The claim that the human brain has grown and evolved 'to hunt small and quick prey'
The human brain is said to have developed and increased in volume during
The evolution of the human trophic level during the Pleistocene --Ben-Dor --- American Journal of Physical Anthropology --Wiley Online Library
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.24247
What fueled humans' big brains? Controversial paper proposes new hypothesis. | Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/human-brain-evolution-prey-size.html
A hypothesis made by a research team led by Professor Lan Balkai of the Department of Archeology at Tel Aviv University is that 'human beings with larger brains were better at catching smaller prey, which improved their survival rates.' The research team also hypothesized that the capacity of the human brain, which was about 650 cubic centimeters 2 million years ago, grew to about 1300 cubic centimeters about 10,000 years before the food production revolution. I can explain it.
Professor Barkai said, 'Large food loss is considered to be a unified explanation for not only brain enlargement, but also many other changes in human biology and culture, and we see that large food loss is the brain. It claims to provide a good motivation for the development of. '
The research team's hypothesis was that, starting with
In addition, the researchers argue that humans are better at digesting fat than other primates, and that human physiology, such as stomach acid and intestinal structure, is the result of adaptation to eating fatty meats. doing.
However, giant herbivores weighing more than 1000 kg began to decline throughout Africa about 4.6 million years ago, and large herbivores weighing more than 350 kg also declined about 1 million years ago, the researchers say. It's not clear why the number of large herbivores has declined so rapidly, but the researchers speculate that it may be due to climate change or human hunting.
The reduction in giant herbivores that have low hunting costs and the ability to obtain fat and nutritious meat has forced humans to hunt small herbivores. Hunting small animals is more complex and difficult than hunting large animals, so the research team claims that 'evolutionary pressure' was put on the human brain to develop significantly.
The researchers claim that changes in tools and lifestyles actually give a glimpse of humanity's transition from large to small prey.
For example, Professor Barkai reports that elephant bones, which were extinct 400,000 to 200,000 years ago, were scattered in the settlement of Homo erectus as evidence that humans were actually hunting large herbivores. I will. Archaeologist Miki-Bendall, a member of the research team, also pointed out that the most recent human ancestors seemed to mainly eat deer.
Professor Barkai said that human ancestors acted significantly in the Pleistocene, including language, complex social structures, and the handling of fire, based on a single hypothesis that 'the human brain grew rapidly in response to hunting demands.' Can explain everything that changed.
by Henry Gilbert and Kathey Schick
However, there are voices who disagree with Professor Balkai's hypothesis. For example , Richard Potts, head of the Smithsonian Institution 's Human Origins Program and paleoanthropologist, said, 'There is a lot of controversy about this new hypothesis.'
According to Potts, it is unknown at the time of writing whether early humans were hunting giant herbivores. Although human cuts have been found in the bones of large herbivores, Potts said it is unknown whether humans killed giant herbivores or harvested meat.
'For example, Neanderthals who lived in Europe 400,000 years ago are thought to have been feeding on large animals in winter, but the same is not true in tropical Africa a million years ago,' said Potts. Maybe '
John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said, 'Both the mechanism of reduction of large herbivores and the expansion of brain volume have complicated backgrounds and draw a direct relationship between the two. 'We can't do that,' he said, but it's important to note the fact that humans may have hunted large herbivores during the Pleistocene. In human history. I think the role played by large herbivores will be discussed more and more in the future. '
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