Posted on 12/12/2010 7:50:16 AM PST by SunkenCiv
The sight of meat, such as a juicy roasted turkey on the Thanksgiving table, may promote caveman behavioral traits, according to new research recently presented at a McGill University undergraduate science symposium.
The study adds to the growing body of research on priming and aggression, which holds that looking at an object possibly learned to be associated with aggression, such as a gun, can make someone more likely to behave a certain way.
"I theorized that meat would elicit an aggressive response because it would be beneficial to our ancestor's adaptation in that it would place our ancestors in a state optimal for hunting and co-opting meat resources, where aggression would be necessary," project leader Frank Kachanoff told Discovery News.
"Fruits and vegetables would probably not require as much aggressive force to be acquired," added Kachanoff, a McGill Department of Psychology researcher...
The researchers predicted that when pictures of meat were sorted, as opposed to geometric shapes, participants would inflict more discomfort on the reader. Just the opposite happened, however. The meat images actually resulted in less punishment.
"It would make sense that our ancestors would be calm, as they would be surrounded by friends and family at meal time," Kachanoff said.
"It would have been favorable to our ancestors' fitness, if they would become less aggressive after hunting was completed, when he or she was around relatives sharing food," he further explained. "This would decrease the chance of one harming a relative with whom much of their DNA is shared."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
(emphasis added)
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These studies are so bogus.
Turkey is tasty.
So, if we inherited these “behaviors” from the Cave Man, where did the Cave Man inherit them from...Geico?
Taste for flesh troubled NeanderthalsThe extinction of the Neanderthals could have been caused by their choosy appetites - they ate virtually nothing but meat... "They were picky eaters," says Dr Paul Pettitt, at the University of Oxford, UK. "And this tells me that they are really unchanging - doing the same old thing year after year... Neanderthals were excellent hunters," Dr Petitt told BBC News Online. "But the issue that was at stake was whether they hunted every day of their lives or whether it was just a summer outing." ...The early humans themselves may have been better hunters than the Neanderthals, depriving them of their kills. Or the hunted animals may have been struck by disease or migrated away.
by Dr Damian Carrington
BBC News Online
Monday, 12 June, 2000What the Hominid AteAnalyzing carbon atoms locked up in tooth enamel, two researchers challenge the widely held belief that Australopithecus africanus -- an upright, walking pre-human hominid that lived in southern Africa -- ate little more than fruits and leaves. Matt Sponheimer, an anthropology graduate student at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Julia Lee-Thorp of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, looked at four A. africanus fossil skeletons unearthed from South Africa. Living about 3 million years ago, A. africanus may be a direct ancestor of modern humans. A. africanus teeth were large and blunt with thick enamel, ideal for crushing nuts and chewing fruit as opposed to the sharp incisors one would want to rip into meat. The first stone tools, which would help in eating meat, didn't appear until about half a million years later. Sponheimer and Lee-Thorp took a new approach, looking at the chemical composition of the tooth enamel. After chipping about two milligrams of enamel with a diamond-tipped dental drill, the researchers analyzed the samples for the isotope carbon-13, which contains one extra neutron in the nucleus compared to the usual form of carbon. What Sponheimer and Lee-Thorp found was that the teeth of A. africanus had an in-between amount carbon-13 -- more than the fruit eaters, less than the grass eaters.
by Kenneth Chang
At least they admitted that their theory on the food promoting aggression was wrong.
Lots of things elicit aggressive behaviors in people that have nothing to do with meat or even food. A few examples: fast cars, heavy metal music, power tools, competitive games, and merchandise on sale! LOL.
The study is incomplete. They tested pictures of real objects against geometric shapes, and all of the real pictures were of a certain type of food.
Repeat with pictures of people, in-race and out-race, then fruits and vegetables, then, oh, say, power tools. Oh and raw meat, too.
As it is described here the study is seriously flawed and does not merit publication.
I come from a HUGE Southern family. At gatherings, there is always more aggression at the desert table than the dinner table. Go figure.
“As it is described here the study is seriously flawed and does not merit publication.”
A study needs to be done to determine why money is spent on worthless studies.
YumYum Eat 'em up.
Our tax dollars at work funding another didactic research project. sarcasm/off
Captain Obvious has been writing grant proposals again...
Besides, how do they know that aggressive behaviours were not required to maintain access to fruits and vegetables (which according to anthropologists grew wild in the 'cave man' days before agriculture).
Most conflict occurs over (natural) resources in human history.
Yum!
“such as a juicy roasted turkey”??????
not a chance when my mother-in-law is cooking!
Well, well. Couldn’t give up on their a priori conclusion despite finding the opposite, so they ran with a headline and lead paragraph that just attributes “caveman behavior” to the sight of meat.
No mention that this behavior is actually calm, oh no, it’s buried halfway down. Got to invoke the stereotype they initially sought to reinforce. Men ... cavemen, clubs and violence, dragging wimmyn around by the hair, don’t you know.
Tsk tsk tsk, those unevolved men. Tofu for them! Phytoestrogens! A more equitable society is just around the corner, yes indeedy.
Political scientists flog their pseudoscientific propaganda, the bureaucrats and apparatchiks determine a need to *do* something because of it, and the dumbed down masses nod sagely or just nod off, never having bothered to read much past the headline.
It’s the story of the past four decades.
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