180k-Year-Old Mutation Allowed Humans To Become Vegetarians, Move Out of Africa

An anonymous reader writes "Early humans were able to move from Africa after a single genetic mutation allowed them to become vegetarians, scientists claim. The switch, which allowed humans to process vegetables, meant that humans were able to move away from water sources and spread across the continent. A team of geneticists compared DNA sequences from a variety of people around the world to see how different populations relate to one another and when they have gone their separate ways. The scientists found that a key genetic variant gave humans the ability to convert fats from plants into essential nutrients for the brain."

Comments

I used to be a meat eater like you...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but then I got an arrow to my DNA...

Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't that be omnivores?

Re:Vegetarian?

[preaction]

We were already omnivores, this allowed us to not be required to eat certain foods (fish and shellfish), so we could survive away from the sources for those.

Re:Vegetarian?

[shutdown -p now]

No, humans were omnivores before, same as other primates. Omnivore means having a diet of both meat and plants, both in large quantities. It doesn't mean that you can survive on either just meat or just plants alone. Indeed, most omnivores require a mix of meat and plants for the diet to be healthy.

So far as I can see, this mutation is not truly vegetarian, either - it lets us reduce meat consumption in favor of plants, but not replace it entirely.

Re:Vegetarian?

[kenp2002]

Sshhh! We're trying to push lifestyles and agendas here people, thinking is not allowed.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

It permitted them to become vegetarians or omnivores (to be even more pedantic). If no meat were available then with this mutation they could in fact survive entirely on vegetables, as stated in the title of the article.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually let us replace meat completely. Take it from a vegan developer.

Re:Vegetarian?

[WhitePanther5000]

So far as I can see, this mutation is not truly vegetarian, either - it lets us reduce meat consumption in favor of plants, but not replace it entirely.

It is quite possible to be healthy today as a vegetarian or as an omnivore - it just requires a bit of planning either way. So I don't understand the "but not replace it entirely" portion of your statement.

Re:Vegetarian?

[shutdown -p now]

It's quite possible if you use various dietary supplements to ensure that you have all the necessary nutrients. It's much harder to be a vegetarian if all you can consume are naturally growing products that you can harvest when living a hunter/gatherer lifestyle (i.e. the way humans did for most of their history). So far as I know, ovo-lacto vegetarians can manage a healthy diet, but even that is not really compatible with living entirely in the wild.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Ol Olsoc]

It actually let us replace meat completely. Take it from a vegan developer.

So disregarding the silly "permission to consume" argument, this must mean that human babies can live on vegetables only? Since mothers milk is an animal product.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Ol Olsoc]

It is quite possible to be healthy today as a vegetarian or as an omnivore - it just requires a bit of planning either way. So I don't understand the "but not replace it entirely" portion of your statement.

It's a good thing that mutation happened then, because earlier humans probably didn't plan at all.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

but not replace it entirely.

About a billion vegetarians might disagree with you on that one.

Re:Vegetarian?

[WhitePanther5000]

Point taken, thanks for elaborating. I follow a pescetarian diet (cholesterol issues), so I was just curious.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the greatest bullshit I have ever heard but maybe that's because I didn't spend my childhood hooked on Ritalin.

Re:Vegetarian?

[nloop]

That's what people say, however I know several very long term vegans and they seem quite a bit healthier than your average red meat loving American.

disclaimer: I love hamburgers.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are incorrect. You can source all nutrients for a vegan diet without resorting to artificial supplements.

B-12 is the biggie for vegans (it is the only hard to naturally source nutrient in a vegan diet). But, it can be had from natural sources. Tempeh is a good source, mushrooms are also a good source, so are unwashed fresh fruits and veggies from your own garden.

No supplements are needed, but for the majority of folks, things like nutritional yeast grown on a B-12 rich substrate and B-12 from a bottle are easier sources to deal with. Nutritional yeast is so popular in vegan cooking that it is unlikely any main-stream vegan would suffer a b-12 deficiency-- but, it is as you say, not a natural source.

Most meat sources of B-12 are actually sourced from feces-- the slain animal consumed feces to get the B-12 (probably same source for the unwashed fruits and veggies, but these would just be bug poop).

Your tempeh incubating, mushroom growing, organic gardening, vegan friend :)

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shutdown, your not quite right. The only additional vitamin vegans need to supplement, beyond what all people should supplement in modern society, is B12. B12 is produced by microorganisms, and in modern society where we chlorinate our drinking water and heat treat many foods, this vitamin must be supplemented.

In addition to B12, ALL people living far from the equator or not getting much sun exposure should supplement vitamin D, because the sun rays are not strong enough to produce the activated form of the vitamin.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually yes, babies can grew up on soy formula and be just fine. I only know because my daughter preferred soy formula, so I did some research on it. She still steals my soy milk any chance she gets. I am not vegetarian, but I eat very little meat and watch my diet.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Seem" is the operative word. There are a number of health problems that veganism can cause that aren't visible. I have a family member who is severely bi-polar and just learned that a lack of certain meat proteins can make the condition much worse. It explains my anecdotal hypothesis that vegan chicks are crazy.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Olsoc, are you actually confused about this? I have never met a vegan who considered human breast milk consumption by a baby to not be vegan. If you do, then you should add an exemption to your definition to match the rest of the world; otherwise, you will continue to be confused.

Breast milk is widely considered the healthiest food for a baby, and it does not violate any of the commonly referenced reasons for choosing a vegan diet such as ethics, environment, and health.

Re:Vegetarian?

[lister king of smeg]

My mother is allergic to most meat and my Dad grew up vegetarian but eats meat now so I grew up eating a mix of meat and veggie substitutes. As for vegetarians not getting enough nutrients they can get them from any number of meat substitutes such as TVP or Textured Vegetable Protein. Manny meat eaters think veggie meat is disgusting but once you get used to the fact that the fake meats don't really taste like the meats they are supposed to imitate and just treat them like a entirely different type of meat they can be pretty good too. My personal favorite is an off brand vegetarian curry abalone that goes great with a little rice and mushroom soup curry gravy.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans require B12 which can only be obtained from animals.
However most grain products contain enough insect parts to meet the need.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably because your average red meat loving American has crap nutrition. Just because you're healthier than a person with bad nutrition because you eat better than they do doesn't mean that you're eating as good as you could be.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

So if we don't have this gene, can we be excused by the moral type vegans for loving meat?

Re:Vegetarian?

[geekoid]

then they are probably eating very carefully, and supplementing. They probably aren't healthier then some eating a balanced diet of reasonable calories.

Re:Vegetarian?

[geekoid]

Children raised vegan have serious issues. You need to be extremely knowledgeable in child physiology, and recognize there aren't small adults. There dietary needs are different. Its not like you ca add one thing to the vegetarian diet and 'fix' it. Parents who do now do scientific research on this issue screw up their kids, and even kill them.

Re:Vegetarian?

[WillKemp]

That's not true. There are a few non animal sources if B12. I was vegan for 14 years and i didn't just seem healthy, i was healthy - healthier than i would have been if i was a lacto vego.

Re:Vegetarian?

[shutdown -p now]

Thing is, I was not talking about the modern society, but rather humans as animals in their "natural" state - i.e. if it's something that you can eat that require fields, irrigation etc to grow, it's not something that was available to our ancestors until around 13k years ago or so. I don't see how you can obtain all the necessary nutrients living in the wild without eating meat or fish.

Re:Vegetarian?

[WillKemp]

The fact that there are millions of severely bipolar meat eaters kinda undermines your theory, i'm afraid.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that you are making extraordinary statements without extraordinary evidence means nobody is going to be swayed, i'm afraid.

Re:Vegetarian?

[WillKemp]

If you're vegan, i hope for your sake that you don't take supplements - because they throw out your body's natural balance and probably make you less healthy. It's totally possible to get all your nutrient needs from a vegsn diet - and to be healthier than your average meat eater - but you have to be on the ball.

I was vegan for 14 years and i was healthy. I've got quite a few long term vegan friends who are also healthy. None of us take or took supplements.

Re:Vegetarian?

[gox]

Humans require B12 which can only be obtained from animals.

That's not entirely true. Animals don't produce B12, it is produced by single celled organisms that are omnipresent in nature. Animals consume it while eating vegetables because they don't wash them. We do, and that's why we can't get enough of it through an ordinary vegan diet. If we lived in nature, we would. So the supplement a vegan needs to get is something that is previously removed from the food source.

Re:Vegetarian?

[shutdown -p now]

Did you check that you're healthy with a doctor? Or is it self-diagnosis, and/or some homeopath telling you?

I've seen quite a few vegans claiming that they're "perfectly healthy" and "feeling so light as never before". Which when you look at how skinny and frail they were was not surprising. But they were certainly not healthy, even going by looks alone.

Re:Vegetarian?

[WillKemp]

Yeah, i agree. I know from experience that a vegan diet can damage young children. They definitely need animal products to develop normally.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a healthy strict vegetarian is possible for adults given modern technology. Being a carnivore is far easier, one just has to eat organ meat. The problem with vegetarianism is getting enough nutrients, while the problem with being a carnivore is overdosing (e.g. Vitamin A and bear liver, or calories/fat and heart disease). We're made of meat after all.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Rosyna]

I have a family member who is severely bi-polar and just learned that a lack of certain meat proteins can make the condition much worse.

Lack of B12 would make the condition much worse. B12 is pretty much only found in sufficient amounts in meat. Either you need supplements of B12 or you need to eat meat. I prefer both (I LOVE meat but don't eat often enough and regularly fall into a massive deficiency).

Re:Vegetarian?

[HiThere]

Interesting. I believe that there are also some plant sources of B12. I'm not sure, however, that I believe the advertisements I used to read saying that orange juice was a good source of B12.

I haven't investigated it closely, because it isn't important to me, but I believe that kale, and perhaps mustard greens, are decent sources of B12...if properly prepared. (The B vitamins are water soluble, so if you boil it or steam it, you need to drink the liquid.)

Still, I've always thought that a proper amino acid balance was the real problem with a vegan diet. Not that you can't do it, but it's tricky.

Re:Vegetarian?

[erice]

That's what people say, however I know several very long term vegans and they seem quite a bit healthier than your average red meat loving American.

disclaimer: I love hamburgers.

The average red meat loving American doesn't understand good nutrition and certainly doesn't practice it.

That sort of sloppy eating practice doesn't work on a vegan diet. Just to survive, one *has* to very careful about what one eats. It is that care and attention about their body that makes them healthy. They would be even healthier if they applied to the same attention to an omnivorous diet.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Geoffrey.landis]

If you're a vegan, I hope for your own sake that you take various (artificially produced) supplements - there's no way to obtain all the necessary nutrients from a purely vegan diet if it's purely natural.

I'm no vegetarian, but nevertheless, I do have to inform you that there are large segments of the world that are vegetarian, including (for example) about 6 million Jains. You may think that you need meat to survive, but no, actually, people can survive without meat. Sorry.

Re:Vegetarian?

[shutdown -p now]

Vegetarian != vegan.

Re:Vegetarian?

[RebelWithoutAClue]

The problem is that people have large stores of b12, so the deficiency doesn't generally show up for a long time.

Re:Vegetarian?

[ChrisMaple]

That "a lack of certain meat proteins can make the condition much worse" does not mean that the lack of certain meat proteins is the ONLY thing that can make the condition worse.

Re:Vegetarian?

[russotto]

Its not like you ca add one thing to the vegetarian diet and 'fix' it.

Actually, you can. Meat.

Re:Vegetarian?

[ChrisMaple]

I've read that the vegetable forms of B12 are not identical to the animal (or synthetic) forms, and are either less effective or totally ineffective in humans.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Swave An deBwoner]

B12 is produced by microorganisms, and apparently that's where most animals get their B12 from -- e.g., eating soil.

Cyanocobalamin is the usual B12 supplemental form and can be obtained in tablet form over the counter or from supplemented foods.

Nutritional yeast is usually supplemented with B12, though the amount varies. Looking at a few labels: KAL Yeast Flakes lists "150% Daily Value" in 3 rounded tablespoons; Red Star Yeast VSF (flakes) lists 8 micrograms or "133% Daily Value" in 2 heaping tablespoons; and impressively, Twinlab SuperRich Yeast Plus lists 25 micrograms or "416%" in 2 tablespoons.

Many people find that nutritional yeasts taste good. I sprinkle yeast flakes on popcorn and mix yeast into soup or over pasta both for the nutritional boost and because it's a source of umami flavor:

http://www.thekitchn.com/umami-for-vegans-136507

Brits and Aussies have Marmite and its clones:

http://www.marmite.com/love/nutrition/vitamin-b12.html

Re:Vegetarian?

[WillKemp]

Doctors are best avoided, in my opinion. You don't stay healthy long if you start taking the pills they love to dish out. I don't need a doctor to tell me whether i'm healthy or not. It's my body and, unlike a lot of people, it seems, i'm well enough in touch with what's going on with it to know how healthy i am.

None of the vegans i know are skinny! And some of them do quite physically demanding jobs. One's a rigger, for example, and a dive trainer. I did building work quite a bit of the time when i was vegan - i had to drink a litre of soya milk a day to get enough protein.

Re:Vegetarian?

[WillKemp]

That's not a problem, that's a good thing! But nobody has 14 years worth of B12 stored!

Re:Vegetarian?

[WillKemp]

I was responding to your "anecdotal hypothesis that vegan chicks are crazy"!

Re:Vegetarian?

[RebelWithoutAClue]

So... why did you stop being a vegan?

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like the ovo part is easily doable in the wild....

Re:Vegetarian?

[WillKemp]

About ten years ago, i stopped eating wheat and other similar grains, because they didn't really agree with me. After a while of that, i started getting the urge to eat fish. At that stage in my life i couldn't really think of a good reason not to, so i did. I never started eating dairy or eggs again - and i still don't touch them. And i didn't start eating other meat until several years later, when i went to work in Afghanistan. I also started eating bread again while i was there (and drinking alcohol, after a year off it - but that's another story!).

