Quotes
The men [Indians of Texas] could run after a deer for an entire day without resting and without apparent fatigue... one man near seven feet in stature... runs down a buffalo on foot and slays it with his knife or lance, as he runs by its side. Traversed by an arrow... he does not die but recovers from his wound. The men went stark naked, the lower lip and nipple pierced, covered in alligator grease [to ward off mosquitoes], happy and generous, with amazing physical prowess... they go naked in the most burning sun, in winter they go out in early dawn to take a bath, breaking the ice with their body.
-- Cabeza de Vaca
When population density reached the point that nomadic exploitation of game and wild plant foods became difficult or impossible and mesolithic humans adopted a more settled way of living, utilization of cereals became attractive. No other free-living primates routinely consume cereal grains.
-- Milton, 1993
While human cranial capacity tripled over the 2.5 million years after Homo habilis first appeared, this trend has recently reversed. Since peaking among Cro Magnons and other humans living during Late Paleolithic, cranial capacity has fallen off about 11%. (This diminution has paralleled a decrease in consumption of animal foods.)
-- Ruff, 1997
My favourite gem of information about connective tissue concerns the digestibility of elastin. During the digestion of meat in the human gut, elastic fibers are broken down by elastase, an enzyme from the pancreas that would not be there if our evolutionary ancestors had not been at least partly carnivorous. In other words, I have never read of the occurrence of elastin in any human food except meat. So if we have evolved a highly specific enzyme, elastase, to deal with elastin in our food, this can only mean that we are the descendants of meat eaters.
-- Professor Howard Swatland, 'Growth and Structure of Meat Animals'
The human body is an incredible system - roughly 7 trillion cells with a mind-boggling level of physical and biochemical coordination necessary just to turn a page, cough, or drive a car. When you consider how little of it you have to think about, it becomes even more amazing. When was the last time you reminded your heart to beat, your lungs to expand and contract, or your digestive organs to secrete just the right chemicals at just the right time? These and a myriad of other processes are handled unconsciously for us every moment we live. Intelligence manages the whole system, much of it unconscious.
-- Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence, p.23
Research is now clear that the inability to manage oneself efficiently leads to premature aging, diminished mental clarity, and even blocked access to our innate intelligence. The converse is also true: Increasing internal coherence leads to more efficiency in all physiological systems and greater creativity, adaptability and flexibility.
-- Ibid, p.23
A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in a sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
-- C.S.Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.124-125
