Thank you for including so many ideas and book suggestions.

Suggesting that 'the big cats don't have big brains like the primates, therefore, why should we want a raw carnivore diet' is fallacious reasoning.  It is a false analogy.  It completely skirts the issue that we have evolved along a much different path than the big cats.  The big cats have big claws, big teeth and great mobility, thus, they can get their raw meat through speed and brute force.  Primates that eventually evolved to our species don't have those highly-developed, built-in tools.  We are also bipedal, the cats are not.  We have opposable thumbs, the cats do not.  We have had to exploit our environment to a much larger extent to have access to meat and bone marrow, probably first by opportunity, and later by ingenuity, as a result of the denser nutrition that carnivorous foods provided. 

We could look to the ocean animals to see how ridiculous this kind of comparison is.  Sharks and orcas eat a raw fish diet, yet the whale has much greater cognitive functioning.  So, you can't draw conclusions about their intelligence based solely on their diet.

(As an aside, I might also add that sometimes the sheer size of a brain factors into cognitive ability, along with % of body mass that the brain occupies).
"It is brain size that makes the difference, and the sperm whale brain is the largest brain to have ever evolved on the planet. It is about 9,000 cubic centimeters and weighs 7.8 kilos or 17 lbs 3 oz. The orca brain is about 5 kilos.

By comparison the human brain is 1300 grams and is about 1300 cubic centimeters.
All mammals from mice to men have three lobes to the brain whereas cetaceans have a fourth lobe. The convulsions on the neo-cortex area of the brain are more pronounced on cetacean brains than on humans.

So overall, the brain of a sperm whale and orca are larger, and more complex than human brains."
http://www.seashepherd.org/whales/whales_intelligent.html

Cooking and Cognition: How Humans Got So Smart

The human brain went through two enormous evolutionary changes -- one in size,
followed by an even more important one in cognitive ability. Your brain consumes huge
amounts of calories and exhibits incredible prowess. In fact, your brain's roaring
metabolism, possibly stimulated by early man's invention of cooking, may be the main
factor behind our most critical cognitive leap, new research suggests.

Possibly about 2 million years ago, the human brain rapidly increased its mass until it was
double the size of other primate brains. Some believe this is because humans started to
eat better food. But then, about 150,000 years ago, a different type of spurt happened --
those big brains suddenly got smart. Humans started innovating, invented many new
tools, and started creating art and perhaps religion.

Research suggests that increased access to calories spurred these cognitive advances. The
extra calories may have come from the first hearths. Cooking, by breaking down fibers and
making nutrients more readily available, is a way of processing food outside the body.
Eating cooked meals would have lessened the energy needs of the human digestion
system, thereby freeing up calories for the brain.

Sources:
Live Science August 11, 2008
Genome Biology August 5 2008; 9(:R124

******

Dr. Mercola's Comments:
To understand what caused the cognitive spurt that took place some 150,000 years ago,
these researchers examined chemical brain processes that were known to have been
altered in that time, and by comparing apes and humans, they found the most robust
differences were for processes involved in energy metabolism.

They believe that it was an increased access to calories – not necessarily from more food,
but from the advent of cooking hearths -- that spurred mankind's cognitive advances,
although they admit it may be premature to make definitive claims of this.

That is probably a good thing, because I couldn't disagree more with some of these
researchers' assessments and dietary comments.

It's true that your gut requires significant energy to digest and extract nutrients from your
food sources, but cooking your food does more than just break down fibers to make
nutrients more available. On the contrary, many nutrients are altered or destroyed in the
cooking process.

Researcher Philipp Khaitovich of the Partner Institute for Computational Biology states that
"eating (mostly) cooked meals would have lessened the energy needs of our digestion
systems, thereby freeing up calories for our brains." Well, maybe -- maybe not. At this
point I'm thinking that's a fairly large leap, considering the overwhelming evidence that
raw diets are far healthier and more nutritious than cooking most or all your foods.

Which is why I was especially dismayed when I saw the author finish off this article with an
admonition to avoid raw food, and Khaitovich's comment that, "devoted followers end up
with very severe health problems."

Raw Foods are Essential for Good Health

Unfortunately, nearly every article written on raw foods in the media makes the SERIOUS
mistake of excluding meat and animal protein from the raw food diet. There are abundant
and plentiful examples from the animal kingdom that show us the importance of raw
animal foods.

And it's true, if you restrict your foods to raw plant foods only, as is mistakenly advocated
by many, you will likely see a radical decline in your health.

more:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/09/06/cooking-and-cognition-how-humans-got-so-smart.aspx?source=nl

Edit by Satya:
© Copyright 2008 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved. This content may be copied in full, with copyright, contact, creation and information intact, without specific permission, when used only in a not-for-profit format. If possible, I would also appreciate an endorsement and encouragement to subscribe to the newsletter. If any other use is desired, permission in writing from Dr. Mercola is required. Manufactured from 100% recycled electrons.

Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website [linked and partially reproduced above] are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked. The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Mercola and his community. Dr. Mercola encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional.

Re Nicola's article:- This is absurd. First, the anti-rawists promote Wrangham's ideas that cooking was started between 1.8 to 2.3 million years ago, and then, when these ideas are totally refuted due to lack of evidence, they come up with a figure of 150,000 years, instead. From what I've read, hearths came into being c.250,000 to 3000,000 yers ago, NOT 150,000 years ago, so any spurt in intelligence could NOT have been due to cooked-foods. Indeed, some anthropologists  have claimed that the nearest spurt in civilisation/evolution was only 60,000 years ago when we invented traps, and subsequently bow and arrows.

*It's amusing how the anti-raw crows are so desperate that they will invent new , much more recent, dates so as to back up their absurd arguments. When one looks at the evidence for 1.8 to 2.3 million years ago, a far more likely explanation for bigger brains emerges, namely consumption of raw meats/organ-meats.