The years off wheat etc were definitely beneficial and starting eating it again didn't seem to do any harm. And i'm certain that the years of being vegan were good for my health long term too. I'd quite like to go back to being vegan, but i couldn't be bothered with the hassle nowadays - and i've developed a taste for meat too1 ;-)

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can be a true vegetarian, but it isn't easy. Vegans are often susceptible to lack of certain dietary factors. A lacto-vegetarian (add dairy products such as milk and cheese to the diet) is another thing entirely. I and my wife are lacto-vegetarians. We really don't need vitamin supplements, are in our mid-60's and good health - we rarely get sick, and then only for a day or so. We do use vitamin supplements occasionally when we are under a lot of job stress, since that burns a lot of the body's resources more than normally. I notice that when my cuticles start getting ragged. I'll then take a multi-vitamin supplement for a few days just to get back into equilibrium. I could do that with diet also, but it's a lot simpler to take a couple vitamin pills with my breakfast coffee... :-)

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a lacto-vegetarian, I agree. However, I like to tell friends that I'm the sort of vegetarian that if I were lost in the woods for more than a couple of days, then the first rabbit that hops by is going into the stew pot! :-)

Re:Vegetarian?

[shutdown -p now]

Yeah, I've noted that ovo-lacto vegetarianism is feasible in some of the follow-up comments.

Thing is, both dietary supplements and steady supply of milk and related products, are something that's not available to us in our "natural" state - i.e. as hunter-gatherer primates. You need well-developed agriculture to get access to a great many important plant foods, as well as milk and everything derived from it. Ultimately, I'm sure that we could come up with a way to sustain a man by injecting the necessary components directly into the bloodstream (and maybe we already can, I don't know) - but that doesn't really make us "chemivorous".

Kudos for doing it right, by the way. I'm a fanatical meat-lover myself, but I respect vegetarians who know what they're doing and don't promote the unhealthy way of doing this. Like that other guy who replied to me saying that he's a vegan, and that he feels perfectly healthy without any stinking supplements. When I asked him if he checked with a doctor, he said that he doesn't trust doctors - go figure. His body to abuse as he sees fit, of course; it's when people spread that attitude around hooking others up, and especially when they have kids whom they force to eat in the same unhealthy way, that they increase misery. Unfortunately, they also tend to be much more vocal than those vegetarians who do it by the (scientific) books and know their stuff well and understand what they really need and how to get there, so many people hear from the weirdos first.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plants cannot produce B12, only bacteria and archea can. If raw plants are pulled from the ground and not washed or skinned, the surfaces can harbor B12 in the form of bacteria that live in the soil. Some legumes host nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the rhizomes of their roots that also synthesize B12.

Re:Vegetarian?

[shutdown -p now]

I'm the sort of vegetarian that if I were lost in the woods for more than a couple of days, then the first rabbit that hops by is going into the stew pot!

Heh. Rabbits are not as healthy as you'd think, though. Too little fat, and you wouldn't have many carbs to power you in the wild, either (no grains, no potatoes, and wild berries won't offer much sugar...). You can literally starve to death on a diet of rabbit meat, even in copious amounts - like this guy.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dairy products (say 1/4 lb of cheese or a pint of milk would be enough) and eggs contain quite a bit, though cooking eggs decreases the ability of the B12 to bind.

Re:Vegetarian?

[dutchwhizzman]

You are comparing people that are very conscious and strict about their diet that happen to have one (debated unhealthy) habit to the average of a very unhealthy nation of people.

If you were to compare honestly, you would take a large sample of vegans of all ages, gender, income group and compare those to people equally concious about what they eat but meat eaters. Factor in the same distribution of age, gender, income group, since vegans tend to be either religious (Buddhist monks for instance) or not poor and living in western countries.

I think you will find that the vegans will not be healthier in general. They may be healthier on specific diseases related to eating meat and unhealthier on factors related to missing essential nutrients that are common in animal produced food but are hard to get in your diet if you are vegan. From what I understand from dietary scientists I happen to know, is that the diseases typically linked to eating meat will probably be a lot more rare than (developmental) diseases from not eating meat in the entire group of tested people. This probably is never truly researched in a way that I propose here, so maybe someone not related to vegan or meat food industries will be willing to sponsor adequate research? Maybe they will find new diseases, or causes for diseases or symptoms not yet discovered.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

2 things in a vegan diet contain b12, mushrooms and bananas.

More important than actually supplying B12 is the secretion of 'intrinsic factor' which is what allows the body to absorb B12 from the diet. Also intestinal floraproduce B12. Learn something beyond the traditional anti-vegetarian/vegan propoganda and you might actually learn something worth knowing. Many 'facts' about vegetarianism come from outdated literature like the idiotic idea that one needs to combine 'complementary proteins' from Frances Moore Lappe and her book 'Diet for a small planet' .

99% of what people believe about vegetarianism is complete hogwash. Being from NZ, being a vegetarian is no mean feat, but in my case it was necessary to prevent chronic gut ache on the standard NZ diet of meat and spuds. I have refused for some time to shovel meat and dairy down my gullet like it's going out of production because frankly, it made me ill. I know a few vociferous meatatarians who don't realise the harm chronic overindulgence in meat can lead to.

I have been a vege for nearly 30 years, how about you?

Re:Vegetarian?

[rs79]

That's not what it says. It just says some people had a higher level of efficiency converting certain fatty acids to EPA ad DHA.

And they're saying this enabled man to live inland away from marine sources.

There's a debate in evolutionary biology, did the source of the w-3 lipids come from marine sources or brains and marrow?

If it's the latter the paper doesn't matter. If it's the former this doesn't imply anything about vegearianism.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

None of which are allowed in a VEGAN diet.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, to sum it up... Your body told you that it could no longer handle the diet you were on - "they didn't really agree with me" - which could quite possibly be because your body was failing in various way due to the a badly balanced diet.

After cutting that part out of your diet your body then tells you that it needs an animal product - "i started getting the urge to eat fish" - which could quite possibly be because your body was still failing in various ways and since you've now reduced your spectrum of intake even more it became acute enough to trigger such cravings.

Your body then was more okay with itself again, and after having recovered the probably drastically depleted stores of B12 and whatever else it might have been, you suddenly "started eating bread again". Which could quite possibly be because your body was telling you "Hey numbskull, now that we've repaired the damage your dietary choices made, we can start eating grains again so we get back to being a fully functioning human being."

And from all of this you make the conclusion that the years of being vegan and so on were clearly beneficial to you. I'd like to just point out that this is far from clear if you look at what you've said objectively and actually measure things against all possible causes rather than your pre-defined assumptions. There is a strong bias in people that a choice they've stuck with HAS to be good, or else they surely wouldn't have chosen it and stuck with it... but that's far from always the case. The benefits you got is just as likely to have been caused by a change of certain parts of the diet, not the exclusion of other things, or a change of lifestyle, or a change of location, or just growing older, or any number of other causes. Meanwhile the process you describe is objectively quite common in vegans and vegetarians... Which hints quite strongly at the fact that it isn't in fact a very natural way of living at all, and not particularly good for you.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Carewolf]

That's not a problem, that's a good thing! But nobody has 14 years worth of B12 stored!

No, but we do have B12, it just not in storage. That is why vegans ends up so thin and crazy, to get necessary nutrients, the body starts to break down muscle and brain tissue.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're vegan, i hope for your sake that you don't take supplements - because they throw out your body's natural balance and probably make you less healthy.

Could you please cite some scientific evidence that supplements "throw out your body's natural balance?"

I've got quite a few long term vegan friends who are also healthy. None of us take or took supplements.

If we're going on the basis of anecdotes, I'll note that I had a friend who was a long-term vegan who took no supplements. He developed B12-deficiency anemia. It was easily remedied with B12 supplements.

Re:Vegetarian?

[harley78]

Sucks to bbq at your house, lol!

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

With things like Rabbit; the plan would be to not just eat the meat, but to eat many of the other squishy bits too - organs and brain.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're probably eating enough bug meat to get by.

Re:Vegetarian?

[flyingsquid]

I call bullshit on this article. So first off, there's nothing to suggest that hominids needed some kind of special adaptation to be able to move out of Africa, after all, they had already done it hundreds of thousands of years before. Homo erectus was the first hominid out of Africa; it's present in Eurasia almost two million years ago, and H. erectus eventually gets as far east as India, China and Indonesia. The Neanderthal-Denisovan lineage then moved out of Africa roughly half a million years ago, with Neanderthals inhabiting Europe and the Middle East, and the Denisovans ultimately going all the way to Siberia. So hominids were already highly adaptable animals, they didn't need some mutation to allow them to persist outside of Africa.

Second of all, the first wave out of Homo sapiens out of Africa actually seem to have taken the coastal route, not an inland route. The first people out of Africa are the australoids, who include the Australian aborigines, Japanese Ainu, probably the Sri Lankan Veddah, and possibly Kennewick Man in Washington. They move out around 70,000 years ago, and since they're today found on islands (Sri Lanka, Australia, Japan) or coastal areas (Washington) they seem to have been early seafarers (the Eurasians move out maybe 30,000 years later, likely taking an overland route). So that doesn't really fit with their idea that the move out of Africa is associated with eating plants and cutting ties with marine resources.

Third, the whole argument is based on the idea that, up to this point, humans are "obligatorily tethered to marine sources". What's the evidence for this? They make some vague claim that early humans in Africa lived "at the margins of lakes, rivers, or seashores in central and eastern Africa." But they don't provide any evidence or argument to explain why humans couldn't have existed anywhere else. Okay, so you get early human remains near lakes, rivers, and oceans... well, for one thing, humans need water, so they camp near lakes, streams, and rivers. Second, fossils get preserved when they are buried in sedimentary rocks. Sedimentary rocks primarily form in lakes, rivers, and oceans. So virtually all fossils are deposited in water. That's just paleontology 101. It's hardly surprising to find early humans in association with water, and you can't from that evidence conclude that humans needed fish to survive.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't if you, you know, read what he said, or have an understanding of logic.

Re:Vegetarian?

[lister king of smeg]

Seriously though bbqing i will throw on a steak/chicken breast/hamburger and a veggie dog, works out fine. I would probably eat more veggie meat than i already do if it were closer in price to real meat.

Re:Vegetarian?

[jellomizer]

The average meat loving American eats too much meat and not enough veggies.
However for people who have a balanced diet are actually healthier then vegans.

The vegans I have met seem worn out and aged a bit more. (This can also be due to the fact a lot of vegans seem to care on what they eat, but not what they inhale though too)

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans are omnivores. And we need essential amino acids from animal proteins that plants don't have.

Re:Vegetarian?

[jedidiah]

Considering that Westerners and Americans in particular have very strange ideas about what constitutes a healthy look, that kind of observation doesn't really mean anything.

Humans simply don't have the enzymes to live like cows. No amount of romanticizing an extreme lifestile will change that.

Re:Vegetarian?

[jedidiah]

Most of those would probably be happy to eat meat and other animal products given a chance. A lot of this "virtuous" eating is just a way to manage poverty.

Re:Vegetarian?

[wvmarle]

Many punk band members I've met over the years were vegan (i.e.: no animal products). You could pick them out: skinny, pale skin. Not healthy. Vegetarians however (no meat, but eating dairy and eggs no problem) are generally pretty healthy.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Human milk is vegan, since vegans (usually) aim to end animal cruelty and the mother (usually) gives the milk without suffering.

More Info:
http://www.vegansociety.com/lifestyle/parenting/vegan-babies-and-children/breastfeeding.aspx

Re:Vegetarian?

[RockDoctor]

"Bullshit" may be a bit harsh. If you look through the list of authors, there's not one associated with a palaeontology, geology or (palaeo-) anthropology institution.

While I'm all for interdisciplinary work, I think this team left a significant type of input out of their work, viz : the palaeontological context. And, as you say, it shows in the results.

Re:Vegetarian?

[ceoyoyo]

If you're eating dairy products or eggs, you're not a vegan (look back to where the thread started). In regards to this story, you're also not a vegetarian in the proper sense - you're dependent upon animal products.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually no, many kids are vegan and the only possible side-effect is that the physical development is slower, more time to reach puberty. like, you know, before someone invented bovine growth hormone ...

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, Brits and Kiwis have Marmite, Ozzies have Vegemite (which used to be called Parwill in a lame joke on Marmite).

Re:Vegetarian?

[ultranova]

Humans simply don't have the enzymes to live like cows. No amount of romanticizing an extreme lifestile will change that.

If "living like a cow" is an actual lifestyle, then humans obviously have all the necessary enzymes to do so. Otherwise it would run out of practitioners pretty soon through natural selection.

Also, cows eat grass; the matter under debate is if humans can survive on vegetables/mushrooms/seeds/root vegetables/grain/whatever, which is quite a different matter. Since vegans presumably exist, and survive for years and decades on said diet, the answer seems to be "yes".

Whether strict vegan diet is healthy is a different matter. Whether it's healthier than the average Western diet is yet another.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am amazed... WE EXTINGUISHED the original water based species we fed on. Should be obvious, becoming a successful predator and intelligent manipulator without a central control... even now with this civilization we are extinguishing species because of population increases. But this did not **allow**, we were selected to have an advantage by assimilating sources away from water bodies once forced away from water bodies. Cant argue with those guys, right? :) Mutation may be a strong word, may be more accurate to speak of reactivation. But it seems the researchers do not have a clear model of how populations grow; relating genes from current populations does not mean there was no past point where a single family remained, all other branches perished: precisely the one having the selected advantage... after helping extinguish all other cousin families and populations. Like a synchronization point in systems, researchers may have found a point where we became (just slightly) more intelligent. But beware that 180K ago is when this supposedly happened, not the time it took for it to happen after the last relevant mutation... djb

Re:Vegetarian?

