Review : Neanderthal Chefs Spiced Up Their Diet

Animal meat has all necessary nutrients, especially protein that is necessary for the human body to grow and function properly. Besides, it plays a vital role in brain development. As suggested by Smil (2013), “Killing animals and eating meat have been significant components of human evolution…have inevitably contributed to the evolution of human intelligence…” (p.1). According to the findings of the University of Colorado (2012), anthropologists have excavated a toddler’s “skull fragment” in Tanzania that is the abnormally tiny size of skull, due to a protein deficiency in the diet and led to youth mortality; this condition was very rare in 1.8 million years ago. This indicates that animal meat is a paramount in the human body, without the essential amino acids that exists in animal meats; human evolution cannot happen (p.1).

An Edible History of Humanity is a book written by Tom Standage. It was first published on in 2009 by Walker & Co in the English language. The book is divided into six parts covering twelve chapters. It talks about the civilization of man from Old Stone Age during hunting and gathering all the way to present-day day. In this book, Standage describes how the development of food production has contributed to the civilization of humans (Standage, 113). He also outlines the role of food in the existence of humankind. The main theme in this text surrounds’ the history of man painting food as the tool in industrial evolution, civilization and how it impacts wars, as well as ecological competition. Standage concludes that food is the key cause of

Hunter-gatherers consumed at least 80 different types of plants and possibly many more. They had a great deal of variety in their diet and had no lack of vitamins or minerals.

Standage, Tom. An Edible History of Humanity. (Ed) New York: Walker and Company, 2010, Print.

As omnivorous beings, it seems that is both a blessing and a curse to have such a vast amount of meal choices to choose from. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan explores the majority of these options and offers a sort of guide on how to make a choice. The UC Berkeley Graduate School journalism professor takes us on an eye-opening ride with this book where we find out horrifying truths on the ingredients of the foods we eat every day and whether our choices benefit our bank accounts more than they do our health and the earth.

The Ted X Talk, Tracking ancient diseases using…plaque, with Christina Warinner as the speaker focused on explaining one innovative way to move past the challenges associated with studying diet, infection and immunity of our ancestors. Warinner is an archaeological geneticist at the Center for Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich. She studies how humans co-evolved with their environment, diets and disease by looking at the skeletal and mummified remains of ancient humans. In her Ted X Talk given in Long Beach, California in March 2012 she provided explanations for the difficulties researchers are faced with, the description of the new implementation of Warinner and her team and the results that were found, Warinner shares with others how the evolutionary history of health and human disease is being investigated.

By examining Neanderthal tools and utensils one can gain an understanding of the complexity of

The ability to cook with fire separates human beings from animals. Pollan was searching for a new way to indulge in the flavor he had never experienced before. He wanted to learn about the whole hog barbecue experience. Pollan used humor effectively to describe the origin of cooking with fire. For example, he defined a shift in human history occurring because some prehistoric person decided that they did not, in fact, need to urinate on fire and put it out. Human self-control led to human control of fire.

The prevalence of diseases in the Western world that are affected by our diet have caused us to re-examine what we eat. The discordance hypothesis proposed by Eaton and Konner explains simply that what we are adapted to eat is in discordance with our modern diet. (Eaton & Konner 1985). Comparative studies have been done on primate and human diets to better elucidate the origins of our diet and how modern deviations affect us. In this paper I will examine what we have learned about the evolutionary history of our diet based on studying primates and how this effects our understanding of disease processes caused by our modern, Western diet.

The upbringing of Neanderthal children is believed by some scientists to have been harsh. High activity levels and frequent periods of scarcity form part of the basis for this interpretation. However, such trials in childhood may not be distinctive from the normal experiences of early modern human children, or those of hunter-gatherers in particularly cold environments. There is a crucial distinction to be made between a harsh childhood and a childhood lived in a harsh environment. Anatomical analyses of Neanderthal long bones have revealed that survival depended on adapting to high levels of activity and a rugged terrain. However, there is little to distinguish Neanderthal physical stamina from that of early modern humans. Both populations

So the lives of at least the survivins hunterFatheresaren't nastyand brutish,even though farmers have pushed them into some of the world's worst real estate.But modern hunter-gatherersocietiesthat have rubbed shoulders with farming societies for thousands of vears don't tell us about conditions befor€ the agricultural revolution. The progressivist riers is reallv making a claim about the distant past: that the lives of primitive people improved when they snitched from gathering to farming. Archaeologists can date that sv!'itchby distinguishing remains of wild plants and animals from thoseof domesticatedonesin prehistoricgarbage dumps. Horr' can one deduce the health of the orehistoric garbagemakers.and therebydirectly test the progressi\ist vierv? That question has become answerable onlv in recentvears,in part through the newly emerging techniquesof paleopathology, study of signs of the dirase in the remainsof ancientpeoples. In some lucky situations,the palmpathologist has almost as much material to study as a pathologist todav For example, archaeologistsin the Chilean deserts found well preserved mummies whose medical conditionsat time of death could be determinedby autopsv. And feces of long-dead Indians who lived in dry cavesin Nevada remain sufficientlywell preserved to be examinedfor hookworm and other parasites. Usually the only human remainsivailable for study are skeletons, they permit a surprising numbut ber of

There was an automatic click when food appeared on TV. There is no way to watch television without seeing a food that can make a person’s mouth water. The idea sparked to carry cooking on to television, starting as a simple way to share recipes, tips, and tricks with home-making mothers over the radio; the food and cooking industry has developed into a full-fledged entertainment basis for many Americans today. The evolution of cooking is positively influenced by the introduction of television and technology on American culture.

The rise of health concerns continues to proliferate throughout the country from increasing obesity rates to the astonishing number of our population with high blood pressure or diabetes. It’s enough to make anyone want to second-guess everything they eat and put in into their bodies. We ask our doctor’s, and ourselves “what can be done?” Eat right, and exercise. Those are the parameters for maintaining a healthy life. So it’s only natural that across the board we’ve got numerous exercise programs to help you lose weight fast or build lean muscle. Then we’ve got every diet under the sun, the no carb diet, high protein diet and all juice diets. Through research we can find and utilize programs and healthy habits that we can practice

Cooking is a vital, overlooked component necessary to accomplish every human’s basic fundamental needs to survive and reproduce. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, food is one of the factors that constructs the base of the pyramid’s physiological section (Myers 330). This section cannot be considered without its fundamental component, the act of cooking. Not only is this act executed in most human individuals’ everyday lifestyle, but has also increased their fitness in the course of time. In Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Humans by Richard Wrangham, Wrangham similar idea convinces me. Wrangham declares that it was fire and cooking that led to new crucial physical traits developed in humans. Whether fire was created as a

The diets of Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens are very different. The diet of the Homo sapiens shows how they were learning to adapt better to their environment, while the Neanderthals were very set in how they gathered food. Studies of nitrogen preserved in the bones of Neanderthals have shown that they consumed a substantial quantity of meat; “comparable to that eaten by contemporary wolves” (Delson et. al 2006). The current interpretation of the Neanderthal diet is that they “were most likely hunters rather than scavengers” (Delson et. al 2006). It was once thought that the Neanderthal diet was comprised mainly of meat due plant life being seasonal in the cold climate they inhabited. Evidence suggests however that the “Middle East Neanderthals ... living in the relatively warmest climate consume mostly meat” (Sawyer et al. 2007) proving that