The advent of several early Homo morphological changes is due to the increased availability of nutrients in the foods that they ate, primarily due to the cooking of these foods. The decrease in the size of the organs involved in digestion and the increase in brain size are due to several converging factors that accentuate each other in a constant feedback loop. Raw plant foods were the majority of early hominid diets and tubers were particularly important and the cooking of these foods would cause a substantial increase in digestibility and increase the amount of plant foods available for early hominids. Also, the increased eating of meat alone, without cooking would have smaller effects on nutrition than the adoption of cooking. This
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When cooking meat, the heat breaks down the collagen in animal flesh and by eating cooked food less energy is expended on digestion and this energy can therefore be used for other activities and growth (Gibbons 2007). As the quality of the diet increased this eventually led to a reduction of the size of the digestive tract and by freeing up those extra calories this allowed the other energy expensive organ, the brain, to grow.
Evidence of widespread habitual cooking in ovens or hearths is found no earlier than 250,000 years ago, charred bones ash and charcoal have been found at sites throughout Europe dating to 300,000 – 500,000 years ago, and charred wood in a hearthlike pattern have been found in Israel dating back to 790,000 years ago (Gibbons 2007). But these dates are long after the anatomical changes seen in Homo erectus, this is possibly due to the inherent difficulty in finding preserved evidence of the controlled use of …show more content…
There is a gap of almost 1 million years between when the morphological changes are seen and the evidence supporting the use of fire. I believe the comparison to modern primates and the scientific data on the properties of cooked food is conclusive in showing that these anatomical changes could not have happened simply with the eating of raw foods cut into smaller pieces, but that these foods were
When cooking meat, the heat breaks down the collagen in animal flesh and by eating cooked food less energy is expended on digestion and this energy can therefore be used for other activities and growth (Gibbons 2007). As the quality of the diet increased this eventually led to a reduction of the size of the digestive tract and by freeing up those extra calories this allowed the other energy expensive organ, the brain, to grow.
Evidence of widespread habitual cooking in ovens or hearths is found no earlier than 250,000 years ago, charred bones ash and charcoal have been found at sites throughout Europe dating to 300,000 – 500,000 years ago, and charred wood in a hearthlike pattern have been found in Israel dating back to 790,000 years ago (Gibbons 2007). But these dates are long after the anatomical changes seen in Homo erectus, this is possibly due to the inherent difficulty in finding preserved evidence of the controlled use of …show more content…
There is a gap of almost 1 million years between when the morphological changes are seen and the evidence supporting the use of fire. I believe the comparison to modern primates and the scientific data on the properties of cooked food is conclusive in showing that these anatomical changes could not have happened simply with the eating of raw foods cut into smaller pieces, but that these foods were