[gox]

That is why vegans ends up so thin and crazy, to get necessary nutrients, the body starts to break down muscle and brain tissue.

I'm sort of skeptical about this claim since I haven't seen anything supporting it in my life or in literature. I don't know why it would even happen. I don't know which nutrient you can't get plenty of through a vegan diet. Do you know? I know vegans that are fitter, stronger and smarter than me. I know vegans that are less smart than me too (they are still fitter). Though I know a lot of people who aren't vegan that aren't very bright, so it's hard do measure the difference.

People who accept fringe norms are more likely to be or appear to be "crazy". This is to be expected. I think the causality is the inverse of what you think. :-)

Re:Vegetarian?

[OneAhead]

Call it what you will, but I do agree with GP that there are some pretty huge goals in the claimed palaeontological implications of their discovery. What I read is: "at some point in time, a mutation happened that increased humanity's adaptability to different diets. This must have been a valuable trait because it got retained." All the rest is pure conjecture, more colloquially known as bullshit. To reiterate GP, I find it particularly worrisome how they ignore the generally accepted hypothesis that humans originally were primates adapted to life on the plains. Where did they ever get the idea that humans used to primarily live on shores? Also, last time I checked, Europe seems to have plenty of shores. In fact, I'm almost sure that western Europe has a higher fractal dimension than most of Africa.

Re:Vegetarian?

[OneAhead]

holes, dammit, not goals

Re:Vegetarian?

[DirtyLiar]

That is why vegans ends up so thin and crazy, to get necessary nutrients, the body starts to break down muscle and brain tissue.

Yeah, my uncle gave into his wife and turned vegan like 15 years ago. He started looking all thin, and frail, and had a grey complexion. Didn't look healthy at all to me. That lasted about 10 years, and I'm glad to say I helped get him him back on the food that can bite back, and off a diet made up entirely foods that can't even run away, let alone fight back.

He looks much healthier now.

Re:Vegetarian?

[DirtyLiar]

About ten years ago, i stopped eating wheat and other similar grains... I never started eating dairy or eggs again

Them's odd eggs you've got there... Can you sprout them?

Re:Vegetarian?

[rmdingler]

Dragon SRS let you down?

Re:Vegetarian?

[RockDoctor]

Where did they ever get the idea that humans used to primarily live on shores?

That has the smell to me of adherents of the "Aquatic Ape Hypothesis," which is marginal "popular science," with very little support in the palaeontological community. The hypothesis is moderately well thought-out, but has little material evidence in it's support, which is why it isn't considered important (or anything approaching "true") by any significant part of the palaeontological community. However, it still gets a lot of publicity outside the community because it's a nice, simple "just so" story. It's difficult to attack directly though, because it isn't insanely wrong, it's just lacking evidence, and the intermediate position - that humans have had a lot of enduring associations with coastal and littoral environments, which could have had a modest effect on shaping human evolution - is perfectly feasible. (You'll note that some of the earliest-branching anatomically modern humans to leave Africa made it to the islands of East Asia and Australia ; in itself that suggests that early humans were at least familiar with and comfortable with littoral environments.

All the rest is pure conjecture, more colloquially known as bullshit.

In my lexicon, "bullshit" carries an implication of deliberate falsehood, which I don't think is present here. If your "bullshit" is diluted compared to that ... well, are your bulls confused over their gender?

Re:Vegetarian?

[iMadeGhostzilla]

I just saw this image ad on the site (somehow made it through AdBlock): "Lose inches AND pounds with no hunger or exercise. Lose 5 lbs/week on average and look great! See how... " which makes me think you may be right, about the quality of the article and the site (named "medicaldaily.com") overall. People who chose to advertise there probably did it for a reason.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ozzies have Vegemite"

We have a couple of other options too:

Ozemite, a yeast extract (similar to Vegemite) from Dick Smith (not personally!), and
Promite, a vegetable extract

I have been a life-long enjoyer of Vegemite and Promite, but only tried Ozemite for the first time on the weekend. The flavour is somewhere between Vegemite and Promite. It isn't as sharp and salty as Vegemite but has more bite and flavour than Promite.

I might just stick to the Ozemite for a while I think. Tasted very nice on toast as part of a Sunday morning breakfast.

Onya Dick!

Re:Vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that means no mammal has really been a vegetarian. They nearly all drink mothers milk.

Re:Vegetarian?

[Carewolf]

I'm sort of skeptical about this claim since I haven't seen anything supporting it in my life or in literature. I don't know why it would even happen. I don't know which nutrient you can't get plenty of through a vegan diet.

You CAN get it. It is just not automatic by just making the choice to become vegan without knowing anything more. If know several vegans, and they are all quite fit, but they also essentially nutrition experts. We were talking about malnutrition, and this is just the form it mostly presents in vegans. But like all non-vegans are not obese, not all vegans are malnourished.

Re:Vegetarian?

[gox]

Okay, agreed.

Re:I knew it

[Anonymous Coward]

More like MUTANTS!

I knew it

[Anonymous Coward]

So vegetarians are mutants and humans are originally meat-eaters?

is it a mutation?

[Sebastopol]

I'm always sensitive to any claims of "mutation X gave humans power Y" because mutations are so rarely beneficial, the majority of evolution comes from sexual inheritance and selection pressure.

So how do they know it was a mutation? Its not like suddenly humans got a hunkering for plants one day. It had to happen gradually, so this gene must have been kicking around for ages, and must have appeared in multiple tribes; one mutated birth isn't going to suddenly diffuse across an entire species.

Basically, I don't understand this article.

Any experts out there want to demystify this for me a little more? How one random gene in one birth suddenly afflicts an entire population?

Re:is it a mutation?

[SQLGuru]

Mutation just means a change. The first person with Attribute Z was the mutation. Breeding happened. The trait was inherited. More breeding happened. etc. If the mutation was beneficial or preferential, it spread faster. If it was detrimental, it spread slower or disappeared.

Skin color, hair color, eye color ---- all mutations from whatever was original (probably dark for all three).

Re:is it a mutation?

[snadrus]

One mutated birth who gets to eat vastly better than the rest of the tribe (as-in not dumb skin & bones) equals likely diffusion. Breeding with the strong, smart (brain nutrients from article), well-fed-looking one becomes very likely.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Sarten-X]

We'll go in order...

mutations are so rarely beneficial

The vast majority of the mutations that are widespread through the population are either benign or beneficial. The ones that aren't don't stick around in the gene pool long enough to become widespread. It's the other half of the selection pressure you mentioned: The selection pressure culls bad mutations out quickly, so the good (or at least ineffective ones) are all that's left. This is definitely a case of history being written by the victors: The bad mutations don't usually stick around long enough to be noticed (in long-term history).

So how do they know it was a mutation?

Because some folks have it, and other folks don't. From the geographic distribution of where the haves and have-nots are, combined with the prevailing theories about human movements, the researchers can estimate what genetic group first got the change.

one mutated birth isn't going to suddenly diffuse across an entire species.

It doesn't happen suddenly. That one mutation spreads through one family, who suddenly has the ability to survive without eating fish (substituting vegetables, instead). Over the next thousand years or so, that family (and the associated mutation) spread across the local region, and the knowledge of "it's okay to eat vegetables" spread with it. Since that group could wander further (carrying longer-lasting vegetables rather than fish), they spread farther than other groups, until they eventually became dominant.

How one random gene in one birth suddenly afflicts an entire population?

Just to be clear, it doesn't. The one random change will be in one family line, and only really become widespread if it allows the family to outgrow the rest of the population, or if the the rest of the population dies off.

Re:is it a mutation?

[SecurityTheatre]

Basically, I don't understand this article.

The problem isn't the article. It's your limited understanding of evolution and genetics. :-)

According to modern evolutionary theory, mutations create ALL change. Most mutations don't do something favourable, or really actually probably don't do anything at all, but some of them are favourable and those individuals go onto spread that gene more effectively than their peers until many many generations later, this gene has spread throughout the species (or the region, or the tribe, etc).

If a tribe of ancient humans gradually gained the ability to survive without meat, and a major event such as volcanic eruption or something killed off the local food staple, the tribe that could survive for years without meat might be the only survivors in the entire area. If the species is isolate to that area, they could plausibly be the only survivors of the species.

In this way it is actually possible for the entire species to gain a trait in just a few generations. Or, a mutation can gradually make its way into cultures in a more limited sense.

For example, genetic analysis suggests that ALL blue eyed individuals are descendants from a single individual with a unique mutation about 6-10,000 years ago. People with brown eyes have a huge variety of genes that affect pigmentation, whereas all individuals with blue eyes have a very specific sequence that controls it, which, along with mitochondrial DNA surveys, leads researchers to conclude the bit about a single individual.

Pretty cool, eh?

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really quite a ridiculous narrative when you actually factor in how the human family tree has so radically contracted and spread and then recontracted with time. You pretty much have to ignore everything we know about tribal humans to make it work right, but there you have it! If we ignore all observation, we can actually subscribe to such a red herring!

Re:is it a mutation?

[kasperd]

I think the question to ask is which came first, the meat-eaters or the plant-eaters? And how many times have meat-eaters evolved into plant-eaters, and vice versa? Maybe humans have ancestors even further back which were also plant-eaters? Could it be that most of the DNA required was already there and just needed a small mutation to become useful again? (There is some discussion as to how much of the DNA is really historical parts that could become active again, and how much is actually responsible for who what we are today.)

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

But today, the lower educated usually have more children than the higher educated, and have them at a lower age.
So the genes for smartness and the social factors for good wealth will slowly be overwhelmed by dumb and incapble masses.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course today this process no longer is effective.
When a mutation causes something that is less favourable, e.g. reduced fertility, it originally would have meant that individual had less offspring and the mutation would die off.
But today the individual gets treatment, the fertility problem is circumvented by artificial methods, and the mutation will continue into offspring.

Also, smarter people "cleverly plan their lives" and have few children at a late age, while dumber people become pregnant as teens and have lots of children.
This favours the propagation of genes that result in less clever people.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Sarten-X]

What's so ridiculous about it? It's important to note that many factors in human population changes are not genetic - the genes just come along for the ride. Natural disasters, politics, and climate force people to mingle and move, and the good (or at least not-too-bad) genes get passed on every time a male gets close enough to a female.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not like suddenly humans got a hunkering for plants one day.

This gene didn't make them eat plants, they already ate nuts and berries and whatever. This gene let people who had it live on nuts and berries and whatever when the hunters came home empty-handed.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they really so smart if they allowed themselves to be overwhelmed?

Re:is it a mutation?

[circletimessquare]

"one mutated birth isn't going to suddenly diffuse across an entire species."

you're right:

1. what happens is those without the mutation die or have less children or no children, or are confined to one small environmental niche
2. while those with the mutation live longer or have more children or move over a wider range taking advantage of a wider range of food

and you're wrong:

1. it could start with one single mutation in one individual
2. it does diffuse across an entire species: that's what sex is for
3. it does happen suddenly, on the time scale of geological time

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

light skin, brown hair and brown eyes is probably the "most original". Animals don't need dark skin if they are covered with hair. The skin became darker when the hair growth thinned out.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

mutations are so rarely beneficial, the majority of evolution comes from sexual inheritance and selection pressure

If mutation weren't in there as a factor as well, we'd all still be single-celled organisms swimming around in the primordial soup. Or we wouldn't be here at all--one of the many mass extinction events in Earth's history would have wiped out whatever life existed, because there'd be no biodiversity to speak of, no variety of forms to survive and adapt to the new environment. For all we know, this did happen several times in the planet's history before the current tree of life took root.

Re:is it a mutation?

[sjames]

Perhaps we're seeing the evolution of social equality. The old guard (who may well NOT be smarter, just better positioned by their parents) does all it can to expand the divide and then gets out-bread and finally eliminated. If they were REALLY smart, they'd be all about reducing the divide between rich and poor so the poor wouldn't out-breed them so quickly.

Re:is it a mutation?

[postbigbang]

The ostensible mutation might have helped humans digest plant proteins... but stomach flora has a lot to do with uptake. Until more is known about the relationship between the two, I'll listen to the premise and wonder aloud how gut flora combined with the mutation to provide a systematic result.

Until then, I think it's clever spaghetti against the wall.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

According to modern evolutionary theory, mutations create ALL change.

Caveat: this is only true if you define "mutation" very broadly. Usually, when biologists say "mutation," it means a change in the DNA sequence, but we're learning more and more about heritable non-sequence changes (this usually goes under the name "epigenetics") which can also affect phenotype, and thus have an evolutionary impact. It's still true as far as we know that most heritable changes are sequence changes, but by no means all.

At some point we're going to have to adapt our vocabulary to deal with this, perhaps by returning to the old meaning of "gene" as "a unit of inheritance" and expanding the meanings of "mutation," "expression," and related terms accordingly. It hasn't happened yet, because the accepted meanings have served us well for 50+ years, and technical jargon is often, quite reasonably, very resistant to change.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Old Wolf]

If not everybody picked up the mutation then how can we all survive on veges alone today?

Re:is it a mutation?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

This one story about one mutation may be right or wrong. but in general thats how mutations spread across populations. If you don't want to believe in evolution because it contradicts your faith or something thats fine, but don't waste our time trying to tell us we're doing science wrong.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Also, smarter people "cleverly plan their lives" and have few children at a late age, while dumber people become pregnant as teens and have lots of children. This favours the propagation of genes that result in less clever people.

Don't be so depressive.

Smart people with strong reproductive impulse may find a way to reproduce earlier, while dumber people may have a hard time at gathering enough resources to "build a nest". Also, essentially, if mankind would become dumber through the ages we would never have an accelerating civilization... it's almost as if kids are bound to be smarter than their parents...

(This is unrelated to any individual or organization, being just my own manner of see things -- someone who had children at a quite advanced age, btw).

