And since when is this a new idea? Even in the 1969, Space Odyssey film, the primitive apes are shown smashing bones to eat marrow. This is not a new idea, nor is the fact that fat was also more valued. Ever since I was a kid, anthropologists always emphasized the importance of fat and bone marrow in the early development of humans.
@@Metal0sopher Recent studies of the Y-Chromosomes linage shows NO Genetics from any Ape/Chimpanzee... In fact it only shows Genetics from the Neanderthal which we now know were just a race of human beings... also the recent study by Harvard Graduate Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson indicates the Y-Chromosones "Clock" places the human linage back to about 4500 years or the time of the Biblical flood... before you Poo-Poo it you should watch the 24 part series from this fantastic biologist here: ruclips.net/video/xP297DOy-Pc/видео.html I'm always amazed how some of the Evolutionary Biologist try to link fossils of Ape skulls to human beings, but are later shown to be only another specie of Ape(knuckle draggers) Example: The very first Artist renderings of Neanderthal man were portrayed as -"Ape Like Hairy beings", but now they are known to have been just as intelligent as modern humans.
Scientist of the year (R&D Journal) professor James Tour, Rice University. 4 PhD's / 700+ published works / 130+ patents / over a dozen companies founded from the medical field to the oil field. Too many accomplishments to list, but his resume is public. Here's a link to his channel. ruclips.net/channel/UColdwL6T062LNo65OHngXAQ
@@CosmicComedyLab Trying to twist real science into Biblical stories is a fools errand. If you want to believe in adult fairy stories, by all means refer to the Bible. If you want to seek truth, incomplete though it is, you need to use the scientific method. The fact you were watching this on a computer that was invented using the scientific method illustrates which method is more useful for the development of the human species. All religions are just human constructs, and the Bible is just one example of our ignorance. Science offers us a way to really understand our origins, for us to learn to find solutions to important problems, and a way for us to survive into the deep future.
Very good lecture, no hints of 'I want to be on TED Talks' at all. Hypothesis, supporting evidence and future directions, without hyperbole, or emoting. SUCH a relief. (NB. I am fine with people having and expressing emotions, but not as an integral part of a science lecture.)
Emotions, within reason, I part of normal people's behavior and, within reason, should be present more and more. For example, it's normal to get excited about new information uncovered that illuminates our origins. Other than that emotion, I can't really imagine and have never seen other researcher's emotions beyond excitement. Basically, I feel like "what on earth do you mean?"
Presentations like this are what keep me watching RUclips. It's thoroughly gratifying for this curious layman to be able to observe systematic advances to a field of science as they happen, and Dr. Thompson is an outstanding communicator. I'm somewhat surprised to learn the extent to which hominid paleontology had yet to be contextually systematized, as compared to archaeology.
Goodness… what a satisfying thing to listen to someone for an hour and not hear a single ‘..eehmm… aahh… like… you know… right?… ‘ ! Thank you for the interesting information you share -
I don't have a problem with "erm", "um" etc. "Placeholder" or "filler" sounds or words exist in all natural spoken communication in all languages. "Right?" checks audience reaction. Excellent talk.
@@pynn1000 - yes, they exist in all languages - using them excessively and in places where they have no use other than filling the empty mind of the speaker, is just that... excessive use - and the "..right..?" that most people add to the end of their sentences is in most cases not used to check the audience's reaction but as an - kind of subconscious- attempt at confirming one's claims to oneself; the speaker very rarely actually awaits and checks any actual reaction from the audience after using the "..right..?", but simply immediately continues on in the speech - besides, in a video presentation there certainly is neither need nor even ability to 'check audience reactions' anyway - - in any case, just listen to JTrudeau, for example, to hear what excessive use of 'ehh.. ahhmm.. uuhh... ' sounds like and how it makes a speaker appear quite not bright -
@@PeterQuentercrimsonbamboo Jessica Thompson's "right?"s were accompanied by a glance at the audience at the venue. We're a secondary audience. (On my second listening I really appreciated her fast delivery but noted more use of "right?" than the first time.)
