Quote:
Originally Posted by Riloux Gartier
The human brain began to grow when humans had to deal with increased social interaction. That social interaction tends to follow hunting, since unlike with gathering, huge ammounts of calories could be ingested in what were occasional bonanzas of meat. This led to an increase in the complexity of social behaviors, including finding how to rise in rank with procurement of meat and other animal products, which were rare, and a luxury... since meat was not nessesary for growth or development; but it was a rare case of having large ammounts of fats+protein calories for the group. It was the gatherings that resulted from harvests (of veggies) and finding meat that led to increased brain complexity, not the item being eaten. By that logic lions would be the most intelligent (at things like math and reading of all) animal on earth.
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Like Vegangelica mentioned, I think that what you write more supports what I wrote - that a meat diet has had tremendous importance to our evolution - than counter it. You write yourself that gatherings after hunting has promoted social interactions, although I would say the hunt itself must have promoted some as well. It takes a lot of cooperation from humans to hunt animals sometimes. To illustrate the point, it would take a lot of cooperation I'm sure to bring down a mammoth. Although I don't think our smartness is explained by any one thing, I think a lifestyle that involves hunting animals helps promote it more than one that has people gathering fruits and veggies.
Have you heard the argument that humans are highly undeveloped when born compared to an adult and that to become an adult, the brain has to go through much growth which requires a lot of B12 and other vitamins as well as proteins and fat? This is stuff you easily get from a meat diet, but not so easily from fruits and roots. The argument is that without meat and fat in our diets, we would be so contrained by our food that evolution to the current size of our brain wouldn't even be a likely possibility. It illustrates the importance of meat for eating in our evolution.
There's another point as well which relates more to behaviour which is that while our stomachs got smaller, our brains got bigger as we shifted from mainly plant diets to including more meat. When we were herbivores, we had to spend more time eating and more energy digesting as plants are tough to digest. Meat is more easily digestible, gives quick energy, gives you more time to do things other than think about the next meal and so on. A herbivore diet constraints animals in that they need to spend more time eating and digesting. Getting rid of this constraint allowed us to evolve other behaviours.
I can't say that all of this is true always and everywhere, but it seems logical to me and I'd like to see what others think about it.