Our ancestors might have developed large brains thanks to fermented foods, which could have improved nutrition and energy supply
  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.worldEnglish
    33·
    3 months ago

    Fermentation makes a huge difference to food security. It lets you take excess calories available only in the good times, and bring them forward to the times where scarcity is the norm.

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      Plus drunk people get up to some real silly shit they might not otherwise get up to and probably accidentally stumbled on some other advances.

      I could see the wheel coming out of drunken escapades, probably starting with a game of “how far can roll rock down hill?”, which led to shaping rocks to optimize their rolling distance, and then later attaching two rounded rocks to each other with a stick, then the realization that trying to stand on the stick and make it move is fun, then some people trying to put something on top of it that’s easier to stand on and eventually finding a primitive bearing system that probably went through many sticks, which led to the invention of lubrication (which would have started as reinforcement with grasses until it was discovered that the oils from the grasses make a bigger difference than the grasses themselves), and then at some point someone pulled it around for their kids or something and then someone thought of having animals pull them. They probably had the first chariot races later that week and then Gilgamesh used them to conquer the known world because you could stick a lot of food in them and keep an army going for longer between raids.

      Though it was probably logs that led to the wheel, since they can skip the whole shaping and attaching them to each other.

  • schmorpEnglish
    25·
    3 months ago

    Humans have been domesticated by fungus

    • Pot8oEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      Yep! The alcohol kills off the slow, old and sick brain cells. The strong and fast ones survive so you end up smarter.

      • poVoqOPAEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        Surprisingly not that much. Forgetting an open container with fruit juice in some warm place often produces fruit wine without any intervention.

          • Dr. Coomer@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            3 months ago

            Not really. Literally just wait for the right time of year, eat a fruit, and there’s a chance it’s fermented. Quite literally, that is the cause for bird alcoholism.

    • lefaucetEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      Pah… In 500 years they’ll be saying it was when had first contact with the greys. Trust no one. /s

    • lefaucetEnglish
      6·
      3 months ago

      New to me at least. Ive seen it blamed on

      Loss of plentiful fruit habitat; forcing folks to hunt big game meaning throwing/coop battles become much more important and lots of cholesterol in the diet enabling fat wrinkles in teh brains

      Mushroom consumption giving rise to complex culture where big brains is teh sexy.

      Complex mouth parts enabled much more complex music making big brains teh sexy

      We is made in the image of god… So duh we is smart.

      Aliens.

      • Notyou@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        I’ve seen most of the explanations except for “lots of cholesterol in the diet enabling fat wrinkles in the brains.”

        One would think if that is the case then the brain of high cholesterol humans would be vastly more wrinkled than whatever the normal or lower cholesterol levels are. I’m not even sure how cholesterol would cause your brain to wrinkle. I’m assuming fat rolls=brain rolls in their minds.

        • lefaucetEnglish
          4·
          3 months ago

          Yeah. I do know the brain has a bunch of cholesterol, but I’ve also read that none of it comes from eating cholesterol. Something about blood brain barrier preventing it from getting up there, and our bodies synthesize all of it, but I really dont know what I’m talking about here.

          This fermentation theory is a new fav of mine. I really think once we got in a position where culture can really take hold and art and family knowledge became both helpful with survival and sexually selected for, it was off to the races for making complex smarts. Brain size aint the only thing that matters either. There are many animals with larger brains than ours, but they aint been designing rockets or learning how to fold cool things out of paper or even painting portraits or making ink to write so-n-so’s got a big bum and I like it… What was I talking about?