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How Cheese, Wheat and Alcohol Shaped Human Evolution
- movedx 9y agoAnd coffee. Much later, of course, but coffee took us out of our drunken state into a hightened sense of mental acuity.
- quickthrower2 9y agoAnd beer helps one get back to sleep at the end of it all.
- LifeLiverTransp 9y agohttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9826240 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9826240 Oh, yes the glorious battle of englightment- awaking from the beverages of medieval times. If only history was that clear cut. It turns out coffee send some shizos into revolutionary overdrive, supresses anxiety and thus allows a mumbling bundle, to develop into a paranoia-ignoring, revolutionary zealot, capable to incite others- even though there exist no plan, not strategy and sometimes even quite progressive kings or queens, battling with trader aristocracys who want to keep the peasants uneducated. TL,DR; New substances have funny side-effects. PS: Also alcohol is my favourite suspect when it comes to the question- why did humanity settle down? Harvest the wild wheat and move on like a true nomad- or stay and grow it.. Nothing that ingenious and labourfull then a unwillingly sobber alcoholic. But it does not make for nice museum texts: "Here we see the first settlements- men settled down, because they where thirsty and needed the wheat and barley, and a nomadic existance was cumbersome with all those earthen kegs to move around."
- org3432 9y agoCan't wait for browsers to start blocking overlays
- benbristow 9y agoI'd like them to start blocking those pointless notification prompts too
- dawnerd 9y agojust did this in chrome, settings, search notifications, toggle ask so it says 'Blocked' I don't get why every site out there thinks I want notifications.
- flukus 9y agoLooks like it can't be disabled for any of googles own products.
- tzahola 9y agoWhat did you expect from a browser made by an advertisement company?
- benbristow 9y agoI like notifications for some websites though so don't want to block them fully. Facebook/Messenger spring to mind for notifications I actually want.
- 0xffff2 9y agoFirefox just added the ability to disable these prompts in today's release.
- newnewpdro 9y agoIt's not like people suffering from celiac's disease and eating gluten fail to thrive in our society. They still reproduce and raise families, most people do. How is evolution going to improve that situation?
- portofcall 9y agoEvolution doesn’t work like that, it’s not a force with goals except reproductive fitness. In this case our society compensates for their issues, and their reproductive fitness is maintained. In the wild they would disproportionately starve and die, and that would also be a valid evolutionary response. It may also be thst gluten intolerance doesn’t particularly matter to rates of reproduction before it kills you, outside of civilization. If what kills you does so after you pass your genes along, evolution doesn’t even notice. There might be some hidden benefit too, such as with sickle cell and malaria, or more commonly the defective genes are part and parcel of a critical system.
- lxmorj 9y agoFood intolerances could help discourage monoculturing, which is a pretty systemic risk to the food supply.
- overcast 9y agoSeeing as we're the only species on this planet that keeps the sick/weak/disabled alive to reproduce. It doesn't fair well in the long term.
- DoubleCribble 9y agoAlso the only one where the infertile & the dead can reproduce, sometimes together (in vitro + sperm donor). Natural selection has been dealt a mortal blow.
- danieltillett 9y agoIn the long term we can correct all genetic faults with technology. Natural selection is a very crude tool. What we have more of an issue is smart people are not having children, or not having as many as they can. The only resource in short supply on the planet is smart people.
- fauria 9y agoIf you are interested in the link between human evolution and food, I highly recommend the documentary 'Cooked', by Michael Pollan: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5347906/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5347906/
- devmunchies 9y agoOne of the things that bothers me most about modern food culture is the lack of reverence for the animal that was slaughtered for you to enjoy. With that said, I actually think he did a good job showing gratitude for the animal in that docu-series. Its the least meat eaters can do for themselves. (I follow the plant-based diet)
- subpixel 9y agoOn that note, the cover of this very popular book makes my skin crawl: https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Her-Pig-Recipes-Stories/dp/0062003968 https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Her-Pig-Recipes-Stories/dp/00620... Not because the pig is dead. I have no bacon if the pig is not dead. But because it's draped over her shoulders like a garland.
- megaman22 9y agoThat's sort of the only ergonomic way for one person to carry a dressed animal of that size. It's just a fireman's carry.
- euyyn 9y agoHow should I properly revere the plant that was killed for me to enjoy, if I followed the plant-based diet?
- devmunchies 9y agoI'll respond to your tu quoque with some very relevant quotes. Charles Darwin: "There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties . . . The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery." Leo Tolstoy: "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral." Carl Sagan: "Humans–who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals–have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and “animals” is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them–without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us."
- ctdonath 9y agoA History of the World in Six Glasses https://smile.amazon.com/History-World-6-Glasses-ebook/dp/B002STNBRK/ref=carldonath https://smile.amazon.com/History-World-6-Glasses-ebook/dp/B0...
- wgj 9y agoPutting Amazon affiliate links in forum posts is against their terms of service.
- condour75 9y agoI'm still feeling guilty about how they shaped my weekend.
- VeejayRampay 9y agoProps to the fungi making it happen.
- mackrevinack 9y agoha yea the fungi really dont get enough credit. they did a lot to make the planet habitable back in the day before much else existed on land and then much later on you have mushrooms entering the early human's diet causing all sorts of eh, "trouble"