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From the article: "Backing up this hypothesis is the fact that humans have relatively smaller large intestines than other primates. This indicates that our anc

From the article: "Backing up this hypothesis is the fact that humans have relatively smaller large intestines than other primates. This indicates that our ancestors were eating food that was already partly broken down by fermentation." IIRC another interpretation of the smaller large intestine is that early humans were eating more bioavailable food (i.e. meat) than other primates, which doesn't need to be broken down as much as more fibrous material (seeds, leaves, stalks etc). Can someone more knowledgable than me confirm or deny?

zer00eyz 3y ago
Were finding evidence of ... "milling for food dates back to the transitional period between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens." From: https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2023/06/19/the-old-grind-just-got-a-little-older/ https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2023/06/19/the-old... I just don't buy that fermentation from random food piles is a driver for evolution...
xenonite 3y ago
Fermented meat would be a combination of both interpretations.. (sausages etc)
wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
Yeah not sure I understand the entire idea behind correctly. To stick with other primates for now. Gorilla's have an obscene amount of muscles; adults need 8000 calories per day, compared to 2000-3000 calories for an adult human. Somewhere, even though they eat low bioavailable food, even though they had to eat all day the heave muscle guys & girls had better chances of survival. Why do we think the brain's need are more special then a feature like muscles? Am I missing something here? There is a decent amount of unfermented and uncooked food with lots of nutritional value a smarter brain can find, mainly meats (fatty parts especially) & nuts (if you are smart enough to open them), that would relatively on parr with the Gorilla way. I'm sure as soon as tools, fire etc, became part of human culture it became even easier for those with more intelligence to became favorable. But that also needed to be in line with the development of more complicated social structures, either genetically or culturally.
- toxik 3y ago
  Generally, the great apes are better adapted to plant diets, humans are better adapted for eating meat. Gorillas eat leaves and pith, and A LOT of it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964658/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964658/
  - berkes 3y ago
    Yes. But the parent commentor asked "why". As in: why can a gorilla sustain it's immense needs to build muscles by eating a lot, but humans cannot do this to build a large brain? To ask that question differently: why would humans need to change to meat/fermentation/cooking in order to grow brains, if they could "just" eat more, as other primates do?
    - Tor3 3y ago
      Humans (since Erectus) _can't_ eat more. We don't have a big enough ingestion system for that. Our guts are tiny compared to other great apes. We're completely unable to survive on what chimpanzees eat, not to mention gorillas. The fire/cooked food hypothesis (and now this speculative one about fermented food) is that it made it possible to greatly reduce the guts, as well as chewing muscles. More calories and better nutrients (both cooking and fermentation greatly improves the nutritional value of many foods), and less need of energy for guts is what's supposed to be the driver here (and seafood has also been mentioned as a possible source of important amino acids which is necessary for brain development)
      - AlecSchueler 3y ago
        Sounds like "standing up" was the real pivotal moment.
      - wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
        but we can, you can perfectly fine live on raw meat (pork back fat) nuts etc. And Guts also shrank because they could. It sounds to me like this part mostly came after we learned to cook, then the body didn't need to waste energy on large complex guts. Hugely complicated brains such as Elephants & Whales do just fine on raw food diets.
arp242 3y ago
The paper addresses that, the tl;dr is that there is no evidence for hunting from this time period and that scavenging wouldn't have provided enough meat to make a substantial difference. It's of course entirely possible that both fermented foods and a meat diet were pivotal, just at very different time periods and in different contexts.
depressedpanda 3y ago
Yes, meat being the driver is the more common (and simpler) explanation for our smaller intestines and larger brains. I guess plantbasednews.org just accidentally left this alternative explanation out. That said, fermented foods could very well have played a part in it.
- 0xEF 3y ago
  Likely more accurate. I'm not sure why anyone thinks any surviving development in an organism is due to this "one weird trick" thing, as opposed to a multitude of factors that rendered that organism fit for their environment, at least enough to pass said development on, anyway. Meat, fermented foods, fire, and a slew of other variables likely played a role. Talking about evolution as though there was some single exploding popcorn kernel that caused change is a pretty narrow take on things. Sites like the one in the link only serve to perpetuate such shallow thinking on the matter, and in this case, likely to push a narrative.
  - throwup238 3y ago