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

As you say, mutations are rarely beneficial, but not never. Selection pressure tends to reduce genetic diversity. For the evolution process to remain functional this needs to be balanced by something that tends to increase genetic diversity. Mutations do that. Beneficial mutations happen often enough to keep evolution going. I imagine our DNA and the replication mechanisms themselves are the result of an evolution process that yielded the optimal mutation rate to balance selection pressure.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing intelligence isn't liked to Genetics then.

Re:is it a mutation?

[readin]

one mutated birth isn't going to suddenly diffuse across an entire species.

It doesn't happen suddenly. That one mutation spreads through one family, who suddenly has the ability to survive without eating fish (substituting vegetables, instead). Over the next thousand years or so, that family (and the associated mutation) spread across the local region, and the knowledge of "it's okay to eat vegetables" spread with it. Since that group could wander further (carrying longer-lasting vegetables rather than fish), they spread farther than other groups, until they eventually became dominant.

How one random gene in one birth suddenly afflicts an entire population?

Just to be clear, it doesn't. The one random change will be in one family line, and only really become widespread if it allows the family to outgrow the rest of the population, or if the the rest of the population dies off.

Actually it does spread across the whole species and it doesn't rely on all other families dying out. That's one of the benefits of no longer using asexual reproduction. The one tribe doesn't have to become the only tribe, it just has to have some members leave and introduce the beneficial genes to other tribes who in turn have members leave and bring the genes to still more tribes.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Beeftopia]

Scenario: Group of humans moves away from an area rich in devourable animals. They turn mostly to plants. Many come sickly and die. Except for a few who remain strong and healthy due to the mutation. They breed more than the sickly ones. Soon, the trait has passed to most of the population.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they have a treatable problem then it clearly isn't that important to fitness, is it?

Unless a civilization-collapsing event occurs and takes away the ability to compensate. Which is exactly what happened in the volcano scenario the GP offerred -- there were people who could live without meat and people who couldn't, and it didn't matter. Until it did. And then everybody could live without meat.

The inverse correlation isn't directly between intelligence and breeding. It's about a standard of living that exceeds a certain point and breeding, and it tapers pretty sharply. In the US, there's a large rich-poor divide, and a cultural sense that the poor are also stupid. To some extent being poor in childhood makes you stupid, but that part isn't genetic. To some extent being stupid might make you poor, and that part is. Countries with a much narrower rich-poor divide, and especially ones which also don't culturally associate stupidity with poverty to the same degree, don't all see the same stupid-people-having-more-children pattern.

One of the surest ways to fix that issue is socialist policies, even if you don't think the poor people "deserve" anything. Of course, it's not really a problem unless you are invested in the whole human race being smarter (rather than smart populations becoming smarter), and are convinced that the "being stupid makes you poor" effect overshadows the "being poor makes you stupid" effect.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

âoeThe number of people on whose cooperative efforts your eventual existence depends has risen to approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is several thousand times the total number of people who have ever lived.â
  Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

Humans are pretty incestuous, and nearly homogeneous genetically. Sorry if you didn't get the message. Also, "red herring" doesn't mean what you think it means.

Re:is it a mutation?

[mevets]

By eating the vegans, I presume.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

By supplementing man made chemicals. Adults do better than kids though because they do not have rapid brain development occuring anymore.

Re:is it a mutation?

[lister king of smeg]

even in xenophobic tribal societies genes cross between populations. one tribe go to war with another and steal the other women mixing their genes. the strong members of the winning tribe would get the best looking stolen mateof the losing mixing the best genes of their populations.

Re:is it a mutation?

[lister king of smeg]

it may be we just don't know how.

Re:is it a mutation?

[lister king of smeg]

that is why smart people invented sperm/egg banks they can have their genes spread across a potentially huge population. if you really want to spread your genes make multiple donation as many sperm banks as possible across as large a geographical area as possible.

Re:is it a mutation?

[geekoid]

"According to modern evolutionary theory, mutations create ALL change"
false.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

except in eukaryotes which have never achieved a large enough population size for purifying selection to drive evolution.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, smarter people "cleverly plan their lives" and have few children at a late age, while dumber people become pregnant as teens and have lots of children.
This favours the propagation of genes that result in less clever people.

You're not the first to notice this.

Re:is it a mutation?

[HiThere]

No. The ancestral species ate both meat and plants. Meat was generally preferred, because it was more dense in calories, was more complete in proteins, etc., but both were eaten by everyone. (N.B.: A lot of the "meat" was insects.)

Because the ancestral species was adapted to this diet, things that could be relied upon to be present ceased to be maintained by evolution. Thus we lost, e.g., the ability to make our own vitamin C, and certain amino acids that we depended upon, but which we could rely upon being in the diet.

Fast forwards, and this mutation happens, which regains (probably by a different path, but I haven't checked) the ability to manufacture certain amino acids. This meant that we were no longer dependent on finding them in our diet. Which meant that those without that requirement could move into areas where the foods containing those amino acids weren't available. It doesn't mean they had to move, but it means they could do so and survive. (It also doesn't say anything about dietary preference. I'd wager they continued to prefer meat.)

You can tell about when any particular mutation occurred by using neutral drift, i.e., a large number of mutations don't have any genetic meaning (well, an *extremely* SMALL meaning). And these happen at a nearly constant rate. So by counting the frequencies of the variant forms of the meaningful genes, you can tell about how long ago that meaningful gene changed. Naturally, this is more significant for longer chunks, as you get about one bit per three codes. (That's not quite right, but I'd need to look up the precise figure.)

Do note, however, that this is only an estimate. Mutation of this nature is a random process, so you can't get a precise answer.

Re:is it a mutation?

[jd]

Non-sequence changes in the epigenome are protein changes in a structure (of sorts) and can arguably still be called mutations. They're typically caused by a response to (non-protein) chemicals in the environment, which essentially act as epigenomic mutagens. Yes, I know, that's not the most common way to phrase it, but the understanding of epigenomics is sufficiently poor that I can probably use such phrasing on Slashdot, and certainly it's close enough in analogy that I could use it in a conversation with someone who actually worked in the field and be understood. Disagreed with, perhaps, or beaten over the head with a baseball bat, but understood nonetheless.

Re:is it a mutation?

[jd]

(1) is often referred to as a "founder event", particularly by people like Ken Nordtvedt, who studies human migrations through genetics as a hobby.

(3) There are an estimated 200 mutations in the Y chromosome alone every generation, be they extra copies/deletions of something (known as a short tandem repeat) or a change in a single nucleotide (known as a single nucleotide polymorphism). Most of this is in "junk" DNA (now known to be control sequences and metadata - a prediction many had made for two or three decades at least, and I've been making on Slashdot for 10+ years) but it's also found in coding sequences. Most genealogy (eg: by Family Tree DNA) is done with the "junk" DNA, most prior health work (eg: by 23AndMe) has been done on the coding sequences but expect that to change to everything at some point. Studies on population migrations suggest one mutated birth (such as the ability to digest milk) can spread over most of the species in 6-7 thousand years, and markers associated with (and do not predate) the Vikings can be found in significant quantities in most inhabited continents after far less time than that. On geological timescales, this qualifies as the Newtonian concept of the infinitesimal.

Re:is it a mutation?

[jd]

Actually, it is. We've identified the specific genes for 14% of it and can say with very high confidence that 60-70% of your intelligence is genetic in nature. I'm going to go out on a limb and say 25-30% is epigenetic (basically environmental chemicals) and 15% tops is due to nurture outside of environmental chemicals, possibly going down to zero.

Re:is it a mutation?

[circletimessquare]

mod parent up

Re:is it a mutation?

[CptNerd]

I for one welcome our veganivorous overlords...

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

out-bread? wtf? whole-grain or white? ffs.

you're not one of the smart ones, your grammar shows the world you're a clod.

Re:is it a mutation?

[dryeo]

Feed a fetus lots of alcohol and you're going to get someone of low intelligence no matter what their genetic makeup is. Lots of other environmental factors like diet as well.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, genetic analysis suggests that ALL blue eyed individuals are descendants from a single individual with a unique mutation about 6-10,000 years ago. People with brown eyes have a huge variety of genes that affect pigmentation, whereas all individuals with blue eyes have a very specific sequence that controls it, which, along with mitochondrial DNA surveys, leads researchers to conclude the bit about a single individual.

Which under current creationist theories would have been Frank Sinatra

Re:is it a mutation?

[madsdyd]

Not so. The process still work. The effects of society (treatment, social services, etc) is simply now a part of the environment in which the natural selection takes place. There really is no difference.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Jerry Smith]

> Also, smarter people "cleverly plan their lives" and have few children at a late age, while dumber people become pregnant as teens and have lots of children. This favours the propagation of genes that result in less clever people.

Don't be so depressive.

Smart people with strong reproductive impulse may find a way to reproduce earlier, while dumber people may have a hard time at gathering enough resources to "build a nest". Also, essentially, if mankind would become dumber through the ages we would never have an accelerating civilization... it's almost as if kids are bound to be smarter than their parents...

(This is unrelated to any individual or organization, being just my own manner of see things -- someone who had children at a quite advanced age, btw).

Unless nests are supplied for by governments. And that is a good thing, in that children should not suffer because of the stupidity of the parents.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Kjella]

Studies on population migrations suggest one mutated birth (such as the ability to digest milk) can spread over most of the species in 6-7 thousand years, and markers associated with (and do not predate) the Vikings can be found in significant quantities in most inhabited continents after far less time than that.

Well the Vikings that lived so 1200 years ago went everywhere from Newfoundland in current Canada to Gibraltar to Baghdad, Iraq so they could cover four continents (Europe, North America, Africa, Asia) in the span of a generation, so what did you expect? Sure, most people never went far from their birthplace but there were exceptions and they were huge. Marco Polo for example traveled all the way from Italy all the way through Asia to the Pacific and back - it took him 24 years with an effective pace of 3 km/day. That's less than an hour's walk even at a leisurely pace, believe it or not that is walking distance. For sure there are many such people throughout history, probably not rich or famous and nobody told their tale but that crossed vast distances by simply setting out in one direction and not looking back.

Re:is it a mutation?

[Ironhandx]

Theres actually a very simple answer to that one:

Not all of us can. There are european, russian, and Canadian population centers that all can't survive on a vegetarian diet, and if they do try they will die young.

Easiest example is the Inuit in Canada's north. They can survive(and quite well) on an entirely meat and fish based diet but large quantities of vegetables getting added in leads to all sorts of things they're having problems with now. Failure in many of the major organs, improper brain development, fast onset diabetes, and many more.

Re:is it a mutation?

[ceoyoyo]

"I'm always sensitive to any claims of "mutation X gave humans power Y" because mutations are so rarely beneficial, the majority of evolution comes from sexual inheritance and selection pressure."

Where do you suppose the genes you get from sexual inheritance come from? Intelligent design?

ALL evolution comes from selection pressure. That's what determines which mutations, and combinations of genes created by sexual inheritance, survive.

One random gene in one birth doesn't suddenly affect a population. It spreads through a population because its possessors have an advantage (selection pressure) and have more babies who inherit the gene.

Re:is it a mutation?

[ceoyoyo]

Ridiculous? Population contraction speeds the spread of beneficial genes through the gene pool.

Re:is it a mutation?

[ceoyoyo]

"When a mutation causes something that is less favourable, e.g. reduced fertility, it originally would have meant that individual had less offspring and the mutation would die off."

Fertility treatment is expensive. The vast majority of people in the world can't afford it, and the ones who do get it almost always have fewer than the average number of children. If the fertility problem is genetic, it's very unlikely that inheritors of that gene will outcompete others over several generations.

"This favours the propagation of genes that result in less clever people."

Which is evolution, alive and well. Just because your own personal biases don't agree with objective fitness doesn't mean evolution isn't working.

Re:is it a mutation?

[DirtyLiar]

mutations are so rarely beneficial

The vast majority of the mutations that are widespread through the population are either benign or beneficial.

True, but he's got a point there. In genetics, as in everything, it's always easier to destroy than build. And a random change is much more likely to be detrimental than benign or advantageous.

So how do they know it was a mutation?

Because some folks have it, and other folks don't.

Actually, wasn't every change, at one point or another, a mutation?

one mutated birth isn't going to suddenly diffuse across an entire species.

It doesn't happen suddenly.

Not unless there is a sudden change in environment that massively favors carriers of a previously benign, or even disadvantageous, mutation. Say the sudden introduction of previously unknown predators (via a new ice-bridge, suddenly clear mountain passes, or migration forced by sudden drought) might mean the environment suddenly favors the carriers of a mutation that makes the prey smaller, so they can burrow underground away from the predators, or bigger and heavier, and more intimidating to the predators. It's not that the environment causes the proper mutations necessary to adapt to it. It's that the environment weeds out those mutations that are an active hindrance to the survival of their carriers. Carriers of currently benign mutations will be randomly killed or pass on their genes, with no regard to the mutation at all, until or unless it becomes an advantage or hindrance to the carriers.

The rise of a new species can be facilitated by an extinction event that leaves only a few of the species alive, maybe even those that weren't the normally most suited to competing with the rest of their species, but were spared death because they avoided most of their species because of their mutation, and simply weren't present at the fire / flood / eruption / whatever. In that eventuality their mutation[s], whatever it/they was/were, suddenly became an overwhelming advantage, literally THE factor pivotal in the survival of the species. Even if it is in every other situation an actual determent to their survival. If the surviving gene pool is small, and the survivors closely related, the resulting spike the mutations carried by their young could go far in towards the creation of a distinct species.

How one random gene in one birth suddenly afflicts an entire population?

Just to be clear, it doesn't.

Not normally, but again, if the only survivors (or just a large percentage of them) of some event are those that have the gene, it is at that point, and could be in the future, a large factor in population.

Re:is it a mutation?

[DirtyLiar]

Of course today this process no longer is effective.

You mean is no longer as effective. Dead is still dead.

For the moment anyway.

