27
Is Pitching a Genetically Acquired Skill
By gambling with its males, a primitive society learns. It is led by
the men who win--those who seem best adapted to the challenges of
the moment.  These leaders spread their ideas and their ways of doing
things--their memes.  The not-so-primitive Alexander the Great
planted the exalted philosophies of Greece from Persia and Egypt to
Afghanistan by slaughtering vast hordes of enemy males on the field of
battle.  Alexander's massacres are fact.  Here's another example from
the world of speculation.
Humans are built to eat meat.  The craving for it is wired deeply
into our system.  There is one hormone--cholecystokinin--designed to
carry a message from the full stomach to the brain, quieting the
appetite. The digestive system refuses to send that hormone on its way
until fats and proteins move from the stomach into the intestines.  In
other words, your body withholds this hormone to keep you hungry
until you've swallowed some meat.40  What's more, as anthropologist
and food expert E.N. Anderson puts it, "We need unusually large
amounts of protein and cannot synthesize as many of the amino acids
as some mammals can."41
If men are like chimps, we started off as herbivores miserable
about our vegetarian diet. Clumsy male chimpanzees who lumber
around on all fours occasionally run across a crippled rabbit or a
wounded baby gazelle.  Do they try to pet and comfort the suffering
beast?  No.  They smash it with a rock and drag the carcass home for a
feast.  When the butchers get back to the troop, the entire crew of
chimpanzee women and children gather in a frenzy, hankering for
some small morsel of the meat.  Mothers, babies, and even the unlucky
males who weren't in on the kill turn into sniveling sycophants.  They
crawl toward the hunters, holding out their hands pathetically,
begging for all they're worth.  The haughty benefactors at first clutch
the corpse close to their breasts.  Then they turn magnanimous.  To
each of those who have humbled themselves, they dole out some small
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