Mageth

Huge mounds of oyster shells found from North America to Terra del Feugo is mute testimony to our species ability to exploit sea food as a staple.

FYI, that's Tierra del Fuego.

These mounds are called middens; the oysters were generally collected on tidal flats, usually in bays or estuaries, or in shallow rivers, with rarely the need to swim. (middens are not uncommon on the Texas gulf coast where I grew up. You can still dig for oysters and clams on tidal flats this way).

Baidarka

To all you sea food haters:

Your silly prejudice against this wonderful source of protein is good news for us sea food-o-files. More sushi, sea urchin, clams on the half shell, conch, oysters and lobster for us and none for you.
Natural selection is a wonderful thing; your prejudice will help keep your brains and sexual organs underdeveloped. Sea food eaters will take over the world!

pz

Oh, yeah, that's another argument I hear from AATers all the time: that our dietary 'requirement' for seafood is evidence of a past dependency on a marine environment.

One of the problems with that, of course, is that there are lots of people who never eat seafood, yet seem to grow brains and gonads just fine.

Albion

Some of us don't have any choice. Allergies aren't all in the mind, you know.

wildernesse

Seafood is a need without which our brains and sex organs don't develop? How did desert dwellers survive and reproduce so well for so long?

What is the quality of seafood that develops these organs? Nutrition-wise, I mean. As in, our bodies need x, only found in acceptable amounts in seafood, and without x we are badly formed. Lives in sea water is not a description that answers this question.

Then examples of people who do not eat seafood and either the cultural adaptations (food source that does supply x) or genetic differences that cause those people not to need x for development.

Anyway, I doubt seafood eaters will have any great surge of fitness over non-seafood eaters. Many types of seafood are easily contaminated with industrial pollutants commonly found in our oceans--ingestion of seafood can concentrate those pollutants in higher food chain consumers. High concentrations of certain pollutants has a positive correlation with reproductive problems and low rates of offspring survival. And I don't see the end of industrial pollutants or their clean-up coming anytime soon.

--tibac

livius drusus

My mom got Hepatitis from eating mussels.

Baidarka

Do I have to use smiley faces every time I stick my tongue in my cheek?