As a drummer I can totally understand the percussion thing. I can give the smallest child a drumstick and they immediately know the motion, and getting them into a tempo and going faster or slower is easy as well.
Hammer-stone in your hand aiming at bone on an anvil-stone on the ground. You’d soon notice the sharp flakes that happen when particular stones hit each other. Might get you thinking eh.
Scientist of the year (R&D Journal) professor James Tour, Rice University. 4 PhD's / 700+ published works / 130+ patents / over a dozen companies founded from the medical field to the oil field. Too many accomplishments to list, but his resume is public. Here's a link to his channel. ruclips.net/channel/UColdwL6T062LNo65OHngXAQ
Yeah, I think it made a few people think, but it didn’t go very far, most people just pounded bone like they’d been shown. Then came along a Newton, but everyone laughed at him, and before he could convince anyone there was something amazing about striking rocks together, the neighbours killed him for his stuff during a shortage of stuff. Thousands of years later an Einstein worked out how to make a spear point, and everyone was astonished. Thousands of years later, as people marvelled at their slightly better spear heads, along came a Tesla...
@IfWhiningAtProblemsWorks, WhyDoCorporationsLobby? Yep! When my Lord and Savior tasked me to watch out for his 'sheep' - He was being generous. Sheep act in their own self interest, people . . .not so much.
It would have been nice to see all of her slides. She addressed several the camera person never showed but kept her in the picture. Even in some cases, when her body language says "look at this" and turns to the slide display to talk about it.
Dave Franklyn I think this video was made by somebody from the audience, not a designated video pro. If the cameraman is pre assigned, he will have all the access and the cue when a subject needs to be highlighted.
The solution is simple: TWO cameras. And then edit with jumpcuts. Even if you’re on the slide for only a split second, we viewers can pause to see it. It is inexcusable in the 2020s to not do the bare minimum coverage. If this was 1970, then I can understand the excuse of being able to afford only one cam. But not in the age when everyone has one in their pocket.
@@dartfatherthe problem with your thinking is that even when she postures and points to the slide; the camera person will decide to zoom in on her while she is still pointing and looking at the slide. She points and looks at the slide and the camera person says “ok I’ll take the slide out of the shot and zoom in on the speaker for no reason.” The constant and unnecessary transition between the slow and long zooming in and out is distracting. Great lecture. No doubt. Just abysmal camerawork. Zero awareness from the camera person professional or not.
Are you against women or just against her? If the former, your username is apt. She was in the field and is presenting data from, in part, what her work there was. @@cavemancaveman5190
This and the shoreline gatherers theory are intriguing. Keep in mind that otters use percussion to open shellfish. Some birds drop bones on rocks to get the marrow fat... not the biggest brains.
Excellent presentation! A slight correction: The Atkins diet is not a HIGH protein, LOW fat, low carbohydrate diet. It is a HIGH fat/MEDIUM protein/low carb diet. A ketogenic diet, at least initially, then as ketogenic as it needs to be to maintain weight-loss or weight.
Gorillas ingest no fat, but they digest fat (fat from their gut microbes)... up to 80% of their calories are from saturated, short chain fats. This is true for cows, too. Imagine, if you could just eat fat directly (like from a dead elephant), you could get rid of your giant gut, and use the surplus energy to, say, grow a bigger noodle. Thought she'd talk about this complimentary evidence from nutrition science, but I guess any talk will have time limits.
A successful lion pride has plenty of surplus energy, including from fat, to afford a bigger brain. They didn't need one (one could argue that they could sure use one now to save them from extinction at our hands). We did need one just to survive with lions around. Coming down from the trees was a dangerous gambit. Scavenging big caucasus with hyenas around was even more dangerous. Lucy was brave!
