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How Sliced Meat May Have Driven Human Evolution (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: The most tedious part of a chimpanzee's life is chewing. Our primate cousins spend six hours a day gnashing fruits and the occasional monkey carcass — all made possible by the same type of big teeth and large jaws our early ancestors had. So why are our own teeth and jaws so much smaller? A new study credits the advent of simple stone tools to slice meat and pound root vegetables, which could have dramatically reduced the time and force needed to chew, thus allowing our more immediate ancestors to evolve the physical features required for speech. The abstract for the (paywalled) article is more informative than many.
along with Pilot Bread (hard tack)
All such "explanations" backed primarily by feelings of vague plausibility should be required to show how they are better supported than ones such as BAHfest.
Maybe early proto-Republican campfire debates caused the evolution of "large hands" as selective advantage for tribal power struggles. Probably not. Show me specifically how their conjecture is scientifically stronger.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Surprised they didn't mention that a longer lasting tooth would have been a huge advantage as well:
"Slicing, whether with a knife or a sharp stone flake, changes all that. Suddenly, hominins could cut up the elastic muscles of a carcass into smaller bits before putting them in their mouths, making them chewable and easier to digest. Pounding has a similar effect on tough, fibrous root vegetables. “What we found is that by simply slicing meat and pounding vegetables, a hominin would be able to reduce the number of chews they use by about 17%,” Zink says. “That equates to 2-and-a-half million fewer chews per year.”
Imagine a 17% less worn tooth. Tooth loss is a huge disadvantage in the wild, just look at how desperate large predators get when they cannot hunt effectively.
An individual living 17% longer would be able to learn and pass on their knowledge and build a more effective society, perhaps even helping invent fire along the way.
Bacon, it's your evolutionary duty!
POSSUM
Ef dey 's anyt'ing dat riles me
An' jes' gits me out o' hitch,
Twell I want to tek my coat off,
So 's to r'ar an' t'ar an' pitch,
Hit's to see some ign'ant white man
'Mittin' dat owdacious sin—
Wen he want to cook a possum
Tekin' off de possum's skin.
W'y dey ain't no use in talking',
Hit jes' hu'ts me to de heart
Fu' to see dem foolish people
Th'owin' 'way de fines' pa't.
W'y, dat skin is jes' ez tendah
An' ez juicy ez kin be;
I knows all erbout de critter—
Hide an' haih—don't talk to me!
Possum skin is jes lak shoat skin;
Jes' you swinge an' scrope it down,
Tek a good sha'p knife an' sco' it,
Den you bake it good an' brown.
Huh-uh! honey, you 's so happy
Dat yo' thoughts is 'mos' a sin
When you 's settin' dah a-chawin'
On dat possum's cracklin' skin.
White folks t'ink dey know 'bout eating',
An' I reckon dat dey do
Sometimes git a little idea
Of a middlin' dish er two;
But dey ain't a t'ing dey knows of
Dat I reckon cain't be beat
Wen we set down at de table
To a unskun possum's meat!
Small teeth can just as easily eat a whole animal as big teeth. Teeth aren't just used for chewing but for attacking and taking down prey. It was tools that allowed humans to take down prey without the need for biting that allowed smaller mouths to be evolutionarily OK.
And beyond that, COOKING the meat was far more advantageous than tools to slice it.
"Sliced bread makes us evolutionarily superior"
Yeesh.. this isn't science, this is drunken bar talk...
Knives don't really replace chewing, fire does that.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
It seemed patently obvious to me and should have been accepted fact 50 years ago, if not 100 years ago.
Humans can not live without knives and fire. We can't kill large animals or microscopic parasites because our biological tools for consuming unprepared foods are practically non-existent. But we evolved from animals that a) did not have fire or knives and b) have much better teeth, claws, and digestive systems that can handle a lot more than we can.
The obvious conclusion is that we must have lost our claws, teeth and seriously weakened our digestive systems after developing fire and knives, both of which are far better than the natural versions other primates have.
Next thing you know, someone is going to say that walking upright freed our hands to carry things, as if it's a big 'discovery'.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
And the other small factor they missed.. Cooking!
Cooking has a large known effect on consumption and abduction of food. Especially meat. Resulting in needing to eat less quantity and being easier to chew..
No.. That couldn't be a factor.. Must have been those thin slices. Sigh.
Chewing cooked food is much much easier.. Making a larger difference than sliced meat (you don't think stone tools produce nice thin slices do you?)
Sounds a lot like someone flash of the moment idea that they rushed to publish rather than something with much backing
To eat tough meat, chewing is almost futile. Grab one part in your hands, the other in your teeth, and tear it. That's what the canines are for, that's what wild predators like wolves and big cats do. The premise of the article is flawed by not considering all possibilities.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I don't spend this much time on many things like this but for some reason this came across as bad science.
