Les tissus du cerveau sont une extension metabollique, mais il n'existe pas de correlation significative entre le taux metabolique relatif de base et la taille relative du taille chez les humains et autres mammiferes a encephale. L'apport en graisses animales dans la nourriture est essentiel dans l'evolution du cerveau humain

The Expensive-Tissue Hypothesis: The Brain and the Digestive System in Human and Primate Evolution

Breakage patterns of human long bones

Cooking is a human universal that must have had widespread effects on the nutrition, ecology, and social relationships of the species that invented it The location and timing of its origins are unknown, but it should have left strong signals in the fossil record We suggest that such signals are detectable at ca 19 million years ago in the reduced digestive effort (eg, smaller teeth) and increased supply of food energy (eg, larger female body mass) of early Homo erectus The adoption of cooking required delay of the consumption of food while it was accumulated and/or brought to a processing area, and accumulations of food were valuable and stealable Dominant (eg, larger) individuals (typically male) were therefore able to scrounge from subordinate (eg, smaller) individuals (typically female) instead of relying on their own foraging efforts Because female fitness is limited by access to resources (particularly energetic resources), this dynamic would have favored females able to minimize losse

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/300083

The Raw and the Stolen. Cooking and the Ecology of Human Origins.

Extracting nutrients is of upmost importance to the sur- vival of any individual or species. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the order Primates is the vast range of nutritional adaptations it exhibits. Within our own species all manner of adaptations are practiced and it has been a major focus of research to determine when and where these various patterns originated. We present one method based on stable isotope analysis in human tissues and discuss its contributions. The ratios of l3C/''C and 15N/14N vary among various pools (i.e., the atmosphere, the oceans, plant communities, trophic levels). These differences are transferred to humans via the foods they eat. The major differences in carbon occur between two photosynthetic pathways (C3 and C4), which in the New World permits tracing the introduction of maize (a C4 plant) and in Asia permits tracing the introduction of millet (also a C4 plant). The marine and terrestrial systems have distinctive isotope ratios of both carbon and nitrogen. Thus, the dependence on marine resources has been traced throughout several areas of the New and Old Worlds. We discuss several potential sources of variation including sex, age, nutritional status, among others. We conclude with some suggestions for future research.

/pdf/stable-isotope-analyses-in-human-nutritional-ecology-1q2es4xc05.pdf

Stable isotope analyses in human nutritional ecology

Cutmarks made by stone tools, conchoidal flake scars from hammerstone percussion, carnivore tooth marks, striations from sedimentary abrasion, and other surface modifications on bones from archaeological sites constitute a crucial body of evidence for investigating the role of human behaviors and of nonhuman taphonomic processes in site formation. This paper describes the various kinds of bone surface modifications produced by humans and by nonhuman processes and assesses the current status of bone surface modification studies with regard to such issues as the need for greater analytical standardization, the selection of instruments for examining bone specimens, tactics for identifying the origins of marks on bones, and strategies for inferring human behaviors.

Bone surface modifications in zooarchaeology

Human origins research by archaeologists has expanded the evidence of the diet and subsistence activities of ancient hominids. We examine an important component of that evidence, the 1.75-million-year-old faunal assemblage from the FLK Zinjanthropus site at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Skeletal-part frequencies are used to evaluate hominid access to and differential transport of carcass portions of differing nutritional value. Cut-mark frequencies and locations are used to evaluate butchery patterns including skinning, disarticulation, and defleshing of carcasses. In contrast to other recently published assessments of the FLK Zinjanthropus data, we conclude that (1) ancient hominids had full access to meaty carcasses of many small and large animals prior to any substantial loss of meat or marrow bones through other predator or scavenger feeding; (2) ancient hominids were butchering animal carcasses by an efficient and systematic technique that involved skinning, disarticulation, and defleshing; and (3) the FL...

Richard G. Klein

Papers

Systematic Butchery by Plio/Pleistocene Hominids at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past. By David Reich. New York: Pantheon, 2018.