    > Talking about evolution as though there was some single exploding popcorn kernel that caused change is a pretty narrow take on things. That’s kind of one of the predominant theories in evolution though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium > Eldredge and Gould proposed that the degree of gradualism commonly attributed to Charles Darwin is virtually nonexistent in the fossil record, and that stasis dominates the history of most fossil species. The theory deals with the morphology of animals in the fossil record but that’s the gist of it: the actual evolution happens really fast, usually to adapt to a large environmental change, and species enter a stable state where they very slowly change if at all.
    - _0ffh 3y ago
      > the actual evolution happens really fast With the qualification, that they can be "fast" in geological time scales, which are rather big. It might look like rapid change in the fossil record, but that is a very compressed representation.
xenonite 3y ago
Josef H. Reichholf, a German evolutionary biologist, writes that the first grain cultivations were not as nutritious and productive as they are today. His thesis is that grains were first used in fermentation – not for food, but alcohol consumption, along with other drug substances like poppy, betel nut, coca and others. Then, storage of these (luxury) goods reduced mobility of hunters and gatherers, which led them to settle down (still eating mostly a hunter and gatherer diet). His book "Warum die Menschen sesshaft wurden" is summarized in https://oe1.orf.at/artikel/213690/Warum-die-Menschen-sesshaft-wurden https://oe1.orf.at/artikel/213690/Warum-die-Menschen-sesshaf... For a scientific journal reference, see "The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities. New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey", Antiquity (2012), https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00047840 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00047840
chewz 3y ago
It seems that humans got Ruminococcus hominiciens (bacteria that is pivotal for brealing down celulosis) only after domesticating cows etc. > Our evolutionary analysis strongly suggests that R[uminococcus] hominiciens likely originated in the ruminant gut and later transferred to humans, possibly during domestication. > The human-associated strains possess functional adaptability highlighted by the acquisition of genes that can degrade specific plant fibers of monocots such as maize, rice, and wheat—major components of the human diet. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj9223 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj9223
goalieca 3y ago
Cooked food, including meat, is hypothesized as the reason for a smaller digestive track. Of course, this needs fire.
ergonaught 3y ago
Why not just read the actual study, to which the article links, and discuss that? "One such proposed dietary change is increased meat eating, which has been argued to have been central to human evolution" Behold the long comment train on a tangent unrelated to the study.
Ensorceled 3y ago
> IIRC another interpretation of the smaller large intestine is that early humans were eating more bioavailable food (i.e. meat) than other primates, which doesn't need to be broken down as much as more fibrous material (seeds, leaves, stalks etc). Can someone more knowledgable than me confirm or deny? Yep, it's also why the Giant Panda needs to eat so much bamboo in a day, they also have a carnivore-like short gastrointestinal tract. The idea that humans were fermenting via persistent food caches a million years before we discovered fire, and doing it consistently enough to affect brain evolution is, well, a stretch.
- multjoy 3y ago
  Why?
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  Why is that a stretch? At a warm room temp fermentation is quite noticeable after 18 hours in a lot of raw edible plants. As little as 6-8 for some of them. You don't need a cache, simply carrying leftovers with you for the next morning would be enough. It's not a big stretch that a resource you would have to go alarmingly out of your way to avoid (by destroying edible food after gorging) would come before fire. This is related to what I've heard called the carrier bag theory. Once you can acquire food, the next technological step is being able to bring it with you. A gourd, a large folded leaf is sufficient. Once you're doing that fermentation is inevitable.
  - Ensorceled 3y ago
    > Why is that a stretch? Because you need to do it over generations, so consistently that it effects the species evolution, selecting for a developing brain you can't support without the fermentation. Similar developments, such as lactose tolerance, required a society that had already domesticated lactating animals.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      Yeah I get that, it still doesn't seem like a big leap to me. Fermentation is just the early curve of the spoilage processes. All you need to exploit it is continued access to food you acquired recently.
happytiger 3y ago
It’s actually discussed in the paper. > Explanatory power compared to other hypotheses > The emergence of meat-eating, tuber-harvesting, and cooking have all been proposed to account for human brain expansion; why should our just-so story be given any additional credence? Below, we consider several explanatory advantages of the External Fermentation Hypothesis versus other current hypotheses. https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-05517-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-05517-3

zer00eyz 3y ago

Were finding evidence of ... "milling for food dates back to the transitional period between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens." From: https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2023/06/19/the-old-grind-just-got-a-little-older/ https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2023/06/19/the-old... I just don't buy that fermentation from random food piles is a driver for evolution...

