresh fruit you could buy.  Good luck getting a healthy diet without meat.  Vegans are the epitome of a spoiled westerner.

Wow.  Ok.

Well CJ covered a lot of good information about this already.  So I'm just going to throw in my own personal way of answering here.

The Vegans view is pretty much the opposite of reality.

Yes, our distant ancestors were much more vegetarian that we are now.  But the simple fact is that the precursors to Homo sapiens started to eat meat.  This practice contributed to the evolution of Homo sapiens.  We would have never been able to afford our massive brains if Homo habilis and later Homo erectus did not start eating meat.  We probably wouldn't even have evolved enough intelligence to be able to converse with one another as we currently do.  Grammar and syntax wouldn't exist for us.

Homo sapiens has always eaten meat.  Our species has never never never been vegetarian in our dietary habits.

Is being a vegetarian now that we have such an abundance of access to calorie rich vegetable matter healthier?

It probably is.  I'll admit that.  But it's defying all precendence in our evolutionary existence as a species.  For myself, I'll take the chance and keep eating meat.

In March my father is having a 700 lb heifer butchered for me and my family to gorge on.  And it's going to be goooood.