Thursday, February 23, 2012

What would humans today look like if prehistoric hominids ate a vegetarian or vegan diet?

Certainly weaker and smaller than present-day humans?What would humans today look like if prehistoric hominids ate a vegetarian or vegan diet?
There would be no human species because they didnt farm then and they wouldnt have a good source of proteinWhat would humans today look like if prehistoric hominids ate a vegetarian or vegan diet?
Hominids developed their larger brain due to the extra protein they obtained from meat. The brain continued to increase in size due to increased abilities to obtain meat and vice versa. They could not have migrated to northern climates where plant matter was not available in the colder months. Lack of a whole foods supermarket would have probably caused vegans to starve to death.

Edit:

I should add that fire %26amp; the ability to cook food negated the need for heavy jaws %26amp; jaw muscles along with heavy skull bones to anchor those muscles. Astrlapiticus robustus appears to have been a vegan that died out some 3 mllion years ago. The size of teeth %26amp; jaws would have limited brain size.What would humans today look like if prehistoric hominids ate a vegetarian or vegan diet?
I'd say that brain size and the relation to omnivorous diet would be that hominids who were the most successful predators were the most innovative and intelligent, in technology and methods for hunting. (logic, deception%26gt; trapping, luring prey).



More efficiency in food gathering and tech. skills put intelligent hominids at a much better advantage for survival and coping, thus outliving less innovative hominids in times of calamity.. (natural selection=bottlenecks where a significant portion of the species dies off, eliminating them from the gene pool)



I don't think that evolution happens in a magical 'you become what you eat' sort of way where protein makes your brain grow bigger. Animals can not genetically modify themselves in successive generations through conscious behaviors-- evolution happens because external elements neatly trim out parts of a gene pool because they fail to cope with a situation that causes a bottleneck (disasters=flood, drastic climate change, epidemic.. etc)... those who are left usually carry a trait that has benefitted them that the others didn't have, and life goes on.



To get back to your question, I'm pretty sure a fair amount of hominids suvrived on a veg/vegan diet out of necessity... but we are carnivorous and hunting animals by instinct and the build of our digestive tract. . . .I really couldn't imagine an alternative to omnivorous lifestyle. Physically, we'd probably have less sharp/colorful vision (an asset of hunting), and maybe we'd still be up in the trees... way more agile than we are now. I could safely say we'd be a fair bit gentler too. We probably wouldn't have as many wars and sadomasochistic people... but life would be more dull . . . :pWhat would humans today look like if prehistoric hominids ate a vegetarian or vegan diet?
In a 'nutshell': earlier, related species to 'us' that have been found in the fossil record are no longer with us precisely because they were vegetarians! They were outcompeted for food and other resources by our 'omnivorous' (which includes 'meat' eating) human ancestors. In other words Humans did not come to be the top of the food chain by being strictly vegetarian. The proof is that we are here today and our earlier 'veggy cousins' are not!

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