so with the mass extinction of the honey bee, we'll turn into super geniuses and convert nuclear fusion directly into food.
"convert nuclear fusion directly into food" You mean like plants, fruits and vegetables do?
disintermediation
The human brain grew as a result of the extinction of large animals: new paper
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Re: The human brain grew as a result of the extinction of large animals: new paper
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's actually some evidence (though also some debate) that early human hunting led to the extinction of megafauna in North America in the late Pleistocene age. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/306/5693/70.full
But these were anatomically modern people - the North American Megafauna were around 50k years ago... There is no evolutionary pressure there!
Yeah, I realized that as soon as I posted, an interesting paper nonetheless. I thought I had also read a paper discussing protohuman hunting practices earlier in the year but I couldn't find it here. Certainly anatomically modern early humans had much more of an impact on our environment then we often give them credit for.
Re: The human brain grew as a result of the extinction of large animals: new paper
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems nonsensical to me that simply eating meat protein could somehow cause a genetic change leading to great-grandchildren with larger brains.
It doesn't seem that nonsensical to me when considering things like epigenetics. It also doesn't seem all that nonsensical if you flip the causality to "some genetic change resulted in more brain activity/growth and necessitated more protein consumption as a result".
Right, phrasing it as "meat causes brains" confuses the direction of causality and fails to explain all the meat-eating animals that didn't grow large brains.