When a mutation causes something that is less favourable, e.g. reduced fertility, it originally would have meant that individual had less offspring and the mutation would die off. But today the individual gets treatment,

The vast majority of people living today do not have access to modern medicine, let alone fertility treatments. Even the poor in North America have access to better (or more expensive) medicine than the average person in the world, and THEY definitely don't have access to expensive and actually inefficient, fertility treatments.

Also, smarter people "cleverly plan their lives" and have few children at a late age, while dumber people become pregnant as teens and have lots of children. This favours the propagation of genes that result in less clever people.

Actually throughout most of history and in some parts of the world today, having large families at an early age is/was an advantage for the survival of the species. Basically so many of the children die[d] at a young age, and so many women died in childbirth, that it was better to have lots of children at a young age while the chance of complications were lower. And without effective treatments for disease and injury, the best plan was to play the numbers and overwhelm the odds with sheer population size.

Also, in those same environments, large and extended families were / are also a successful survival strategy for the parents. When the parents are no longer able to provide for and take care of themselves, having many adult children means that there are more resources and people available for your care and upkeep. In those environments the wealth of the aged can be measured by the number of their progeny.

It just so happens that we in the 1st world have created an artificial environment for ourselves that facilitates the attainment, storage, and accumulation of masses of wealth not previously possible. (A cow, a traditional and trans-cultural wealth repository, stored in a room out of site, will die, it's value lost to the saver. A big gold coin, or paper bill will not. Even better, when invested the portable / storeable / generic (if you only have a chicken, you can only buy from someone who wants a chicken) / liquid wealth called 'money' can actually gather to it'self even more wealth.) More effective medicine means an environment where most children survive to adulthood, makeing large families with lots of children a huge drain on their parents resources, not the "Money in the Bank", they used to be. Also, not so much anymore, but in our recent past, parents living in 1st world countries would eventually move in with one of their children and spouse. They would usually still have some savings, but even more importantly, because of the more easily attained wealth, one child would often be able to support his parents with little or no help from his siblings. Making any more children than one or two an unprofitable, and needlessly expensive, investment of the parents. But all this, in the sweep of human history, is recent and new activity.

As a side-note: As lives have even further lengthened, prices continued to rise, and medicine has advanced in effectiveness, ageing has become an expensive prospect that drains savings, empties nest-eggs, and bankrupts families. Making the practice of "moving in with the kids" far less attractive to those kids. In the past few decades that practice has been depreciated in favor of the even more artificial, impersonal, and cold-blooded "warehousing" of the elderly. `Clever` for the kids and their kids, without a doubt. But devastating for the parents. (Go volunteer at one if you don't believe me.)

And mistake on our society's part, I'm sure.

Vegetarianism :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Always knew vegetarianism is superior - now I have proof :D

Vegetarians?

[houghi]

Vegetarians. You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

Re:Vegetarians?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a proxy vegetarian via eating grass and corn fed cows!

Re:Vegetarians?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vegetarians. You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

A lot of people don't. The phrase "I'm a vegetarian I only eat [chicken/fish]". Makes me want to slap the stupid out of people.

Re:Vegetarians?

[aristotle-dude]

Vegetarians. You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

A lot of people don't. The phrase "I'm a vegetarian I only eat [chicken/fish]". Makes me want to slap the stupid out of people.

No, it is people like you living in the "first" world who think that vegetarians in the "third world" only eat fruits and vegetables. They don't eat red meat because it is too expensive but some do eat fish and poultry when it is available. In the third world, meat is expensive.

Re:Vegetarians?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vegetarians. You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

Re:Vegetarians?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a vegitarian, I don't eat any Bacteria, Protozoa, Chromista, Fungi or Animalia!

This is of course impossible.
So there is no Vegetarians.
QED

Re:Vegetarians?

[Tarlus]

Vegetarianism implies that a person has made an explicit choice not to eat meat. I would imagine that the majority of people in "third world" countries who cannot afford the luxury of meat would still eat it, if they could.

Re:Vegetarians?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Vegetarians in the "third world" eat fish and poultry when it is available, because the education system in the "third world" is too poor to teach them the definition of word vegetarian.

Re:Vegetarians?

[alexo]

Vegetarians. You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

murderers?

Re:Vegetarians?

[HiThere]

Corn fet cows are an abomination. Cows are meant to eat grass. Corn stalks are ok. But corn kernels in large amounts are not good for them either as individuals, or as menu items.

Re:Vegetarians?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's your take on 'vegetarian fed chickens'?

Re:Vegetarians?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corn fet cows are an abomination.

Tasty, tasty abomination.

Re:Vegetarians?

[zippthorne]

By that logic we're all Breatharians - people who've made the conscious choice to get all of their nutrition from the air they breath, and also from a limited selections of vegetables and animal products.

Re:Vegetarians?

[dryeo]

There are religions that ban eating animal flesh (actually I believe killing). Maybe not a majority but still a sizable number of people who have decided to be vegetarians. For most of these, milk is fine as no killing is involved.

Re:Vegetarians?

[HiThere]

If you can make a chicken be vetarian without cutting off it's beak, I'm quite aurprised. Chickens usually prefer insects even to corn. And if you don't use oyster shells, you'd better have another VERY good source of calcium.

That said, I just can't feel very sympathetic towards chickens. I know I ought to, because factory chickens are raised in truely horrible conditions, but having seen what chickens will do to each other, well... they aren't quite as bad as people, but only because they're stupider and don't have hands. And they are kind ONLY to their very young children and to their social superiors. (Roosters are protective, but I'd call it possessive rather than kind.)

Cattle, OTOH, are caring animals. They aren't quite as intelligent as a dog (most dogs and most cattle, I'll grant exceptions exist), but they are nearly as caring, and not quite as viscious. (A bull may chase you off, but that will usually be all he's after...unless you've really irritated him, which, admittedly, people often do.)
N.B.:: I'm talking about an ideal case. If a bull has been repeatedly irritated or injured by people, he is likely to become quite viscious towards ALL people, not just those who have previously injured him.

Please note that bulls feel possessive towards the cows in their herd. And people aren't in the habit of respecting this feeling, so bulls tend to be much more aggressive than they would otherwise be. Also sexual deprivation will cause ANY male mammal (and probably most chordate males..but some fish have some habits that make this dubious) to be more aggressive.

WARNING: I'm no expert in this area. This is just a non-expert opinion. I may have spent a couple of years on a dairy farm (non-commercial), but we had no bulls in residence.

Re:Vegetarians?

[HiThere]

Personally I prefer grass fed beef.

Re:Vegetarians?

[DirtyLiar]

I thought you said "Foxy Vegetarian". Now I'm dissapointed. :(

Re:Vegetarians?

[DirtyLiar]

vegetarians in the "third world"... don't eat red meat because it is too expensive...

Which means that they are not vegetarians.

...but some do eat fish and poultry when it is available.

Again, meaning they are not vegetarians.

Vegetarians reject the consumption of meat, for one reason or another. Either it's bad for you, or it's not natural, or it's morally abhorrent, or it's torture, or it's murder.

Vegetarianism is a choice and a philosophy, not an accident of birth, a measure of wealth, location, or citizenship.

People who eat meat, or would if they could, are, by definition, simply NOT vegetarians.

Digestion & tooth variation

[drkim]

I wonder what the time parallel is between this mutation in digestion, and the change in human teeth (the addition of 'grinding' teeth for plant products) that allowed for ingestion.

Re:Digestion & tooth variation

[HiThere]

The grinding teeth far predated this change. If anything they may have decreased in size, but that would be because of cooking and other pre-processing rather than a change in diet.

P.S.: I haven't checked the dates against when the teeth decreased in size, but the grinding teeth date back to before we split off from the gorillas. And probably considerably before that, depending on exactly which features you are looking at.

Re:Digestion & tooth variation

[DirtyLiar]

Cooking and other pre-processing WAS a change in diet.

One has to wonder...

[Daetrin]

We'll never know (barring the unlikely discovery of Pastwatch like technology) but i really wonder about what happened with the first person who had this mutation and actually made use of it. I mean, if they couldn't process vegetables before they never would have thought of them as a food source, would they? So what caused this one person (or group of people) to change their mind? Was there some kind drought or other disaster that prevented them from finding game to kill, but for some reason there was still vegetable material around and they were just desperate enough to eat anything by that point?

Re:One has to wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the human diet already included some vegetation, but this person (or people) carrying this mutation was able to extract more nutritional value from it, giving them a slight advantage over others who didn't carry the mutation.

Re:One has to wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

They could process vegetables just fine, the couldn't get essential fats from vegetables, the meat and fish in their diet was providing that.
What likely happened is some process where a significant number of some tribal group gained this mutation through breeding (taking many generations), and an event of some kind cut down back drastically on their normal food sources (animals), whether it was a natural boom/bust cycle of predator/prey populations, or something like a wildfire or drought that killed a lot of their normal food sources. People without the mutation were getting sick and dying, but people with the mutation were able to get enough of the essential fats from the vegetables in their diet that they survived. The fact that they could survive on less/no meat, meant that they could weather poor hunting years better than populations without the mutation, and the populations that could process the fats from vegetables were more fit to survive and gradually overtook the populations without the mutation.

Re:One has to wonder...

[snadrus]

I've got kids, I don't wonder. They put everything in their mouths. The 4-year-old's leather shoes are a favorite teething toy for my younger one. Heck in the 1800s people were chewing straw for fun. Things were probably going good, but for one kid, things were doing much better. It would make an interesting story though.

Re:One has to wonder...

[Alwin Henseler]

Duh... kids are expensive and time-consuming.

First person to get this gene, and his/her partner simply worked out that with 1/4th the land, they could feed their kids corn, soy & stuff, rather than feeding that to a cow and use the cow's meat to feed their kids.

1/4th the area means 1/2 the length/width, so they didn't have to walk so far, less effort to defend that smaller plot, and could spend more time each day doing nothing (yeah peeps were lazy even back then). Kindergarten math, you know. Oh wait...

Re:One has to wonder...

[1u3hr]

, if they couldn't process vegetables before they never would have thought of them as a food source,

RTFA. It isn't about switching form pure carnivore to pure herbivore. We never were carnivores. We've always been omnivorous. The mutation in question allow people to produce a specific fatty acid, DHA, we need for our brain's health, from vegetables. Previously we had to eat fish to get this. So people with this gene could stay healthy even if they didn't eat fish for a long time. So they could migrate and thus conquered the world.

More interesting than that...

[erroneus]

... being able to eat vegetables is not unusual for ANY monkey or ape. What is more if not most interesting is a genetic mutation which allows us to eat grains. Chimpanzees, for example, simply cannot process grains and as far as I have heard humans are the only primates which can.

Re:More interesting than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

what are you talking about? Monkeys eat the donuts I throw at them all the time and they do fine.

*donut: wheat powder fried in oil

Re:More interesting than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on! Apes can eat out of the oven white bread.

Re:More interesting than that...

[PPH]

That is probably closer to the truth than the 'humans as vegetarians' idea. Both humans and chimpanzees (who's lineage separated much farther back than 180K years) can process plant protein from fruits and nuts. Humans may have developed the ability to supplement their diets from grains, but they still require protein* (animal or plant sources of essential amino acids). So, wherever they went, they needed to encounter the same food stuffs that would sustain a non grain consuming primate. Just a different mix, giving the human genome the advantage.

*The actual vegetarian fad is probably a modern development. Once humans had developed communications and a culture necessary to hand down dietary information (even through religious tradition), they could wean themselves off of animal protein. Even today, the failure to adhere to strict protein replacement supplements renders many vegetarians malnourished**. And they smell funny too (probably due to a resulting amino acid imbalance) if they don't get it just right.

**I wonder if this isn't what killed Michael Duncan Clarke. He went vegetarian a few years back and he looks like he has lived most of his life highly dependent on protein intake. Gandhi (and those with similar physiques) may have been a successful vegetarian due to a life not eating meat and having a metabolism adjusted to it.

Re:More interesting than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, we owe our big brains to the energy starch gives us. Very few primates can digest starch while diferent human groups developed civilization the day they domesticaded a starchy plant (rice, corn, potatoes, wheat, etc.)

Re:More interesting than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a very useful comparison.
Monkies will try and eat anything fried in oil - soak paper in oil and they will eat it - they will get some caloric value from the oil, the rest is roughage. No nutritional value beyond dietary fiber, which is not in short supply in their normal diet.
Sprinkle sugar on it and they will grab it as quick as a fat chick on a doughnut.

Re:More interesting than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

That is probably closer to the truth than the 'humans as vegetarians' idea. Both humans and chimpanzees (who's lineage separated much farther back than 180K years) can process plant protein from fruits and nuts. Humans may have developed the ability to supplement their diets from grains, but they still require protein* (animal or plant sources of essential amino acids). So, wherever they went, they needed to encounter the same food stuffs that would sustain a non grain consuming primate. Just a different mix, giving the human genome the advantage.

*The actual vegetarian fad is probably a modern development. Once humans had developed communications and a culture necessary to hand down dietary information (even through religious tradition), they could wean themselves off of animal protein. Even today, the failure to adhere to strict protein replacement supplements renders many vegetarians malnourished**. And they smell funny too (probably due to a resulting amino acid imbalance) if they don't get it just right.

**I wonder if this isn't what killed Michael Duncan Clarke. He went vegetarian a few years back and he looks like he has lived most of his life highly dependent on protein intake. Gandhi (and those with similar physiques) may have been a successful vegetarian due to a life not eating meat and having a metabolism adjusted to it.

I call shenanigans. Specifically,'the failure to adhere to strict protein replacement supplements renders many vegetarians malnourished". Compare that statement vs the ADA, "It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases."
Notice that supplementation is not required for healthful vegetarian diets, nor is it needed for a healthful omnivore diet. (a carnivore diet would be a slow death from scurvy, long before the cardio issues happen). Note the word 'healthful' in both of those.
Technically eating nothing but potato chips would be a vegetarian diet, and eating nothing but jello would be an omnivore diet - but both fail the 'healthful' requirement mentioned.
Given the "prevention and treatment of certain diseases" part of that quote, it is the omnivore that has nutrition explaining to do, not the vegetarian.