xenonite 3y ago

Fermented meat would be a combination of both interpretations.. (sausages etc)

wouldbecouldbe 3y ago

Yeah not sure I understand the entire idea behind correctly. To stick with other primates for now. Gorilla's have an obscene amount of muscles; adults need 8000 calories per day, compared to 2000-3000 calories for an adult human. Somewhere, even though they eat low bioavailable food, even though they had to eat all day the heave muscle guys & girls had better chances of survival. Why do we think the brain's need are more special then a feature like muscles? Am I missing something here? There is a decent amount of unfermented and uncooked food with lots of nutritional value a smarter brain can find, mainly meats (fatty parts especially) & nuts (if you are smart enough to open them), that would relatively on parr with the Gorilla way. I'm sure as soon as tools, fire etc, became part of human culture it became even easier for those with more intelligence to became favorable. But that also needed to be in line with the development of more complicated social structures, either genetically or culturally.

toxik 3y ago
Generally, the great apes are better adapted to plant diets, humans are better adapted for eating meat. Gorillas eat leaves and pith, and A LOT of it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964658/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964658/
- berkes 3y ago
  Yes. But the parent commentor asked "why". As in: why can a gorilla sustain it's immense needs to build muscles by eating a lot, but humans cannot do this to build a large brain? To ask that question differently: why would humans need to change to meat/fermentation/cooking in order to grow brains, if they could "just" eat more, as other primates do?
  - Tor3 3y ago
    Humans (since Erectus) _can't_ eat more. We don't have a big enough ingestion system for that. Our guts are tiny compared to other great apes. We're completely unable to survive on what chimpanzees eat, not to mention gorillas. The fire/cooked food hypothesis (and now this speculative one about fermented food) is that it made it possible to greatly reduce the guts, as well as chewing muscles. More calories and better nutrients (both cooking and fermentation greatly improves the nutritional value of many foods), and less need of energy for guts is what's supposed to be the driver here (and seafood has also been mentioned as a possible source of important amino acids which is necessary for brain development)
    - AlecSchueler 3y ago
      Sounds like "standing up" was the real pivotal moment.
    - wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
      but we can, you can perfectly fine live on raw meat (pork back fat) nuts etc. And Guts also shrank because they could. It sounds to me like this part mostly came after we learned to cook, then the body didn't need to waste energy on large complex guts. Hugely complicated brains such as Elephants & Whales do just fine on raw food diets.

arp242 3y ago

The paper addresses that, the tl;dr is that there is no evidence for hunting from this time period and that scavenging wouldn't have provided enough meat to make a substantial difference. It's of course entirely possible that both fermented foods and a meat diet were pivotal, just at very different time periods and in different contexts.

depressedpanda 3y ago

Yes, meat being the driver is the more common (and simpler) explanation for our smaller intestines and larger brains. I guess plantbasednews.org just accidentally left this alternative explanation out. That said, fermented foods could very well have played a part in it.

0xEF 3y ago
Likely more accurate. I'm not sure why anyone thinks any surviving development in an organism is due to this "one weird trick" thing, as opposed to a multitude of factors that rendered that organism fit for their environment, at least enough to pass said development on, anyway. Meat, fermented foods, fire, and a slew of other variables likely played a role. Talking about evolution as though there was some single exploding popcorn kernel that caused change is a pretty narrow take on things. Sites like the one in the link only serve to perpetuate such shallow thinking on the matter, and in this case, likely to push a narrative.
- throwup238 3y ago
  > Talking about evolution as though there was some single exploding popcorn kernel that caused change is a pretty narrow take on things. That’s kind of one of the predominant theories in evolution though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium > Eldredge and Gould proposed that the degree of gradualism commonly attributed to Charles Darwin is virtually nonexistent in the fossil record, and that stasis dominates the history of most fossil species. The theory deals with the morphology of animals in the fossil record but that’s the gist of it: the actual evolution happens really fast, usually to adapt to a large environmental change, and species enter a stable state where they very slowly change if at all.
  - _0ffh 3y ago
    > the actual evolution happens really fast With the qualification, that they can be "fast" in geological time scales, which are rather big. It might look like rapid change in the fossil record, but that is a very compressed representation.

