Posted on 02/11/2019 6:51:30 AM PST by Openurmind
YALE UNIVERSITY—Long before human ancestors began hunting large mammals for meat, a fatty diet provided them with the nutrition to develop bigger brains, posits a new paper* in Current Anthropology.
The paper argues that our early ancestors acquired a taste for fat by eating marrow scavenged from the skeletal remains of large animals that had been killed and eaten by other predators. The argument challenges the widely held view among anthropologists that eating meat was the critical factor in setting the stage for the evolution of humans.
Our ancestors likely began acquiring a taste for fat 4 million years ago, which explains why we crave it today,” says Jessica Thompson, the paper’s lead author and an anthropologist at Yale University. “The reservoirs of fat in the long bones of carcasses were a huge calorie package on a calorie-poor landscape. That could have been what gave an ancestral population the advantage it needed to set off the chain of human evolution.”
https://popular-archaeology.com/article/a-taste-for-fat-may-have-made-us-human-says-study/
I would rather defer to those varied sources. Thanks.
Lots of uses for the wheel, if you have any agriculture. Agriculture in most of North and South America was not well developed. They had very few domestic animals, unlike Eurasia, or even Africa.
You don't need to be greedy to use wheels. You just don't want your children to die of starvation in the winter.
Americans before the European came (and for quite a while after) lived very brutal and short lives.
A taste for fat may have made us human, says study
They smile.
Not sure if all women realize this but a happy smile makes almost any woman beautiful. They don't need all those cosmetics and face-lifts, etc.
There is historical truth in what you say here. They did not have beasts of burden so the need for the wheel just wasn’t there because there was no practical tool to pull it. They did have very wide spread cultivation in South America but even if they had beasts of burden bigger than the llama the terrain would not have allowed it because to build the infrastructure would have burned more calories than they could have consumed.
While they did build roads (more like trails) over this terrain it was only practical because of the climbing abilities and agility of the camelids. They still do not build roads over most of this terrain because it’s not practical. Something to always remember is that early survival was a very fine balance of calorie profit or loss. Some impractical concepts just were not worth the extra expenditure of calories so there was just no need for it.
A reality I would like to point out is that most Europeans lived brutal and short lives before they came here too. :) .
Actually there is a difference between fat calories and carbs. Carbs are what make folks fat. :)
Yes. Almost everyone did. But the Europeans had higher population densities, larger cities, and much more technology than in the new world. Mostly because of higher agricultural output.
I would say Christianity was a large improvement over the Aztec gods as well.
Probably because of the agriculture, there was an aversion to cannibalism in Europe, that seems absent in much of Africa, North and South America, Australia, and a fair amount of Asia as well.
You can make a good case that for 300 years, the first Americans lived in a golden age of abundant and stupid big game, with few diseases.
The population density was so low they only had to walk a couple of weeks to get into new, virgin hunting grounds.
For a thousand years there likely was little war, or disease. Only hunting, raising families, and exploring.
After a thousand years, they had filled up the continents, and went back to the usual existence of constant war, famine, and hardship.
And that population scenario fits for sure. Something I always wondered about the cannibal issue though, I have often wondered if there was much more than we think in the old world during some of the hard famines but we just don’t talk about it.
I suspect you are correct. But a taboo had developed against it. Cannibalism in time of starvation is a bit different.
It still happens today, in extreme situations, and is accepted as necessary.
Humans get hungry and morals go out the door. They are going to eat anything before it eats them. lol
This is still funny, but of course, to the PC crowd, it's irreparably racist:
My Cousin Vinny: Grits
Yep - had another senior moment and got it bass akwards....thanks for reminding me my mind is going haywire.....creep...
Just kidding - happy FReeping.
Sorry the facts couldn’t help you with that. lol
The libs will find out just how much humans like fat if they try to force us to become vegans because of their globull warming religion.
Give thanks to the lard!
:-))
Back about thirty years ago some anthropologist wrote a book on the theory that what gave the human brain a ‘bump” in the evolutionary process was that some lower order (chimps/) started eating the brains of their kind as they cannibalized them. I don’t remember the name of the author or book, but it caused something of a small blip on the evolutionary theory radar at the time.
Or we can join Georgio with the theory that it was alien extraterrestrials.
Chimps and other primates still practice cannibalism and hunt for meat quite often, the vegans are mistaken, Capuchin and macaque monkeys even eat shellfish. So honestly I don’t know what exactly changed back when that made man different.
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