Re:More interesting than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

what are you talking about? Monkeys eat the donuts

Being able to put something in one end and not die before it comes out the other is quite different than being able to gain significant nutrients and energy from that thing.

Re:More interesting than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually protein is not that difficult of an issue for a vegetarian or even a vegan. A mix of grains and legumes, or just properly prepared soy, can cover all neccessary amino acids. It's stuff stuff like you see in this artical that are the real issues with veganism (not vegetarianism). Still, vegetarianism does require a very diverse diet to be well nurished.

Re:More interesting than that...

[PPH]

Notice that supplementation is not required for healthful vegetarian diets,

So, what do they mean by "appropriately planned"?

Consider that many of the recommended fruits, nuts, soy products and whatever haven't been available locally or year-round until the (recent) advent of air freight and refrigerated shipping (so, what does your vegetarian carbon footprint look like), I wonder how one was expected to maintain such a diet thousands of years ago.

a carnivore diet would be a slow death from scurvy

Yeah. All those poor Eskimos.

Re:More interesting than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Both a pure carnivore and a pure vegan diet without supplements would be a slow death from lack of various vitamins. Supplement either with milk and you're perfectly fine.

Re:More interesting than that...

[HiThere]

A carnivore diet is not necessarily deficient in vitamin C, but you might need to avoid cooking the meat...and you might need to eat parts of the GI tract. (Does it make it not a carnivore diet if you eat the guts of something that eats plants?)

N.B.: When eating sardines, I eat the guts. If they were raw, I'd probably still eat the guts, but I'm not sure. Perhaps raw sardines would have bones that I couldn't eat.

Re:More interesting than that...

[HiThere]

Soy, yes. But IIRC even a couple of thousand years ago people weren't eating soy. Maybe it's closer to three or four thousand years ago. But there's a story about the discovery of soy that would seem to place it fairly recently. (After Buddhism came to China.)

Still, I will admit that traditional stories can be wrong. But IIRC raw soy can't be eaten until it's been processed (nothing extreme, soaking in water and throwing away the dissolved effluent a couple of times). (I notice, though, that rats don't have any problem with unprocessed soy beans, so perhaps this is more a matter of taste than a requirement.)

Re:More interesting than that...

[erice]

Consider that many of the recommended fruits, nuts, soy products and whatever haven't been available locally or year-round until the (recent) advent of air freight and refrigerated shipping (so, what does your vegetarian carbon footprint look like), I wonder how one was expected to maintain such a diet thousands of years ago.

They cheated. Vegetarianism has been widespread in India for a lot longer than there has been air freight. However, vegans are really rare. The rest supplement with their vegetable matter with a great deal of dairy.

Re:More interesting than that...

[the biologist]

The Eskimo don't suffer from scurvy because they eat whale blubber raw. Until you cook whale blubber, it has plenty of vitamin C.

Re:More interesting than that...

[dryeo]

Hemp seed also contains all the essential amino acids plus all the essential oils. There are good arguments that hemp is the oldest cultivated plant and it has properties that were attractive before cultivation.
Hemp seed is also easy to eat (just needs grinding, by rock or tooth) unlike soy that even when correctly prepared doesn't seem to go down easily.

Re:More interesting than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

They developed civilization because of the division of labour now required (cultivation, storage, and guarding the grain supply). It's not clear you need a bigger brain to form collectives, since many "lower" animals do that automatically.

Re:More interesting than that...

[kinnell]

Nonsense. The fossil record shows that human brain sizes shrunk after the agricultural revolution. We developed large brains through eating large amounts of fat and protein from meat.

Re:More interesting than that...

[wvmarle]

The key "mutation" that allowed this was us learning to cook our food.

Personally I consider culture part of the DNA of a species, things that people teach other people, or what animals learn from there brethren. So learning to cook our food is a mutation. And an important one.

We still can not really digest rice, corn or grain, unless the kernels are cooked (or baked; keep it general). We can digest raw meat, but not as efficient as cooked meat. We can digest fruits very well, and generally eat them raw, as we can handle many nuts. Some vegetables we also eat raw, but potatoes for example we can't get much nutricion from without cooking them first.

This cooking allowed us to take in energy very efficiently, and allowed us to grow our brains particularly. At the moment it is virtually impossible for humans to survive on uncooked food alone. There simply not much that we can digest, and then we don't get the energy out of it we need to survive.

Re:More interesting than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Notice that supplementation is not required for healthful vegetarian diets,
So, what do they mean by "appropriately planned"? "

"appropriately planned" = A technical term to avoid silly discussions about not living on just potato chips (for the vegetarian) or on just Jello (for the Omnivore). Those would be vegetarian and omnivorous diets, and they would both be unheathful.

Re:More interesting than that...

[ceoyoyo]

"The rest supplement with their vegetable matter with a great deal of dairy."

Which isn't vegetarian in any objective sense. As far as the universe is concerned, if you need animal products you're not a vegetarian, whether you acquire those products by carving off chunks, milking, or repeatedly pulling off lizard tails.

Re:More interesting than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Eskimos eat the whole animal, which includes the contents of herbivorous stomaches.

Re:More interesting than that...

[DirtyLiar]

True, humans can 'eat' grass, but don't have the stomached to extract nutrition from it.

Which is odd, because wheat is a grass. (Though we eat the seeds, not the stalks.)

Re:More interesting than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your "big brain" theory is rendered incorrect by the fact that the human brain can run just fine off the energy of protein, even in the absence of carbohydrates.

I don't understand...

[mcgrew]

The switch, which allowed humans to process vegetables, meant that humans were able to move away from water sources and spread across the continent.

Without water there's no plants, without water and plants there are no animals. But it seems to me that the mutation didn't make us herbivores, it made us able to greatly expand our sources of nutrition. We not only could eat meat, but veggies as well.

We're not herbivores, we're omnivores.

Moved away from water?

[Nyder]

unless they mutated away to live without water, humans did NOT move away from water.

I'm pretty sure they still lived around water. Rivers, Springs, Oases, Wells, whatever, but they needed the water.

But what do i know?

Re:Moved away from water?

[PPH]

They'd have to drink their Scotch neat.

Re:Moved away from water?

[udachny]

You are wrong, it's because you are not actually a human, you are a bunch of letters on my computer screen. We, humans, can survive without any water for months at a time. In fact we don't really even need water at all, it's just a habit from the old times, we live mostly on solid coffee beans and salt. Lots and lots of salt. That's how we fight off the land pyranha as well, they hate salt.

Re:Moved away from water?

[Anonymous Coward]

roman_mir, a pathetic feeb cowering behind a shadow username

YOU ARE NOTHING

Re:Moved away from water?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point about the water sources is probably the lack of animals nearby that one could hunt (gathering at some lake to drink). Humans have a brain and tools, meaning they can access a wider variety of sources of water. And they can build containers to carry some with them.

Re:Moved away from water?

[Grog6]

A true Couniseur would make ice from the Scotch...

Liquid N2 is a wonderful thing to have around. :)

Re:Moved away from water?

[geekoid]

Yes, the moved away from water. we didn't stop using water, but we know longer had to live right on the bank.
The contexts should have made that clear.

Re:Moved away from water?

[Anonymous Coward]

It might have been better expressed as "moving away from large sources of animals living in or attracted to bodies of water." They didn't need to consume fish or clams or the animals that gather every day at the water's edge. A spring, creek, or small water hole that provided water and supported local plant life and a lower density of smaller animals now sufficed.

Re:Moved away from water?

[argStyopa]

We're still living near water?

Didn't we know that would make us vulnerable to climatologically-induced sea-level rise? What craziness! It's almost like we sited our habitations for convenience, not for long-term sustainability.

Stupid monkeys.

Re:Moved away from water?

[wvmarle]

Of course. To this day humans tend to live near water, this has never changed. Almost all our major cities are either at rivers or at the coast - the vast majority of the world's population lives in coastal areas. Water is simply very important for us - and not just for drinking.

Re:Moved away from water?

[ceoyoyo]

Ah, you've discovered the birth of civilization.

Oh wait, I get it now...

[erroneus]

... okay, prior to being vegetarian-capable, being omnivorous was the fixed state of early humans?

Let's imagine... travelling across the land... probably fleeing from another group in S.Africa who was strong enough to stay and keep their claim to the land they had... and finding themselves increasingly hungry... wild game of any sort becoming more scarce and harder to catch or kill... the ones that didn't adapt, died and didn't produce offspring. The ones that lived passed on whatever capacity to survive without dying of malnutrition. Classic natural selection we're talking about.

But here's the thing. Even today when people try to go vegetarian, some people simply can't make the change without nutritional complications while others are just fine with it.

I don't think ALL humans are equally mutated if you wish to call it that.

Re:Oh wait, I get it now...

[mcgrew]

TFS was worse than the normal FS. First off, the "vegetarian" bit. Now that I've RTFA, we were omnivores, but we needed fish or our brains wouldn't develop propery, so we were stuck living near the ocean. Once we could live without fish we could live anywhere.

It had nothing to do with vegetarians, the sumitter is probably one of those PETA vegan nuts.

Re:Oh wait, I get it now...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

but we needed fish or our brains wouldn't develop propery, so we were stuck living near the ocean.

Well, you could need not to live near the ocean, and be stuck without a brain.

Seems to work for me.

Re:Oh wait, I get it now...

[Dan East]

So which other animals must eat fish for their brains to develop properly? Do any other primates have to eat fish? Or did all the rest of the primates also mutate about the same time so they don't have to eat fish either? If humans are the only primate that had to eat fish, and we don't now, then how do the researchers know we required fish at some point in the past when other primates do not?

Re:Oh wait, I get it now...

[Sigg3.net]

It had nothing to do with vegetarians, the sumitter is probably one of those PETA vegan nuts.

You seem to have misspelled PITA there, sir.

Re:Oh wait, I get it now...

[mcgrew]

I'm guessing that by "developing properly" it's meant "developing like a normal brain". Perhaps eating fish is what made us evolve to be smarter than the average ape, and these pre-human hominids that didn't eat fish were still smarter than gorillas but mentally retarded compared to others of his species.

Re:Oh wait, I get it now...

[kinnell]

Our brains are around 30% larger in relation to other primates, hence we need additional nutrients for ours to develop fully.

Re:Oh wait, I get it now...

[Anonymous Coward]

So which other animals must eat fish for their brains to develop properly?

Every one whos encephalization quotient is higher than 2.5.

can i haz teh dictionary?

[luis_a_espinal]

How the hell did the original poster went from this

The scientists found that a key genetic variant gave humans the ability to convert fats from plants into essential nutrients for the brain."

To this?

180k-Year-Old Mutation Allowed Humans To Become Vegetarians, Move Out of Africa

People who don't know their scientific terms mis-quote scientific articles. News at 10.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[Urza9814]

What's wrong with the summary? We no longer needed to get those nutrients from meat -- we could survive solely on plant life. Therefore, we could become vegetarians.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The point is that the mutation (putatively) allowed humans to survive on a vegetarian diet, when they couldn't do so before. This would be very valuable for a nomadic "hunter-gatherer" lifestyle in times and places where there was plenty to gather but not so much to hunt (or fish, as the case may be).

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the mutation, humans (or proto-humans) still had to eat some meat to get those essential nutrients. After the mutation, they could live on vegetables alone.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that we couldn't survive solely on plat life and still needed meat in our diet, just not necessarily Fish.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[luis_a_espinal]

The point is that the mutation (putatively) allowed humans to survive on a vegetarian diet, when they couldn't do so before.

Uh, you need to read how to learn, as well as how to apply logic. What the article says ("ability to convert fats from plants into essential nutrients for the brain") does not mean (or imply) "avoid meats by choice". It doesn't mean/imply ("ability to survive on plants alone"). It simply means "ability to exploit a greater variety of food products for brain sustainment with greater efficiency".

That is all. Any other interpretation is not an interpretation of logic, but of choice (aka "wishful thinking").

This would be very valuable for a nomadic "hunter-gatherer" lifestyle in times and places where there was plenty to gather but not so much to hunt (or fish, as the case may be).

Inconsequential. That does not imply vegetarianism (be it voluntary as in humans or mandatory as in herbivores.) In the name of Jebuz, buy a dictionary or use google and learn the meaning of the word "vegetarian".

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't the "ability to convert fats from plants into essential nutrients for the brain" be useful for a vegetarian?

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[luis_a_espinal]

What's wrong with the summary? We no longer needed to get those nutrients from meat -- we could survive solely on plant life.

Let me introduce you to something call logic: I can survive on plant life. I chose not (ergo I'm not vegetarian).

Meaning capacity(vegetarianism) -> trait(vegetarian) == FALSE

Therefore, we could become vegetarians.

Petitio Principii

Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc"

In the name of humanity, please buy this book: Attacking Faulty Reasoning, by Edward Damer

And this book : New Oxford American Dictionary

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[geekoid]

" we could survive solely on plant life."
that's not what it says.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[cryptizard]

It makes perfect sense. Your argument would only hold if in fact no humans had ever become vegetarians, even though they now had the ability to. Since some humans became vegetarians, this mutation allowed humans to become vegetarians. It doesn't say allowed humanity or allowed all humans to become vegetarian. English has more nuances than you are giving it credit for.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the summary is this ... it wasn't the ability to survive on vegetables alone that gave the advantage... it was the ability to survive on whatever was around (be it meat or vegetable).

That adaptation allowed humans to spread further than ever before because they had overcome a dietary limitation. This dietary limitation had previously crippled their ability to live beyond their current geographical region.

Had the humans switched from carnivores to vegetarians, they would have almost certainly found similar limitations to where they could live.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[jd]

So what you're saying is the headline should have read "180k-Year-Old Mutation Allowed Humans To Become apisceanic, Move Out of Africa".