Scientist of the year (R&D Journal) professor James Tour, Rice University. 4 PhD's / 700+ published works / 130+ patents / over a dozen companies founded from the medical field to the oil field. Too many accomplishments to list, but his resume is public. Here's a link to his channel. ruclips.net/channel/UColdwL6T062LNo65OHngXAQ
@@philipb2134 Amber O'Hearn has a talk where she references the biology. It really doesn't sound unlikely to me when you think about grass and leaves. If she's right that mammals can't break down cellulose (I was taught that in biology class), then how can that sugar be the energy source for the animal? That microbes can break it down (the cell wall, I mean) and use that sugar for energy isn't surprising. That they produce short chain fatty acids as some byproduct doesn't seem odd either. But I'll look for that reference and post it later today. Cheers!
My first ‘meat’ that I ate after about five years of ovo-lacto vegetarianism was some delicious bone marrow. Thank god I am no longer plant-based for my diet. I eat meat, organs, fat, no seed oils, no seeds, dairy, and the least toxic plant foods: fruits and honey. Doing fantastic!
carnivore diet here. ruminant meat, fish, salt and water. doing fantastic. all my non communicable diseases have gone. i was vegan and ill, but now iam cured.
Utterly fascinating. A lesson in the scientific method. As another wrote "She is impressive in every single way. I hope to yet find her subsequent work presented.
I'm not impressed. Lots of animals fight for a carcass. Do you really think Lucy and her family could fight off a pack of ancient hyenas to get possession of the bones? Seems unlikley to me. Perhaps they found novel way to process seeds and nuts. Plenty of those to go around. Also, why is there no trace of people getting cravings when they see raw bones? Dogs have those cravings. Humans get cravings for things like mangos and watermelon
@@yogiyoda Evolution changes creatures slowly and relentlessly. Homo sapiens looks and acts much different than predecessors, quite naturally. You are skeptical, and that is not bad. The key is to find evidence that supports your evolutionary hypothesis.
@@ivarhusa454 - I mean you can just look at little lucy and know she doesn't stand much of a chance against a hyena. Hell, hyena can chase off lions. Little lucy with her rock doesn't stand much of a chance
There is also the fact that one, or the group, could be chased from their prey by a larger predator and return to claim the marrow at a later time when safe
Probably happened more often than not. They knew the carnivores were only there for the meat, their fat was safe inside the bones and it would keep for several days. Hell, they were probably always scavenging marrow off discarded kills, there would be plenty of them. Lots safer than killing something and defending it like those boneheaded lions. ;- )
It seems to me that scavenging the bones from and accessing the marrow that the non human predator could not access would be ‘step one’ in the development process.
Stumbled on this, clicked on it and could not stop watching/listening. Amazing! My brain wants more! Would it not be amazing if a netflix type of company would invest in a full size show that used CGI to bring this old world and species to life?
Bone marrow has a rich, buttery, semi-sweet flavor with a delicately creamy texture. When roasted, the marrow takes on slightly nutty, umami notes. Normal large animals typically have more than 80% fat in their bone marrow, while animals that may have died from starvation may have less than 20%. 21:10
That is why some people boil the bones after eating or preserving the meat (from chickens to goats or beef) to create bone broth. Rich in minerals and can be used as the fluid to boil rice or as a base for soups.
Wonderful talk. Very interesting but I found it frustrating that she was referencing the board and using a pointer to highlight what she was talking about but the camera remained focused on her on did not show the board.
One of my family's favorite foods is bone marrow soup. It's funny how many families think it's gross to eat the marrow from bones (which is healthy as long as it's from a healthy animal) but yet think it's perfectly fine to give their kids sugary cerial and drinks that give them diabetes down the road. People have it so backwards for the most part.
My family love the marrow. It’s getting rare to find meat on the bone in western countries, that’s probably why people think it’s gross. It’s hard to find organ meat in the supermarket.
