Meat-Eating and Human Evolution edited by Craig Stanford and Henry Bunn,
Oxford University Press, 拢55, ISBN 0195131398
MEAT-EATING maketh man? Of all our relatives among the monkeys and apes, we
humans eat the most meat. It forms between 20 and 50 per cent of our diet, while
our cousins are predominantly veggies. Common chimps are one of the few
relatives who also like the odd steak tartare, but it鈥檚 only a tiny part of
their diet鈥攁bout 5 per cent. Because we share a common ancestor with them,
it is likely that an ancient relative, living around 6 million years ago, also
had a taste for raw flesh.
Meat-Eating and Human Evolution asks when our ancestors became serious
meat-eaters and what impact the carnivorous habit had on our evolution. A series
of fascinating and scholarly essays, designed for students but accessible to the
general reader, explore issues such as whether hunting and meat consumption were
the crucible of human intelligence or held society together. Fossil evidence of
meat-eating is picked over, as is the difficulty of finding a suitable model for
ancient carnivores. Were the ancestors more like dogs, pigs or lions? Were they
scavengers, opportunists or outright killers? How can we find this out? What can
human foragers such as today鈥檚 Hadza people tell us about the meat-eating habits
of our ancestors? The present consensus is that increasing meat consumption
fuelled the evolution of big-brained babies that cost their mothers so much
nutritionally. I think it鈥檚 also made us the paradoxical beasts we are: very
successful and sociable, but aggressive when fighting for limited resources.
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