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to get the B12 from bacteria. Plants don't need B12. Animals do, so their flesh, milk, eggs, and especially livers are concentrated sources of B12. Animals can get them from the bacteria that live in their gut (ruminants) or by eating the bacteria fermenting away in their poop. We need to consume B12 at these levels of concentration. Humans are not ruminants, and most humans don't eat their poop, so we consume the flesh, eggs, milk, and livers of these other animals.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Essential nutrients for the brain aren't essential nutrients for the entire body. There is a pretty big difference.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[__aaltlg1547]

also very valuable for apes, since they don't eat much meat.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[ceoyoyo]

Despite the Latin, you seem to have overlooked the word "could" in the GPs statement.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the name of humanity, please buy this book: Attacking Faulty Reasoning, by Edward Damer

No wonder some states want to ban the teaching of critial thinking. Check out the price of this book.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[DirtyLiar]

What's wrong with the summary? We no longer needed to get those nutrients from meat -- we could survive solely on plant life.

[Sarcastic drivel snipped] I can survive on plant life. I chose not (ergo I'm not vegetarian).
Meaning capacity(vegetarianism) -> trait(vegetarian) == FALSE

True. But an unused capacity is still capacity. Meaning that you have the capacity [or are allowed] to become a vegetarian.
Besides, a 180k-Year-Old Mutation [still] Allow[s, but does not force] Humans To Become Vegetarians

Therefore, we could become vegetarians.

Petitio Principii

Are you suggesting that there is no proof of human vegetarians so that the title's only proof is it's own assertion?

Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc"

True, correlation neither implies or proves causation.

So you're saying that scientists conclusions are wrong, and that something else allows humans to digest the fats in plant-flesh?
Do you have anything to base this on other than the fact that correlation does not prove causation?

Because correlation many not prove causation, but neither does it disprove it.

Besides, I think I can safely assume that the scientists have more knowledge and expertise in their chosen field than some random person on /. spouting insults and trying to impress with big words and Latin phrases.

Because neither bluster nor contempt prove anything more than insecurity on the part of the blusterer.

Another truism: Our society too complex, our combined knowledge too vast for any single individual to test every theory and bit of knowledge that we have collected, and that some reliance on experts is necessary lest we find ourselves living our lives only to verify knowledge discovered by others. Contributing nothing of value ourselves.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary?

[DirtyLiar]

can i haz teh dictionary?

Would you settle for a [cheazburger]?

Re:Wait a sec....

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't joke, SK is talking about putting creationism in theirs, and if you go look at how many of the current manhwas are religion oriented (albeit a weird mix of Christian, Eastern and Western mythos), you might be scared.

Re:I knew it

[hazah]

We are omnivores.

Re:Wait a sec....

[macbeth66]

I can't sit idly by while the fundies ride rough-shod over reality.

Headline wrong

[br00tus]

The Slashdot headline is wrong and the initial website it links to has a wrong headline.

If you read the scientific paper, it says the mutation happened about 85,000 years ago, not 180,000 years ago. This makes it logically consistent with other biological discoveries, archaeological finds etc.

Re:Headline wrong

[hemo_jr]

Wow, someone here who actually read the article and is able to do a bit of arithmetic. Bravo!

Re:And the fundies say...

[Tr3vin]

If you are going to go from a biblical standpoint then you should know that all of creation ate only vegetables until the fall of man. If you being critical you should at least know what you are poking fun at.

Re:I knew it

[sconeu]

What do the Mantas have to say about this?

Re:I knew it

[trollboy]

Until I eat you. Jurassic Park anyone?

It's to generate more page views

[Anonymous Coward]

The headline is flamebait. The editors know the Slashdot nerds will see the term "vegetarian," become furious, and click on the article, and post furious posts, which will generate more furious posts and more page views. Profit!

Re:It's to generate more page views

[aevan]

You had me up until 'click on the article'

Re:It's to generate more page views

[mister_playboy]

By article, he means the discussion in which we have both posted, not the external article.

His analysis is accurate.

Re:It's to generate more page views

[Anonymous Coward]

I am the AC that posted that, and yes, I meant this Slashdot article/discussion in which we are posting. Sorry.

Re:It's to generate more page views

[gripped]

You might be, you might not. If you hadn't posted AC there would be no doubt.

Re:It's to generate more page views

[jd]

In this post-QM world, why couldn't they be both?

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[skovnymfe]

Man I really can't tell if you're serious or not. On one note it seems like you're just spewing shit for the fun of it, but looking at your previous posts, either you're fond of spewing shit or you actually mean what you're saying. Damn.

Skimpy article

[wcrowe]

It doesn't explain that vegetables contain the necessary DHA. Is that the case? I can only infer that from TFA.

I also have to ask the question: do other primates not eat vegetables?

Re:Skimpy article

[Anonymous Coward]

If they don't, they get NO DESSERT!

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[Anonymous Coward]

i cannot wait to see the look on your face when judgement day arrives and you have been following the wrong imaginary being. pretty sure we'll burn together.

Re:And the fundies say...

[Anonymous Coward]

There was only one apple tree, the rest all grew bacon, which is why after Adam and Eve pissed Him off, God banned it.

yea!!, and the british..

[tempest69]

I don't believe that Americans came from the British, because there are still British people. Clearly Americans came from a Creator, and we owe him the decency to stop claiming that many Americans are simply the descendants of Europeans.

right there with you man.

Re:yea!!, and the british..

[DirtyLiar]

I don't believe that Americans came from the British, because there are still British people. Clearly Americans came from a Creator, and we owe him the decency to stop claiming that many Americans are simply the descendants of Europeans.

right there with you man.

Um, I think this was meant for you:

by skovnymfe (1671822)

Man I really can't tell if you're serious or not. On one note it seems like you're just spewing shit for the fun of it, but looking at your previous posts, either you're fond of spewing shit or you actually mean what you're saying. Damn.

Next mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

So when is the next mutation going to happen that humans can survive from common fast food?

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[Anonymous Coward]

We didn't evolve from monkeys, we evolved from great apes and our genetic cousins are still around. You should go to talkorigins.org for more information.

Just because *you* don't know something, it doesn't mean "therefore God". And, of all things, your God. Not the different Gods that existed for thousands of years in hundreds of other cultures, no, but your God specifically. Sorry but you need to prove your own theory with evidence including the specific claim that it is your God, as opposed to Ra or Thor. You can't just say "you're wrong, therefore I am right" - we could both be wrong.

The difference between scientists and creationists is very simple: scientists adjust views as more evidence is found and creationists assert that Creator started everything. That's why scientific explanations keep changing - there is new evidence. Who knows, maybe they're proven wrong in a thousand years and it was the FSM after all, but we'll find that out not because of faith but because of evidence.

Re:And the fundies say...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

If you are going to go from a biblical standpoint then you should know that all of creation ate only vegetables until the fall of man.

And if you disagree, Chuck Norris will kick your butt.

I'm a vegitarian...

[thatskinnyguy]

...my food eats plants, then I eat the food. *rimshot*

Re:I'm a vegitarian...

[El_Oscuro]

Even my plants are carnivores.

Re:And the fundies say...

[Dishevel]

Mmmm. Bacon trees!
It really was heaven on earth.

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I cannot wait to see the looks on your faces when Judgement Day arrives. Now go love thy brother as yourselves and forgive.

Congratulations, you've just summed up the entire fundamentalist mentality in two sentences. Good job!

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[rasmusbr]

No, it's like a watching a juror change her way of thinking about the story as more and more evidence is revealed throughout the trial.

Until someone can show me how to make a creator out of dead empty space, you need to just accept the fact that there is a creator-creator. Until someone can show me how to make a creator-creator out of dead empty space, you need to just accept the fact that there is a creator-creator-creator. Until someone can show me how to make a creator-creator-creator out of dead empty space...

Wrong! Obviously you aren't keeping up

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so wrong. You haven't been keeping up with your articles as the 'author' of the "out of Africa movement" is contradicting his own idea and that this is not what happened. But junk science followed by more junk science gives you slashdot science.

Whaaaat

[eyenot]

You're SO wrong, for starters, what do you MEAN, "Out of Africa"? Don't you mean, "Out of Africa, East Asia, and Australia?" And lastly, what do you mean "mutation"? If it wasn't for selective breeding it wouldn't have taken hold. Where you think you is, Waterworld?

Re:and this is why the stereotype exists

[Ol Olsoc]

African Americans love Chicken

Everyone loves chicken, you insensitive clod!

We're all mutants here.

[billstewart]

I'm a mutant, you're a mutant, he's a mutant, we're all mutants here.

I'm fortunate to have the Northern European "able to digest milk as an adult" mutation, which gives me a few more dietary choices. (I rarely actually drink milk without lots of coffee in it, but having the option makes being a vegetarian a lot more convenient than it otherwise would be.)

Hmmm... Bacon...

[Anonymous Coward]

Vegetarian, my foot...

Have you looked at a chimp's skin color?

[billstewart]

Chimps and Gorillas are basically black, with lighter-colored palms of their hands. We didn't turn light-skinned till we moved north and needed the extra vitamin D.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe we've "evolved" one bit. Just a sign of the times. There are atheists who will say I never hurt anyone, but they smoke a quarter of an ounce of pot everyday(or name your posion) with their buddies. And there are Christians who say they never hurt anyone, but they do the same thing in some fashion. Throwing stones at each other as always. No matter how much you try not to hurt anyone you will, and this argument just got a few people killed. I'm not happy about that are you? I've hurt some people too you know. Technically, it's a sin to debate in a good number of cases. It's horribly saddening that we waste our time doing this.

FYI: It is ~80K years not 180K.

[morto]

"Studies suggest that anatomically modern humans arose in Africa approximately 150 thousand years ago (kya), expanded throughout Africa ~60–80 kya, and to most parts of Europe and Asia ~40 kya[1]–[6]. Numerous mitochondrial DNA studies support what Foster and Matsumera [5] describe as a ‘remarkable expansion’ from a small geographic region dating broadly to ~60–80 kya." see http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0044926

Re:Land bridge to California?

[Anonymous Coward]

-1?

Hell hath no fury like a gay hippie scorned.

I'm carnivorous mostly...

[Grog6]

I could do without veggies way easier than I could do without meat.

I broke up with the most incredible girl just after HS because I just could not eat another tofo burger.

Potatoes and my GF's occasional tossed salad is enough veggies for me. :)

This is Slashdot, thinking is optional.

Like she said, "Nothing is True, Everything is permitted." :)

Re:I'm carnivorous mostly...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bollocks.

She can't have been THAT incredible if you broke up

You're probably gay.

Re:I'm carnivorous mostly...

[harley78]

Shouldn't have broke up with her. If it was right/good, she would have understood that you want to eat meat. Sounds like you are a dumbass. Or not. C'est la vie.

Re:I knew it

[Grog6]

As long as there are only Trolls, not Velociraptors. :)

So you're saying...

[mccrew]

So you're saying that vegetarians are mutants?

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[Anonymous Coward]

My invisible people will Kill your invisible people!! (rofl)

It say so in some book, somewhere; like Dude said.

Re:And the fundies say...

[geekoid]

He is welcome to try. Bring it on.

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[geekoid]

close. this is more accurate:

"I cannot wait to see the looks on your faces when Judgement Day arrives. Now go love thy brother as yourselves and forgive, or ELSE!"

Striking similarity...

[phloe]

to another article about E.Coli bacteria in a lab evolving the ability to absorb citrate instead of just glocuse:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2012/09/19/the-birth-of-the-new-the-rewiring-of-the-old/

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[geekoid]

"Every month it is more crap to blow out to the masses every time your fundamental evolutionary rules change"
no they don't.

"e. It's like watching a liar on trial and seeing him change his story as the judge rolls out the evidence. "
Since there is, literally, warehouse and file cabinets full of evidence, and sine we use evolutionary theory to make predicts, you are incorrect.

" Until someone can show me how to make atoms out of dead empty space, "
done...but you probably can't understand the math. Sorry. No m,y fault you are ignorant. as a side note: I find it interesting you don't apply the same level of proof to the existence of god)

" you need to just accept the fact that there is a Creator,"
SO I can show you that all your arguments are wrong, but you won't bother to learn why evolution is real, but you want me to accept what you are saying just ...cause? Double standard much?

" and you owe Him the decency to not insult Him by claiming we just popped out of thin air, "
no one claims that, please try to learn.

". I cannot wait to see the looks on your faces when Judgement Day arrives"
ah, yes, another person ignorant of his own theology:
A) Jesus said it would happen during the life time of his then disciples. Oops.
B) Even if it did happen, it would only be 144,000 people raptures. Hell, the world might not even know it happened.

". Now go love thy brother as yourselves and forgive."
You don't need a god for that.

". If any Life WAS out there and it was only even 10 minutes earlier in its (evolutionary)life stage, then we would have found it and/or it found us since we have been sending out hardware for 60 years. "
Wow, you really have been poorly educated, have you? hint: the universe is big, species existence is short. Sending hard ware for 60 year. You think that's a long time? Assuming a single comes in a way we are looking for it, it would only be a signal that happened to be from 6 light years. It would be like rowing a mile away from shore, seeing no lane, and then declare Europe doesn't have anyone there.

"THE FUCKING MONKEYS ARE STILL HERE THAT WE SUPPOSEDLY EVOLVED FROM"
false. The animals we evolved from died 10's of thousands of year ago.

We share a common ancestor with some primates.

Yuu, literally, have no understanding of evolution. How about you try to understand it before making yourself look stupid?

Protip: evolution doesn't mean there is no God. completely different discussion. What it means is Bible literalism is incorrect. Something people who put the Bible together recognized, and there is plenty of evidence of it's editing. Genesis is an allegory. the people who wrote it knew that, the people who interpreted understood that, and anyone who actually studies it knows that. I could do an in depth reason and examples, but I won't. I will simply leave you with a couple of points:
1) Adam and Eve had sons.
2) They where marked before they went out among the 'others'. If Adam and eve were first, how where there other?
3) There are contrary origin myths in the Bible.