Very interesting video. It is along the lines of another palaeontologist I saw discussing human evolution who came to the field later in life after a main career in economics. He and his team brought a perspective of “follow the money” that is emphasized in economics and applied it to chemical energy to give new insights into how brain size was selected for. People often think of the “nature” in natural selection as being the mostly climate and other animals as competition or threats but refocusing on energy budgets as a selective pressure can be helpful and seems to be along the lines of missing the “fat” part of the story because we aren’t thinking about it when we look for “meat eating” in our history.
Brilliant lecture. Finally someone who recognize that hypotheses should be a. Testable AND b. Make sense. The whole scavanging makes sense this way. The first weapons could well be stones too. Throwing stones is basic human skill that can be used to drive hynas jackals and voltures off carcasses
Tying fat to brain size is brilliant. Nutrition information on essential lipids in modern diets is creating new theories about the development of modern neurological diseases.
My understanding is that the ph of the human stomach is on par with that of scavengers, and would have been protective against bacteria in carrion. Would the low ph have been an advantage for marrow eaters?
Anyone who eats a whole food diet knows how much one has to eat to get enough calories - a lot! Now imagine trying to find that much food in nature, all year and on a daily basis. Without calorie dense fat and marrow it would be very difficult. That's why nature's junk food, grains, was such a game changer. It messed up our health but gave us access to fast calories.
@hicoteo So true, we fed the masses but at a cost...I've finally broken my chains to the grains...and my health is recovering. Our modern food system makes addiction to carbs almost unavoidable--not to mention every week there's a sugar bomb being served for some occasion--always a holiday or some kiddos birthday--we've tied celebrating life with eating cake--pure junk for our bodies. Give me wild salmon with the skin on and stick a candle in it for my birthday....
@@ravenwolf7128 So, true. I've stopped giving people and kids sugar. I usually give nuts, cocoa nibs, coconut oil, cheese, .... anything but. Food quality is now one of the political campaign issues in the US. More people will open their eyes. Stay healthy 👍
anthropology informs me that the average traditional hunter-gatherer today spends roughly 4hrs a day or 20hrs a week on survival and food collection tasks. Even those in africa It would seem more onerous to us because our knowledge of wildfoods is minimal at best. So we would take longer, it would require for us to work on survival tasks every hour of the day to collect the few foods we know of and be missing the abundance at our feet
@@kim-ys2fsYes, back then people knew their stuff. They had to, to survive. I spend more time than that going to the stores, buying food, cooking and eating. 😊
So if this significantly proves that fat is essential for health and intelligence why do governments/health organisations promote low fat and that fat is dangerous?
@@zachary4376 Agreed. Fit, healthy, happy, balanced people are not addicts capitalism depends on addicts. What's interesting we used to be hunter gatherers and when we started farming they could tithe and tax and dominate us..............
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth the first, the Scottish commoners complained they had to subsist on Salmon. During the 19th century the people of the island of St Kilda would plunder "mutton bird" (a cliff nesting sea bird) for their eggs and their very fatty meat. Coastal living reduces the competition with predators and provides a lot of Omega 3 fat and Vitamin D. Shellfish are also very high in fats. Hunting and gathering provides a wide variety of food sources.
Silly me, I went to an Ivy League school and never had a professor as engaging or attractive as Dr. Thompson. I like that she is speaking of real science here, the factual record, rather than trying to draw speculative inferences about hominid behaviors from inadequate data as many of her colleagues are doing. Frankly, I thought her central point was already the established view of how tool-making arose from earlier tool-using (rocks and sticks being basic tools), but she does tie it all together neatly. One aspect she glossed over deserves more emphasis: if Lucy was on the open savannah using a rock to get at the bone marrow of a large animal, she was most likely not alone. Angry predators and other scavengers would have abounded, and Lucy alone would have been no match for them. Other members of her clan or tribe went with her, driving scavengers away and using rocks, sticks, and vocalization to intimidate other predators and keep them at bay. There is safety in numbers. Then all members of the clan shared in the marrow extracted from the bones. It was a cooperative effort. We probably scavenged in groups, just as we later hunted in groups. This group behavior was likely the beginning of socialization and the sharing of other resources, which are among our characteristic human behaviors. Along with bigger brains, scavenging on the savannah may have also been vital to the start of our cultural evolution 3.5 million years ago. They all likely evolved together.
