I feel this to just be a discussion! But yes my picture was wrong:
while I say they were omnivorous all the time, and merely switched the main energy source of their diet from fruits to meat. And in this aspect, I think I'm right.
That sounds correct to me too! If hominid tooth style DOES reflect omnivory, (instead of 90% herbivory, as I thought) then of course any species could switch its main caloric intake, just as you show gorillas have done. In fact, I haven't even bothered to read some of the newer books about avoiding many carbs (not all) and going back to a more pre-agro diet based largely on meat. I like my media-labelled "cholesterol-raising" "difficult to digest" and definitely steroid-induced Beefusteaki!
-IF IT'S DONE RIGHT!- see above pic!
It's not like our tooth style matters to "us" anyway - "we'd" invented fire cooking and stone tools far before "we" invented agriculture, removing much of the need for predator teeth to strip raw meat from a carcass on the spot!
Anyway - if meats give you loads of energy yet shorten your lifespan, would that not have been the perfect trade-off for our ancestors? They did have loads of energy to make their lives much MUCH better than eking out a meager diet, and IF it happened to kill them some 10 years sooner than the much more herb-based competitor, like maybe nutcracker man, they might have sure made up for it with far more surviving offspring!
This is just shooting in the dark, guys, it's been a long time since my ONE Anthropology course, and I've only dabbled in it since - far less so than the Dinosaurian Paleontology that I love as much as medium rare steax. And somewhat less than pink flesh. (Which is why I'm not a pro paleontologist today...)
