Angela
Elite member
- Messages
- 21,823
- Reaction score
- 12,329
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Italian
See:
https://www.sapiens.org/evolution/brain-evolution-fat/
"[FONT="]Percussion marks suggested someone may have accessed the marrow; cut marks hinted that flesh was stripped from bone. To her surprise, the specimens were [/FONT]3.4 million years old[FONT="], putting the butcher’s behaviors back 800,000 years earlier than conventional estimates would suggest."
"[/FONT][FONT="]I[/FONT][FONT="]n a [/FONT]wide-ranging review[FONT="] published in February’s issue of [/FONT][FONT="]Current Anthropology[/FONT][FONT="], Thompson joins a team of researchers to weave together several strands of recent evidence and propose a new theory about the transition to large animal consumption by our ancestors. The prevailing view, supported by a confluence of fossil evidence from sites in Ethiopia, is that the emergence of flaked tool use and meat consumption led to the cerebral expansion that kickstarted human evolution more than 2 million years ago. Thompson and her colleagues disagree: Rather than using sharpened stones to hunt and scrape meat from animals, they suggest, earlier hominins may have first bashed bones to harvest fatty nutrients from marrow and brains."
[/FONT][FONT="]Because large animals such as antelope pack a serious micro-and-macro-nutrient punch, scientists have thought their meat contributed to humanity’s outsized brains. A consensus arose in the 1950s that our ancestors first hunted small animals before moving on to larger beasts around 2.6 million years ago. Flaked tool use and meat eating became defining characteristics of the [FONT="]Homo[/FONT] genus.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It’s a very appealing story,” says Thompson. “Right around that time there appeared to be the first stone tools and butchery marks. You have the origins of our [FONT="]Homo[/FONT] genus. A lot of people like to associate that with what it means to be human.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Then, starting in the mid-1980s, an opposing theory arose in which [FONT="]Homo[/FONT]’s emergence wasn’t so tightly coupled with the origins of hunting and predatory dominance. Rather, early hominins first accessed brain-feeding nutrients through scavenging large animal carcasses. The debate has rolled on through the decades, with evidence for the scavenging theory gradually building."
Honestly, I don't see how it matters to the big picture. Food from animals, from even before blade making, was important to brain growth. They sought more of it, hence the weapons.
[/FONT]
https://www.sapiens.org/evolution/brain-evolution-fat/
"[FONT="]Percussion marks suggested someone may have accessed the marrow; cut marks hinted that flesh was stripped from bone. To her surprise, the specimens were [/FONT]3.4 million years old[FONT="], putting the butcher’s behaviors back 800,000 years earlier than conventional estimates would suggest."
"[/FONT][FONT="]I[/FONT][FONT="]n a [/FONT]wide-ranging review[FONT="] published in February’s issue of [/FONT][FONT="]Current Anthropology[/FONT][FONT="], Thompson joins a team of researchers to weave together several strands of recent evidence and propose a new theory about the transition to large animal consumption by our ancestors. The prevailing view, supported by a confluence of fossil evidence from sites in Ethiopia, is that the emergence of flaked tool use and meat consumption led to the cerebral expansion that kickstarted human evolution more than 2 million years ago. Thompson and her colleagues disagree: Rather than using sharpened stones to hunt and scrape meat from animals, they suggest, earlier hominins may have first bashed bones to harvest fatty nutrients from marrow and brains."
[/FONT][FONT="]Because large animals such as antelope pack a serious micro-and-macro-nutrient punch, scientists have thought their meat contributed to humanity’s outsized brains. A consensus arose in the 1950s that our ancestors first hunted small animals before moving on to larger beasts around 2.6 million years ago. Flaked tool use and meat eating became defining characteristics of the [FONT="]Homo[/FONT] genus.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It’s a very appealing story,” says Thompson. “Right around that time there appeared to be the first stone tools and butchery marks. You have the origins of our [FONT="]Homo[/FONT] genus. A lot of people like to associate that with what it means to be human.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Then, starting in the mid-1980s, an opposing theory arose in which [FONT="]Homo[/FONT]’s emergence wasn’t so tightly coupled with the origins of hunting and predatory dominance. Rather, early hominins first accessed brain-feeding nutrients through scavenging large animal carcasses. The debate has rolled on through the decades, with evidence for the scavenging theory gradually building."
Honestly, I don't see how it matters to the big picture. Food from animals, from even before blade making, was important to brain growth. They sought more of it, hence the weapons.
[/FONT]