Did Eating Meat Make Us Human? Don't Be So Sure, New Study Says

[Judi Lynn]

By Stephen Luntz
24 JAN 2022, 20:00

Some anthropologists have noted early evidence of meat-eating around the time Homo erectus evolved, which sported an exceptionally large brain for a creature of its size. The apparent correlation between these events has led both experts and ordinary observers to endorse the “Meat made us human” hypothesis. However, a reanalysis of these sites casts doubt on these conclusions, showing the association may be an illusion based on biased site sampling.

The idea that large brains need animal protein (and a few micro-nutrients) to grow is so beguiling that the Australian Meat and Livestock industry ran a major campaign on it, fronted by Sam Neill fresh from playing Jurassic Park paleontologist Alan Grant.

Inevitably, vegetarians questioned the tagline of “Red Meat – We Were Meant To Eat It”. Now, a paper in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences reveals that the campaign's critics may have been right all along.

“Generations of paleoanthropologists have gone to famously well-preserved sites in places like Olduvai Gorge looking for — and finding — breathtaking direct evidence of early humans eating meat, furthering this viewpoint that there was an explosion of meat eating after 2 million years ago,” lead author Dr Andrew Barr of George Washington University said in a statement.

More:
https://www.iflscience.com/brain/did-eating-meat-make-us-human-dont-be-so-sure-new-study-says/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Eating meat may not have been as crucial to human evolution as we thought

Ancient humans definitely ate meat, but it probably didn't supersize their brains.

BY PHILIP KIEFER | PUBLISHED JAN 24, 2022 6:00 PM

The oldest evidence of Homo erectus comes from an arid hillside near the border of Ethiopia and Kenya. Though the 1.9-million-year-old fossil is only a tiny shard, more complete, if more recent individuals show that the species looked recognizably human. The species had long legs and short arms. Its face was flat, without a chimp-like snout. Behind that face was a hefty brain, bigger than that of any of its predecessors.

The question, then, is what forces shaped H. erectus, and further down the line, its descendant Homo sapiens.

One popular theory has it that a meat-heavy diet allowed H. erectus to invest in its brainpower. But a new report casts doubt on the basic evidence to support the idea.

The theory that a meaty diet allowed human brains to develop is sometimes called the “meat made us human” hypothesis. “One of the leading ideas is that if you switch from a plant-based diet towards a diet that’s rich in protein and fat, like eating meat and bone marrow from carcasses, you have the energy you need to feed a larger brain,” says Andrew Barr, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University, who studies the environment of early human evolution.

More:
https://www.popsci.com/science/eating-meat-human-evolution-study/

[multigraincracker]

2. I would think that different environments

required different strategies for survival.

[Botany]

3. I remember either reading or seeing something on human evolution that when early humanoids ....

.... migrated to the coasts of southern Africa and started eating seafood there was
a real growth spurt in human development because of all the proteins in the fish and
shellfish.

I think I will make some scampi tomorrow. My brain needs all the help it can get.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. Cooking food was crucial.

More to the point, there would not be one and only one thing that made us human. Lots of things came together: walking upright and getting out of trees, eating meat, cooking food, making tools. Language. Heck, language is probably the single most important thing that made us human. But again, probably not the only thing.