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> A big reason humans developed our modern brains ~35kya is because of them cooking food (which makes digestion on proteins easier on the stomach) Probably a b

by yumraj 4y ago

> A big reason humans developed our modern brains ~35kya is because of them cooking food (which makes digestion on proteins easier on the stomach) Probably a bizarre question/thought experiment , and no way we'll know in our lifetime - if we start feeding cooked food to some animal, will it develop a larger brain?

chitowneats 4y ago
My guess is that it would depend on the animal. Most carnivore stomachs are highly optimized for digesting raw meat. My layman's understanding is that because humans are fairly balanced omnivores, we get more benefit from cooking meat.
- glyphosate 4y ago
  The pH of human stomach acid is on par with that of many scavengers, such as vultures. Anthropological evidence indicates that early hominids, as they began their transition to a more carnivorous diet, were feeding on the left overs from other carnivorous predators - which would explain the need for such an extremely acidic stomach
  - chitowneats 4y ago
    Interesting!
  - schrodinger 4y ago
    Fascinating, does that mean vultures are just as susceptible to e.coli, salmonella, etc as we are? I always presumed they could handle "slightly spoiled" meat without food poisoning better than us.
sonofhans 4y ago
Only if it _needed_ a larger brain to get that cooked food. Humans feed cooked food to ourselves, and our big brain helps us to discover and remember new sources of food, and how they need to be treated to become edible (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Toxicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Toxicity). Without this pressure it’s hard to see how plentiful, nutritious food would do anything other than make the animal sedentary, slow, and stupid (e.g., to one degree or another, koalas, sloths, gorillas, modern humans).
AlotOfReading 4y ago
No, there has to be selective pressure if we're not just talking about random drift. For hominids, sophisticated brains have been an incredibly rewarding evolutionary strategy despite the staggeringly expensive energetic costs they incur. Foraging is an intellectually demanding activity as we do it, so anything evolution can do from minimizing other expensive tissues (expensive tissue hypothesis) to high calorie oriented food selection to prosociality feeds back into improving fitness. The timeline is pretty suspect there though. 35kya is far, far too late for any sort of behavioral modernity as that term is typically used.
jjtheblunt 4y ago
perhaps (and i don't know) the added nutrition from eating cooked food had greater benefit at time T for individuals with slightly better brains via natural variation a la genetics/mutation...and if so they'd slightly be more active and slightly be more reproductive, correlating advent of cooked food with improving brains, but not as causally as suggested?

by yumraj 4y ago

chitowneats 4y ago

My guess is that it would depend on the animal. Most carnivore stomachs are highly optimized for digesting raw meat. My layman's understanding is that because humans are fairly balanced omnivores, we get more benefit from cooking meat.

glyphosate 4y ago
The pH of human stomach acid is on par with that of many scavengers, such as vultures. Anthropological evidence indicates that early hominids, as they began their transition to a more carnivorous diet, were feeding on the left overs from other carnivorous predators - which would explain the need for such an extremely acidic stomach
- chitowneats 4y ago
  Interesting!
- schrodinger 4y ago
  Fascinating, does that mean vultures are just as susceptible to e.coli, salmonella, etc as we are? I always presumed they could handle "slightly spoiled" meat without food poisoning better than us.

sonofhans 4y ago

Only if it _needed_ a larger brain to get that cooked food. Humans feed cooked food to ourselves, and our big brain helps us to discover and remember new sources of food, and how they need to be treated to become edible (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Toxicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Toxicity). Without this pressure it’s hard to see how plentiful, nutritious food would do anything other than make the animal sedentary, slow, and stupid (e.g., to one degree or another, koalas, sloths, gorillas, modern humans).

AlotOfReading 4y ago

No, there has to be selective pressure if we're not just talking about random drift. For hominids, sophisticated brains have been an incredibly rewarding evolutionary strategy despite the staggeringly expensive energetic costs they incur. Foraging is an intellectually demanding activity as we do it, so anything evolution can do from minimizing other expensive tissues (expensive tissue hypothesis) to high calorie oriented food selection to prosociality feeds back into improving fitness. The timeline is pretty suspect there though. 35kya is far, far too late for any sort of behavioral modernity as that term is typically used.

jjtheblunt 4y ago

perhaps (and i don't know) the added nutrition from eating cooked food had greater benefit at time T for individuals with slightly better brains via natural variation a la genetics/mutation...and if so they'd slightly be more active and slightly be more reproductive, correlating advent of cooked food with improving brains, but not as causally as suggested?