Food For Thought: Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter

[Mr. McD]

"What we think is that this dietary change around 2.3 million years ago was one of the major significant factors in the evolution of our own species," Aiello says.

That period is when cut marks on animal bones appeared — not a predator's tooth marks, but incisions that could have been made only by a sharp tool. That's one sign of our carnivorous conversion. But Aiello's favorite clue is somewhat ickier — it's a tapeworm. "The closest relative of human tapeworms are tapeworms that affect African hyenas and wild dogs," she says.

So sometime in our evolutionary history, she explains, "we actually shared saliva with wild dogs and hyenas." That would have happened if, say, we were scavenging on the same carcass that hyenas were.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128849908

[Ozymanithrax]

1. WWTMI...n/t

[Oregone]

2. Being homicidal made humans smarter

After mastering how to kill each other for power and joy, killing pigs was just good clean fun.

[kenny blankenship]

3. IBTVSB!

[provis99]

4. the headline is incorrect.

What the article is really saying is that cooking our food made us smarter, not eating meat.

[Silent3]

7. Most likely it's not either/or, but a feedback loop.

Where exactly it would have started, I can't guess, but perhaps a little scavenged meat helped us develop our brains, which helped us get smarter at scavenging and hunting for meat, which helped us get even smarter, which helped us figure out how to use fire to cook, which helped up get more nutrition out of both meat and vegetables, which in turn helped us get even smarter still.

[Igel]

13. It says both.

The headline is incomplete.

[SheilaT]

5. I was too lazy to click on the link,

but I've also read that the cooking of food was a huge improvement in our diet also. Particularly cooking meat. It made nutrition available to us that wasn't there before.

I don't mind that others choose to be vegetarian or vegan, but the truth is that we evolved as modern humans as meat eaters.

[theoldman]

6. Bigger brains are what made us smarter.

Brains require a lot of energy provided by meat, not vegetables. Make me wonder about vegetarians.

[handmade34]

8. always wondered why I have such a little head...

I would hazard a guess that we vegetarians are on the top of the intellectual chart... (it's all evolution, my friend)

[TZ]

14. uh since no one is born a vegetarian thats a bullshit statement

:eyes:

[handmade34]

16. I should have included...

a :-)

...and my children were born vegetarians... oh, maybe feeding off my body is like eating meat??

I really don't care what other people eat, except that I am concerned about the effect that mega animal factories have on the environment and global climate change (and that is a real problem)

[MichaelHarris]

9. you have

to be smarter to catch the little bastards before you can eat them.

[Curmudgeoness]

10. Finally, a good reason why I am not vegan. I get so tired

of trying to rationalize why I eat meat. Now I know.

[SocialistLez]

11. Eh...don't rationalize it

I get so sick of holier than thou vegetarians.

Different strokes for different folks.
Shut the fuck up and let me enjoy my burger.

[Curmudgeoness]

17. Ditto. Just have too many people close to me who will not eat meat.

or eggs, or dairy. God, how do they live with themselves killing those poor plants.

[SocialistLez]

18. My ex girlfriend was a vegetarian but NEVER commented on my diet.

I have a friend who is a vegetarian and is always trying to guilt trip me into being a vegetarian.

"Don't you feel bad that a poor chicken had to die for your meal?"
"Slaughterhouses are so horrible. How can you eat that?"

I also can't bring up zoos because that will end up with links from PETA about how horrible zoos are.

As the saying goes, you can win more bees with honey than vinegar.

[Odin2005]

12. The vegans will be flaming you in 3, 2, 1...

[Nihil]

20. Hopefully not for too long though ...

... as I prefer "medium-rare" to "black & crispy" ...

:hide:

[TZ]

15. I'm going to hazard a theory and say it was the HUNTING of animals

Not the actual eating that improved intelligence. If you notice, most pack hunters are considered highly intelligent and social animals. (wolves, orcas,dolphins)

[tinrobot]

19. It's also vitamin B12, which is essential for brain development.

You can't get B12 from plants. If you wanted a large brain, you had to eat meat.

Cooking is also a reason - it allows us to spend less time digesting food, so we can have smaller guts and bigger brains.

[Odin2005]

21. Don't forget trapping of small game!

That is thought to have been a mainly female job, especially in cooler climates, while the guys hunted the bigger things.