Have you ever been more than a little aggravated by the snotty moral superiority of vegetarians? I know I have. I also know that I somewhat dismayed by growth in popularity of this fetish, especially among women. These days I cannot find a single restaurant in London that doesn’t have a ‘Vegetarian Section’ on the menu.
This shouldn’t be a political issue, merely a matter of personal preference. But, while a vegan society remains the aim of the Animal Rights movement, it is a political issue.
Thus far, in defence of my firmly carnivourous ways, I have always used the freedom of choice arguments against the accusations that I am promoting cruelty to animals, harming the planet and ruining my health (although why these people should concern themselves with my well-being is a mystery to me).
However, thanks to anthropology there is another, and better, rebuttal available. Thanks to recent discoveries about the early history of our species we have learned of the contrasting fates of two different but concurrent sub-species of early hominid; Robust Man (Australopithicus robustus) and Gracile Man (Australopithecus garhi).
Robust Man was a vegetarian. We know this because of the extraordinarily prominent sagittal crest found on its skull. This crest could only have evolved in order to provide an anchor for enormous jaw muscles of the kind required for rumination. That, coupled with large, flat teeth, lead anthropologists to the conclusion that Robust Man ate roots, tubers and plants.
Gracile Man remains, on the other hand, consist of a smooth skull and lots of sharp teeth. He was a carnivore.
The trouble with eating vegetables is that they are difficult to digest and require a large gut in order to do so. Meat, however, is easy to digest. So Robust’s metabolic energy went into the development of his huge gut and Gracile’s metabolic energy went into the development of his brain.
As a result, Gracile went from picking the marrow out of bones to develop hunting skills and eventually become us while poor retarded old Robust wallowed around on the floor of the forest and farted himself into oblivion.
So, the next time somebody tells you that meat is murder, you can reply yes, but vegetables are suicide.
