Would we be smart without meat?

[DC]

thanks for the many good answers, got a lot reading to do i think

its a bit like the chicken and egg question.

did we hunt and eat meat because we were smart or did we get smart because we ate meat

 

[Piscivore]

If the developing humans had ate fish instead of red meat wed all be geniuses.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Oh so just because you guys are smarter, you think that justifies the killings of cows and pigs? Oh so you think you're all a bunch of smart asses? So you think just because you're smarter than a chicken, that entitles you to go and kill it? So then you think murder and rape and pedophilia and terrorism are okay?? So you think you're smarter than Mother Nature???

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

thanks for the many good answers, got a lot reading to do i think

its a bit like the chicken and egg question.

did we hunt and eat meat because we were smart or did we get smart because we ate meat

I believe we needed to be smart enough to hunt an animal, but once we gained the meat diet, it enhanced even more our intelligence by becoming a higher nutrient for our brains. But I'd like some corroboration/expansion on this if possible.

 

[Michael Redman]

I've heard that cooking also led to further advances in communication, beyond the realm of pragmatic communication used in hunting and into the domain of storytelling, small talk, etc. Homonids who were able to do this around the campfire instead of bashing each other's heads in had an evolutionary advantage.

Too bad such hominids are so rare these days.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Oh so just because you guys are smarter, you think that justifies the killings of cows and pigs? Oh so you think you're all a bunch of smart asses? So you think just because you're smarter than a chicken, that entitles you to go and kill it? So then you think murder and rape and pedophilia and terrorism are okay?? So you think you're smarter than Mother Nature???

For the last time, YES!

 

[TimCallahan]

The late Dr. Louis S. B. Leaky chased down and killed a Thomson's gazelle with his bare hands, but was unable to skin it with his teeth. He surmised from this that the first stone tools were used for skinning game. So hunting could have stimulated wider tool use, along with cooperative behavior.

Another anecdote that may have bearing on this is that Jane Goodall observed that when a dominant male chimpanzee found a less dominant male eating a choice bunch of bananas, he wouldn't hesitate to take them away from away from the less dominant chimp. However, when a less dominant male killed a small animal, the dominant male would actually beg the less dominant chimp for some of the meat. It is interesting to note that while chimp society is rigidly hierarchical, most human hunter / gatherer societies are intensely egalitarian. It is possible, therefore, that eating meat stimulated a radical change in human society. This might have helped shift selective pressure from favoring the males who were the best bullies to favoring those with greater intellect.

Of course, both of these speculations are based on anecdotal material. Thus, I offer them only as tentative hypotheses.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

For the last time, YES!

Bite me

 

[bluesjnr]

To successfully kill large animals people needed
1. Complex language
2. The ability to predict what everyone else will do. This includes the potential meat.
3. Social pecking order. This means who gives orders to whom.
4. A group of 50+ people in a tribe.
5. The ability to make tools.

I cried when I thought about the poor starving tribes of 49 people who didn't have an MDC potential tribe member.

 

[Bikewer]

Oh come on. We all know it was the big musical monolith and the bright idea to whack a tapir over the head with a femur...