Omnivorous, the reason our species is a success

[binary_star]

beef Wrote:

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> Binary star, gorillas also have a similar age for

> puberty among females, and in parts of Africa a

> similar life expectancy (barely 32 in Swaziland

> according to the CIA World Factbook, which is

> shocking). So I don't really see how this helped.

It probably helped as much as the incisors. Or omnivorism.

[Thomas Micklewright]

This threads like a gorilla fact book, very interesting.

[beef]

Hi Rosie, to quote from your same article "Chimpanzees are largely fruit eaters, and meat composes only about 3% of the time they spent eating overall, less than in nearly all human societies." Which is what I said.

You all seem to be arguing about teeth, meat and puberty and not really telling us how, relating to our species, these factors could have helped with our evolutionary success. I'd like a little more elucidation please.

Just to reiterate my original argument, I don't think it was teeth, omnivorism or puberty that helped us advance, but the way we prepared food through cooking and preservation. These methods meant we were able to extract a greater energy from foodstuffs and introduced pulses and grains into our diet.

This freed us from the tyranny of a hunter/forager lifestyle and fostered farming and a move away from feast/famine in early human society. I believe that this was the secret of our success.

[Alan Medic]

Heinz Wrote:

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> ibilly,

>

> The fact you can type a reply really does proves

> that we are the dominant, successful species. Let

> me know when you're budgie (or any other animal)

> does the same.

Most people in these parts know billy to be a goat. You are just jumping to conclusions Heinz. By the way, what type are you, old bean?

[Medium]

I agree with "beef" on the preservation argument. It was what also allowed humanity to expand all over the globe.

If you think about it, "omnivore" just means that you can eat anything, so when there was no meat, humans could still survive.

[Ted Max]

Just to reiterate my original argument, I don't think it was teeth, omnivorism or puberty that helped us advance, but the way we prepared food through cooking and preservation. These methods meant we were able to extract a greater energy from foodstuffs and introduced pulses and grains into our diet.

This freed us from the tyranny of a hunter/forager lifestyle and fostered farming and a move away from feast/famine in early human society. I believe that this was the secret of our success.

Have you read Richard Wrangham's Catching Fire?

[mockney piers]

"This freed us from the tyranny of a hunter/forager lifestyle and fostered farming and a move away from feast/famine in early human society. I believe that this was the secret of our success"

This is bit deterministic isn't it.

All our hominid contemporaries used fire and yet they all died out, so fire as the reason for our success must be incomplete at best.

[Ted Max]

Mockney, are you Steve Jones in disguise?

[mockney piers]

well, they are anagrams!!!

[beef]

Hi Ted,

Haven't heard of the book before, may check it out for some holiday reading.

Hi Mockney,

I did have food preservation and farming in my list also, I'm sure there are many other factors too, probably how we developed as social groups, how and where we travelled and our ability to use tools and think through problems. In all it was quite likely a gradual and inclusive process, one little step leading to another, one area opening up the next. Of course, all this is conjecture, none of us really know. It could have been aliens.

I don't believe it was omnivorism that helped us develop. Or teeth. Or sleeping with hebetic girls. Or Aliens.

[binary_star]

beef Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> You all seem to be arguing about teeth, meat and

> puberty and not really telling us how, relating to

> our species, these factors could have helped with

> our evolutionary success. I'd like a little more

> elucidation please.

>

> Just to reiterate my original argument, I don't

> think it was teeth, omnivorism or puberty that

> helped us advance, but the way we prepared food

> through cooking and preservation. These methods

> meant we were able to extract a greater energy

> from foodstuffs and introduced pulses and grains

> into our diet.

Sorry, my point about puberty was that it probably helped about as much as omnivorism, i.e. not all that much. It may have helped but didn't give us any special advantage. Anyway, moving on...

I don't think it was omnivorism, but I'm not sure it was just cooking either - didn't Neanderthal man cook? You don't see many of those about these days. I doubt it's possible to point one thing, it was probably a combination of many things - language, tools, cooking, fire. Other species have aquired these skills, but not to the same degree as humans. But although these skills might now be unique to humans, I don't *think* they were unique to homo sapiens. So Why did other early humans die out and us survive? Disease, competition from us?

[mockney piers]

In short nobody really knows, but it probably boils down to a bit of lots of reasons and a bit of luck.

Competition with us may have been a factor, breeding rates, adaptability to change, levels of tool usage, climate changes were almost certainly factors, we came pretty close to extinction ourselves during one of the hotter drier eras.

There are indications that there may have been interbreeding with neanderthals, so they may not be entirely gone but live on in bits of our dna.

Hell, lets chuck fire and omnivorousness in, who knows!!

[Brendan]

Fast food resturatns and guns.

And thumbs.

[binary_star]

And maybe our genocidal tendencies towards other hominids...

"An article in New Scientist (Vol. 186, No. 2504) gives the following account of folklore on Flores surrounding the Ebu Gogo: The Nage people of central Flores tell how, in the 18th century, villagers disposed of the Ebu Gogo by tricking them into accepting gifts of palm fiber to make clothes. When the Ebu Gogo took the fiber into their cave, the villagers threw in a firebrand to set it alight. The story goes that all the occupants were killed, except perhaps for one pair, who fled into the deepest forest, and whose descendants may be living there still."

(Homo floresiensis/Ebu Gogo weirdness from Wikipedia)

[beef]

An article in the paper today reporting on a paper in Science, obviously inspired by this thread.

It says that homosapien usurped the neanderthal because of greater numbers, food preservation and better weapons.

So we ate better, fought better and were better looking so shagged more!

Case closed!

[Huguenot]

I guess that's the point - there was such a range of critical factors without which homo sapiens couldn't have emerged - that each one of them simultaneously is not the key reason, and is the key reason.

Homo habilis was the first human species that has evidence of meat eating around 2.5m years ago, and a brain size of 800ccs. The next dominant species was Homo erectus - and that was the first species with extensive evidence of the use of fire, and a brain size of around 1000ccs

Homo sapiens has got a brain size of around 1400ccs.

There's consequently correlation between meat eating, cooking and brain size (which we assume reflects dominance, although it's not always the case). But correlation isn't causation, and we don't actually know that homo habilis gave rise to homo erectus.

One thing is clear, that big brains make huge energy demands.

It's pretty much confirmed biochemically that this energy couldn't have been delivered without a diet including meat, even though the energy itself comes from carbohydrates in low nutrient cereal crops.

This is because cereal crops could not have played a big part in diet without the high nutrient and protein delivery of meat.

In fact humans in developing parts of the world today still suffer from diseases like beri-beri and pellagra, which are caused by diets that are too much restricted to cereal crops and the consequent nutrition deficiencies.

In addition, the dense nutrition delivery of the meat/cereal combo freed up enormous amounts of time for early humans that would otherwise be spent eating (chimps spend 80%+ of their waking hours eating).

As any fule kno, the devil makes work for idle hands: all this free time would have leant itself very effectively to tool creation and warfare - both activites which enhance intellectual development.

Hence being omnivorous is critical to the development of homo sapiens, but not the only issue.

I usually hear these arguments as a dig at vegetarianism, but I don't think it's a very good one. Our insight and technology into nutrition mean that a meat diet is no longer critical to create the right blend of energy and nutrients.

However, I do note that vegetarians never seem very happy, so maybe this is meats real contribution to society ;-) *joke*