Lease try to learn how to think and do research.

Have a nice day.

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[geekoid]

It's just .. turtles all the way down!

Betram Wooster was right?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Homo sapiens first appeared 180,000 years ago but stayed around bodies of water in central Africa for almost 100,000 years. Researchers explained that the location was critical because it had a ready supply of fish and shellfish that provided the necessary fatty acid Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) necessary for brain development Read more at http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/12261/20120921/180-000-year-old-mutation-allowed-human.htm#8CTvIV68ZBqJuuRV.99

Bertie was attributing the braininess of Jeeves to fish, and I thought he was being a dope as usual. Turns out there is something to that.

The article is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The Earth is only 6,000 years old, which means that everything these so-called scientists are saying is false and a lie.

The Bible is the only Truth, and those who turn away from the Word of the Lord will burn in Hell for all of eternity. Don't beLIEve the lies that these "people" are telling you. They are tools of Satan and they only want to create more soldiers for Hell's Army.

I praise Jesus every day that I am able to root out these false prophets and expose them for what they are. God bless those of you that aren't fooled.

Re:The article is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone beLIEve the lies you're telling us?

Becoming vegetarians seems a stretch..

[Tangential]

The article begins by claiming it allowed them to "become vegetarians" but the content of the article says

"The change meant that humans no longer had to rely on just one food source, fish, for brain growth and development.

Not having to rely on just one food source (animals) doesn't sound like a vegetarian to me It reads much more like it allowed them to become omnivores and thus be able to move away from a purely animal protein based diet.

Its amazing how much prejudices of the authors can spin the results of a study.

Re:I knew it

[hazah]

Heh, never heard of it.

bad title, this is an omega-3 story

[manu0601]

The title is wrong, this was not about becoming vegetarian, it was about been less dependent on fishes for omega-3 intake

The brain needs an omega-3 fatty acid called DHA. We can get it by eating fishes, or create it by transforming alpha-linonenic acid we get from vegetables (good sources are flax, wallnuts, colza). The mutation they talk about is about transforming alpha-linonenic acid into DHA.

This does not make use vegetarian, as there are still many nutriments we are unable to get from vegetables. The point is that it let us have working brains without relying on eating fishes

An interesting point is that the enzymes that process omega-3 also process omega-6, and the mutation therefore also increased our ability to process omega-6. This was not a problem until we started eating animals fed with too much omega-6. The animal flavor of omega-6 is called arachidonic acid. Excess of that one lead to cardiovascular problems and it promotes cancers because of excessive inflamation.

Re:I knew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Vegetarians are more evolved than meat-eaters.

If you understood evolution you would know that everything on the planet is equally evolved. (ie, a modern human is "as evolved" as a modern horseshoe crab.)

However, you do make a good point that Vegetarians are more poorly educated.

ummm.... vegetarian?

[shaitand]

Humans are omnivores not vegetarians. This mutation would have allowed them to be omnivores rather than carnivores.

Only a massive modern globally fueled artificial availability of things that can't grow in one place allowed people to be vegetarians and mostly skinny and malnourished vegetarians at that.

Meat on the other hand requires no exotic combinations or preparations to keep you nourished. You are made of meat, and all animal meats have everything you need to produce and maintain the meat that is your body.

Re:ummm.... vegetarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. The mutation allowed humans to live ONLY on plants, hence they could survive in the event that they couldn't get meat. Humans were omnivores up until this point, which meant that they required both plants and meat to survive.

Also, I am a vegetarian. And a boxer in my spare time. I'm pretty sure I'm healthier than you. Vegetarians and vegans tend to be more aware of what they're putting into their bodies, and protein and B12 are *not* a problem in the modern world.

Re:ummm.... vegetarian?

[wvmarle]

Omnivores before the mutation, omnivores after the mutation. Key difference: after the mutation humans could live without taking in meat (which can be useful to go and live in places where meat is rare or not available at all). Before the mutation meat was an essential part of their diet, and we needed a lot of it, too.

Re:ummm.... vegetarian?

[metlin]

Only a massive modern globally fueled artificial availability of things that can't grow in one place allowed people to be vegetarians and mostly skinny and malnourished vegetarians at that.

This is silly. There are entire societies and cultures that are built around being vegetarian (look around parts of the Indian subcontinent). I'm pretty sure a lot of people there have been vegetarian long before the advent of overnight shipping of fruits and vegetables.

Plus, your derogatory second statement is also pretty broad, sweeping, and soundly untrue. A good many gym rats (myself included) are vegetarian, and you'd be surprised at how many physically fit people are vegetarian. Eggs and whey can do wonders to a vegetarian diet. I'm pretty sure my "vegetarian" biceps and bench will make you look skinny (or fat - take your pick).

Re:ummm.... vegetarian?

[ceoyoyo]

Those societies eat a lot of dairy products and eggs. You mention eggs yourself. While the popular definition of "vegetarian" includes people who eat animal products other than meat, since we're talking about evolution we have to use a more objective definition, which is closer to vegan: if you eat animal products you are not a vegetarian.

You'd have an awfully hard time being a healthy non-animal product eater without using artificial supplements and only native local plants. It's not a lack of overnight delivery of vegetables that's a problem, it's things like nuts, fruits and particular plants that contain difficult to obtain nutrients. It MIGHT be possible to live on a pure locally sourced plant diet today given your choice of location, an appropriate collection of alien species, and the resources to do things like irrigation, but this wasn't an option in the past.

And Low Testosterone too!

[Anonymous Coward]

So that explains why most vegetarian men are so emasculated, that same mutation must also have lessened their base testosterone levels.

Poor pale salad eaters, give me Meat.

An Indian friend of mine...

[mha]

An Indian friend of mine (with degrees from Stanford and from the Univ. of Chicago, so one could say a well educated person) pointed out to me that Indians hadn't won anything in some major sports event for decades (don't remember what it was, or if he was talking about all of them at once), and that Indians are usually much smaller than people in the West. We were talking about eating habits, but only a few sentences, nothing major (I would not do that, because I could not care less if YOU kill YOURSELF slowly (by not eating enough meat, haha :) ).

I must say those Asians are pretty short too, the majority.

So let me go and grab another steak...

What happened to "and"?

[sqldr]

"180k-Year-Old Mutation Allowed Humans To Become Vegetarians, Move Out of Africa" is a statement, followed by an order to move out of africa. Honestly, is it that hard to type two extra characters and turn the comma into an 'and'?

Yes, because the vast majority of slashdot readers

[portforward]

are "fundies". At some point when most people are children, their parents explain to them that repeating jokes ad nauseum isn't funny. Your comment isn't original, it isn't amusing, and isn't relevant to the conversation. That is probably why you were downmodded to a troll.

makes no sense

[__aaltlg1547]

Apes don't require meat. Why would our hominid ancestors have required it?

Essential amino acids

[Anonymous Coward]

Amino acids are builing blocks for proteins that make up most of our bodies.
Essential amino acids are amino acids that we don't produce in our body, that we must get from our food. The thing is that some of these amino acids don't exist in plants. Thus we must have animal proteins in our diet. We can't live only on plants.

Re:Essential amino acids

[petteyg359]

How much is the Beef Council (what a stupid name) paying you?

Re:Essential amino acids

[Anonymous Coward]

This is basic, high school level biology. Plants don't produce all the essential amino acids we need. We are not vegetarian by nature, but omnivore.

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[__aaltlg1547]

Ultimately you have to explain how something can create itself AND dead empty space AND mass energy out of what we normally would think of as less than nothing. It's the Achilles heel of the creation paradigm. The non creation paradigm says that complex things can emerge out of simple antecedents but it still doesn't explain why there is a universe. We'll probably never know that.

Powder on fruits is yeast = B vitamins

[bd580slashdot]

I have ripe plums rolling into my yard right now from my neighbors trees. The light colored powder on the outside of them (easy to see on grapes and so on too) is yeast. I eat it. Lots of B vitamins. Plus I use the yeast for sourdough and wine and such. I just wash some off into the juice or flour and water mix.

There are plant sources for ALL needed nutrients. I was vegan for a long time.

Re:Powder on fruits is yeast = B vitamins

[DirtyLiar]

plums [have a]... light colored... yeast [on them]. I [use it in]... wine[s] and such

Don't you find wild yeasts give you inconsistent, and often bad, results?

Re:and this is why the stereotype exists

[metlin]

Everyone loves chicken, you insensitive clod!

Not us vegetarians. :-)

Bleh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that umami flavor is just MSG, right? These yeast products are very high in it. Also, usually when you see "hydrolyzed soy protein" or "autolyzed yeast extract" you know that those ingredients were included for their high MSG load but allow the manufacturer to avoid having to list MSG in the ingredients.

And, given the perversity of the universe, you know that if something is enjoyable then it is also deleterious: glutamate is an excitotoxin that kills neurons, just like aspartame/nutrasweet.

Re:Bleh.

[Swave An deBwoner]

You might have more correctly stated that MSG has umami flavor; there's a little bit more to the story though:

Umami represents the taste of the amino acid L-glutamate and 5prime-ribonucleotides such as guanosine monophosphate (GMP) and inosine monophosphate (IMP).

And interestingly:

Humans' first encounter with umami is breast milk.[26] It contains roughly the same amount of umami as broths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami

As for your comments on exitotoxicity, I think that's a yet unresolved question. It's a quite interesting question though, given the prevalence of naturally occurring glutamate (and umami) in diets worldwide.

Re:Bleh.

[DirtyLiar]

You do know... when you see "hydrolyzed soy protein" or "autolyzed yeast extract" [they]...were included for their high MSG load [while allowing]... the manufacturer to avoid [listing]... MSG in the ingredients.

I did not know that.

Re:Bleh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know... when you see "hydrolyzed soy protein" or "autolyzed yeast extract" [they]...were included for their high MSG load [while allowing]... the manufacturer to avoid [listing]... MSG in the ingredients.

I did not know that.

Heh, yeah, it's the food industry's analogue to a trojan.

Not 180k -- it's 85k

[dradler]

RTFA. The mutation was ~85 kya. The popular article also gets this wrong in their title.

Re:Not 180k -- it's 85k

[adobelis]

Correct. And that is why the numbers in the news article don't add up: according to it, homo sapiens originated 180kya, hung around lake regions for 100,000 yrs, until this mutation allowed them to move... also 180kya. Someone please fix the title of this article (and tell MedicalDaily too). "RTFA" - lol. Yes, read the abstract, ye science writers.

Savages vs. Humans

[iq145]

"Organized religion" seems to have turned some humans right back into the savages of 180,000 years ago

Lonley Iland

[krischik]

Do you really thing you can survive on a lonely island, without the industrial supplements and processed food like tofu. On a vegan diat only?

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[ceoyoyo]

Actually, modern cosmology and quantum mechanics does a pretty good job of reducing everything. It's to the point where the creation of the universe can be explained by a quantum fluctuation with the energy equivalent of about 10 lbs of matter. That leaves only the laws of quantum mechanics as an unexplained prerequisite, and lots of people are working on explaining even that.

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[__aaltlg1547]

Actually, modern cosmology and quantum mechanics does a pretty good job of reducing everything. It's to the point where the creation of the universe can be explained by a quantum fluctuation with the energy equivalent of about 10 lbs of matter. That leaves only the laws of quantum mechanics as an unexplained prerequisite, and lots of people are working on explaining even that.

1. Quantum fluctuations happen with energies on the order of 4E16 Joules? Who knew!?!

2. The energy that exists in the universe also remains to be explained, along with how inflation could have occurred. I think we're still a long way from having a complete, coherent and plausible explanation for the first second of the universe's existence.

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[ceoyoyo]

Quantum fluctuations are random. One that big is very rare, but it can certainly happen.

The universe may very well have a net energy of zero, or very nearly zero. (Hawking, A Brief History of Time, pp. 129)

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[__aaltlg1547]

Quantum fluctuations are random. One that big is very rare, but it can certainly happen.

The universe may very well have a net energy of zero, or very nearly zero. (Hawking, A Brief History of Time, pp. 129)

For the correct placement of the value of zero, of course; that being whatever amount of energy that that universe comprises.

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[ceoyoyo]

No. The idea is that the gravitational field created by a large volume of fairly uniformly distributed matter has negative potential energy. It turns out that negative negative energy neatly cancels the positive energy in the universe.

But go ahead, Shavano, just keep making up misinformed one liners to further your argument with Steven Hawking.

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[__aaltlg1547]

Hawking's explanation is one of several competing theories regarding the origin of the universe and why it's expanding.

If it turns out that the sum of all this potential is approximately equal to the sum of all the other energy in the universe, that would be an interesting fact. But this theory assumes there is almost 3x as much energy in the universe than we can physically measure.

Isn't the missing or "dark" energy calculation is the result? That's what I've read and I find it deeply dissatisfying because it doesn't answer the question of why it has to be that and offers little hope of verification.

Possibly a paid Slashdot ad?

[Futurepower(R)]

Fraud Alert: This may be a paid ad for the very un-respectable Medical Daily. Do you see the Medical Daily ad? "Lose inches AND pounds with no hunger or exercise. Lose 5 lbs/week on average and look great!"

The PLOS One article says, "Jointly, these two sets of data support the hypothesis..." and "suggesting" and "we can speculate that perhaps" and "Consequently, it is likely..." and "it is likely that ... would have been...". When that is re-phrased by the Medical Daily article, it is written to sound much less scientific and much more certain.

That's my opinion, but others feel the same way.

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses.

[ceoyoyo]

Dark energy is required to accelerate the expansion of the universe, to match supernova observations. It's also required to explain why the universe appears to be very close to flat, from observations of the cosmic microwave background. It's not a fudge factor invented so Hawking could be right about the universe having zero energy.

Re:And the fundies say...

[niado]

I wish there was a "-1 defied Chuck Norris" mod option :(