xenonite 3y ago

Josef H. Reichholf, a German evolutionary biologist, writes that the first grain cultivations were not as nutritious and productive as they are today. His thesis is that grains were first used in fermentation – not for food, but alcohol consumption, along with other drug substances like poppy, betel nut, coca and others. Then, storage of these (luxury) goods reduced mobility of hunters and gatherers, which led them to settle down (still eating mostly a hunter and gatherer diet). His book "Warum die Menschen sesshaft wurden" is summarized in https://oe1.orf.at/artikel/213690/Warum-die-Menschen-sesshaft-wurden https://oe1.orf.at/artikel/213690/Warum-die-Menschen-sesshaf... For a scientific journal reference, see "The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities. New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey", Antiquity (2012), https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00047840 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00047840

chewz 3y ago

It seems that humans got Ruminococcus hominiciens (bacteria that is pivotal for brealing down celulosis) only after domesticating cows etc. > Our evolutionary analysis strongly suggests that R[uminococcus] hominiciens likely originated in the ruminant gut and later transferred to humans, possibly during domestication. > The human-associated strains possess functional adaptability highlighted by the acquisition of genes that can degrade specific plant fibers of monocots such as maize, rice, and wheat—major components of the human diet. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj9223 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj9223

goalieca 3y ago

Cooked food, including meat, is hypothesized as the reason for a smaller digestive track. Of course, this needs fire.

ergonaught 3y ago

Why not just read the actual study, to which the article links, and discuss that? "One such proposed dietary change is increased meat eating, which has been argued to have been central to human evolution" Behold the long comment train on a tangent unrelated to the study.

Ensorceled 3y ago

> IIRC another interpretation of the smaller large intestine is that early humans were eating more bioavailable food (i.e. meat) than other primates, which doesn't need to be broken down as much as more fibrous material (seeds, leaves, stalks etc). Can someone more knowledgable than me confirm or deny? Yep, it's also why the Giant Panda needs to eat so much bamboo in a day, they also have a carnivore-like short gastrointestinal tract. The idea that humans were fermenting via persistent food caches a million years before we discovered fire, and doing it consistently enough to affect brain evolution is, well, a stretch.

multjoy 3y ago
Why?
giraffe_lady 3y ago
Why is that a stretch? At a warm room temp fermentation is quite noticeable after 18 hours in a lot of raw edible plants. As little as 6-8 for some of them. You don't need a cache, simply carrying leftovers with you for the next morning would be enough. It's not a big stretch that a resource you would have to go alarmingly out of your way to avoid (by destroying edible food after gorging) would come before fire. This is related to what I've heard called the carrier bag theory. Once you can acquire food, the next technological step is being able to bring it with you. A gourd, a large folded leaf is sufficient. Once you're doing that fermentation is inevitable.
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  > Why is that a stretch? Because you need to do it over generations, so consistently that it effects the species evolution, selecting for a developing brain you can't support without the fermentation. Similar developments, such as lactose tolerance, required a society that had already domesticated lactating animals.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    Yeah I get that, it still doesn't seem like a big leap to me. Fermentation is just the early curve of the spoilage processes. All you need to exploit it is continued access to food you acquired recently.

happytiger 3y ago

It’s actually discussed in the paper. > Explanatory power compared to other hypotheses > The emergence of meat-eating, tuber-harvesting, and cooking have all been proposed to account for human brain expansion; why should our just-so story be given any additional credence? Below, we consider several explanatory advantages of the External Fermentation Hypothesis versus other current hypotheses. https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-05517-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-05517-3