According to Leslie Aiello as quoted in the scholarly journal, Current Anthropology, "man’s brain size was curtailed until meat entered his diet because as a species you can’t have a big brain and big guts." According to Aiello, "providing energy for both would have kept you so busy you wouldn’t have time for reproductive behavior." And I hope you know what that means. That’s right... there would be absolutely no need to be nice to members of the opposite sex. (Just kidding, dear).

According to some scientists, man didn’t start getting smart until almost two million years ago when he gave up the veggies and started eating varmints. Up until that time fossil records indicate that man, then known as Homo erectus, ate mostly vegetable matter. Tons of it. And in the process he used up lots of energy which meant Homo erectus didn’t have any spare time for productive endeavors such as team roping, Thursday night poker games and all-male trail rides. A mostly vegetarian diet also requires a large digestive system. (Think of the cow and the elephant).

When man started eating meat, which was easier to digest than trees, it required less energy, his belly grew smaller and the surplus energy fed his brain which started growing significantly. (This should give hope to recovering vegetarians.)

Of course, this is all theoretical. But if you doubt the hypothesis just take a look at apes, daytime TV hosts or members of PETA. I think you’ll find that the bigger the gut the smaller the brain. I believe the scientists may be on to something. Leslie Aiello estimates that if man still ate only vegetables his brain would weigh 10 ounces instead of three pounds, or less in the case of politicians, bunjee jumpers and wrestling fans.

This just in: Men, next time your wife calls you a "Neanderthal" for doing something stupid consider it a compliment. According to another English study Neanderthals were actually quite smart. They got that way by eating meat. The results from a bone analysis from a 28,000 year old Neanderthal man suggest their diet was made up of 90% meat. Much like a modern day cowboy. I don’t really understand how the scientists arrived at this conclusion but to become smart enough to figure it out I bet they had to eat lots of hamburgers!

Until now the scientific community considered Neanderthal man to be dimmer than a dead light bulb. He was thought to be simple and stupid. But this new information is changing public opinion. If they were so stupid how did they kill and cook huge mammoth, woolly rhinos and other large animals without the aid of guns and barbecue grills? According to Erik Trinkaus, a St. Louis anthropologist, "This study implies a much higher degree of social organization complexity than is frequently attributed to Neanderthals. They were much more equal to modern humans in many ways." (I’m not so sure the Neanderthals would consider that a compliment.)