Human Evolutionary History

Cooking

  • Provides more energy
  • Is universal
  • Exclusively raw diet renders females infertile

Meat diet

  • Provides more energy
  • Vitamins A and B are essential and only found in meat
  • Small intestine dominates vs colon in other apes

Cooking & carnivorous → more energy for larger brain
Neoteny of cranium → space for bigger brain
Slow development → time for learning to max the advantages of big brains

Water habitat?

  • Need for water
  • Tendency to sweat
  • Adaptation to a diet rich in the oils and fats of fish
  • Rather good at swimming

Alcohol

fermented liquids are relatively clean and sterile.

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But foraging, nomadic people not only could not grow the crops to ferment; they did not need the sterile liquid. They lived at low densities and natural water supplies were safe enough. So it is little wonder that the natives of Australia and North America were and are especially vulnerable to alcoholism and that many cannot now ‘hold their drink’.

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