Thoughtful Tuesday - 19

Okay so this is the second part to last weeks blog. So just a quick recap or indeed you can just read it again! Basically there is a theory and it's back up by some pretty good science in my view that the only way we could have developed our rather large brains is if another tissue or organ shrank. Now it would seem that the thing that shrank was our GI tract and the ONLY way this could have happened is if our food source changed from a plant based one to a meat based one.

There is also another part to the story. If you just look at our skeletal structure there are some pretty obvious signs that we are in fact meat eaters.


Now you can, in fact look at the ribcage and pelvis to also make an assumption on dietary habits. So, taking a look at the picture above (which has been taken from the proteinpower website) you can see that both the skeleton of the chimpanzee on the left and the australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) on the right have much wider rib cages and slightly wider pelvises. This is down to the fact that they would have to house a much larger GI tract. You can imagine both these animals to have quite large distended stomachs just by looking at these pictures. The human skeleton on the other hand has a much narrower ribcage and pelvis. Again, you can imagine the lines of the stomach to be much thinner and more svelte (at least that what it's meant to look like, there are exceptions!) this change in structure is down to the much smaller GI tract, which, again, can only exist with a higher quality diet (ie meat)

Now I know that we don't have fangs and claws and a lot of people would argue that we wouldn't have been able to tear flesh from carcases, which is probably true. I would argue that we wouldn't have had to tear flesh as our first attempts at meat were probably as scavengers and as our brains started to grow we developed tools to deal with the rest. Another point on fangs is that gorillas have some pretty nasty fangs on them and they are most definitely vegetarian (for the most part) so that argument doesn't hold weight either

So more fuel for the never ending fire on if we're meat eaters or not. I'll leave it up to you to make your own mind up. I for one will not be giving up my steak any time soon!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

J