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

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 21, 2012 @08:07AM from the i-don't-eat-greens-food-eats-greens dept.

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."

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More interesting than that... by erroneus · 2012-09-21 08:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

... 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.