A session with Google and no knowledge anthropology I found this:
Chimpanzee's habit was an entire Continent away from H. erectus
http://www.janegoodall.ca/abou...
(not that big of a deal we do have Hurricanes, Cyclones and Typhoons to mix the groups)
Chimpanzee's are a different time line than humans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So what do the modern apes—and in particular our closest relatives the chimpanzees and bonobos—eat? Plants. Yes, plants. ... But most chimps don’t eat such meaty treats often. Three percent of the average chimp diet comes from meat. On average, nine days a year are meat days for chimps.
http://blogs.scientificamerica...
Despite their hunting behavior, however, only a very tiny percentage–perhaps as small as two percent–of a wild chimp’s diet consists of meat or insects.
http://www.allaboutwildlife.co...
Google this phrase: what do you feed a chimpanzee - give one this blurb:
It also eats leaves and leaf buds. Seeds, blossoms, stems, pith, bark and resin, insects, and meat make up the rest of its diet. While the common chimpanzee is mostly herbivorous, it does eat honey, soil, insects, birds and their eggs, and small to medium-sized mammals, including other primates.
http://www.janegoodall.org/ is a worthless site unless you wish to give money.
Topic: H. erectus meat consumption is associated with __________.
Not one answer includes teeth
http://science-forums.com/inde...
The only thing that associates chimpanzee (meat eating) and evolve of humans jaws to is the submitted article itself.
So, sliced bread is the greatest thing since sliced bread, eh?
Table-ized A.I.
All the hominids with robust skulls and jaws are that old. Tool use did not change the anatomy of hominids when they were invented.
Fire was tamed some 500K years ago. There was a gradual change, even Homo sapien neanderthalis had less robust skulls than previous hominids. That was 200K years ago. The Homo sapien sapiens, anatomically modern human beings, also 200K years had definitely smaller jaws and teeth. It was due to fire, not due to tool use. Homo sapien skulls changed from "robust" to "gracile" gradually over the last 100K years. Definite evidence having a strong skull as protection against random enemy bashing the head with a stone tool was not that important. They attribute this change to either language or culture being developed that allowed less lethal interactions between strangers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So is religion. The only reason it's not a mental illness is that the definition of delusion explicitly exempts religion.
Still, there's millions of people suffering from it. And unlike homosexuality, millions who do not share that mental illness have to suffer from it, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Meat is tasty. 'nuff said.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually, being married and yet worried about the sexual identity of other people is not "normal" at all. It is indeed proof of being psychologically compromised. Negative emotions about things that don't relate to your life are harmful, abnormal, an aberration that is socially harmful to yourself, your family, and your community.
Also, believing that income of level n implies that you are not reducing your horizons is illogical and implies further dysfunction relating to your work life. If it is true that you're an engineer, you seem pretty narrow minded and uninterested in potentially superior thought patterns. That is disappointing if you truly work in an important industry.
You go astray when you just wave your hands and presume that it is not normal for some people to have good eyes, and some not to.
When you let accidental assumptions sneak in like that, you build a house of cards instead of a solid idea. The theory you claim at the start would actually be proof that is both normal and beneficial.
If you read the article, you might discover that sliced meat is technology, and luddites are stuck eating leaves and berries.
Can your app slice meat, or do you not know how to app with a rock? I can rock your apps with a rock, and rock doing it.
Primates only went up into the trees to eat the bugs, silly.
We "naturally" have eaten many things. For long periods it has been mostly meat. We're evolved to eat a wide variety of things "naturally."
I don't even eat mammal, and this is obvious stuff. Stop letting your moral decisions confuse your factual understanding of nature.
When we were cynodonts, we ate lots of meat.
bacon, is there anything it can't do?
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
Talking about "bad science"
Chimpanzee's habit was an entire Continent away from H. erectus
Huh? Homo Erectus finds very much overlap with even the modern Chimpanzee ranges in Africa you linked to, and it's not hard to imagine that Chimpanzees' range extended much further 2 million years ago than it does today.
Chimpanzee's are a different time line than humans
They covered that already - they're talking about our ancestors, who had chimp-like jaws: "all made possible by the same type of big teeth and large jaws our early ancestors had."
So what do the modern apes—and in particular our closest relatives the chimpanzees and bonobos—eat? Plants.
Again, already covered - "A new study credits the advent of simple stone tools to slice meat and pound root vegetables"
...and be human-smart? If I (still) had monkey teeth, would I still need a bottle opener?
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Since there is no sane reason to oppose something that doesn't affect you, I assumed that it needs a reason from lalaland.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.