Scientist of the year (R&D Journal) professor James Tour, Rice University. 4 PhD's / 700+ published works / 130+ patents / over a dozen companies founded from the medical field to the oil field. Too many accomplishments to list, but his resume is public. Here's a link to his channel. ruclips.net/channel/UColdwL6T062LNo65OHngXAQ
Maybe when you went to that Ivy League University, all the professors were primarily men, and a few old out dated women. And now that you are probably older than many of those professors were back then, there are many academic hotties. As for being foragers that scared off other predators... I agree that being in larger groups are what made this possible. I also believe this is how we began our progressive advances in intelligence. We couldn’t exploit every kill, so we learned how to predict other animals behaviour and use that against them. Back in the age of Lucy, the competition made us very diminutive. We were smaller then... not physically adapted for the environment we where in, there was no choice but to wise up, and then group up.
I like your comments, second paragraph, we thought through. What's interesting is that now it looks like you dig up the area look for what you want then return everything back that you dont. To me it just means someone who has a new idea will have to go back and dig up everything again. In this case it's all been mixed up. Every item should be recorded, its location, position, description, depth, etc so that you get a true picture or 3d layout of the dig or find. What they are doing is not very scientific,. They find lots of smashed bone in one area, why. What is near this, you bring bone back home to open and feed others or to keep until needed...
@@brucepad1019 archaeologist don't just "return everything they don't use". The literally have multiple specialist from different areas on digs, To try and get as much information as possible, from the excavation at the time. Most archaeologist will make a sample catalogue that is open and accessable to others, that can research the materials later, to learn more from them.
Wonderful, comprehensive update with a lot of sophisticated "new stuff." Thank you Prof. Thompson! Minor quibbble: The video might have benefited from more picture-in-picture (more like zoom) so the slides could have been visibile through the whole talk.
Even if they were around back then which I don t know smashing by dropping is way harder, if the bone is too small it wont break because of low terminal speed, if its too big or can t be grabbed because of it s shape then it also stays intact, and when they find the right bones they must also find a hard surface to drop it on and most likely that s not near the carcass
Interesting to hear the clear distinction she draws between what paleontologists are looking for and what archaeologists are looking for in the field. Makes sense that the quest for fatty food sources (brains, marrow, liver, etc) would be drivers of human evolution. I remember watching a RUclips of some guy who actually went and lived among some hunter-gatherers for short periods. He asked them at one point what they thought the most important thing in life is. He was trying to see if they gave much attention to philosophical questions. Maybe they thought about love, or their familial bonds as being most important? Nah. The response was quick and unanimous: meat. Meat was the most important thing to them. Turns out that being a hunter-gatherer on the African savannah doesn't leave a lot of time for sitting around philosophizing. Planning the next hunt takes priority, apparently.
Scientist of the year (R&D Journal) professor James Tour, Rice University. 4 PhD's / 700+ published works / 130+ patents / over a dozen companies founded from the medical field to the oil field. Too many accomplishments to list, but his resume is public. Here's a link to his channel. ruclips.net/channel/UColdwL6T062LNo65OHngXAQ
Very interesting. Not my field, but allow me to throw out a wild hyphothesis: The Afar Triangle, where Lucy was discovered, is one of the most geologically active regions on Earth, known for its unique geological features, including rifting, volcanic activity, and tectonic movements. This area is part of the East African Rift System, which is a major geological fault system that extends across Eastern Africa. Perhaps this is not by chance. Volcanic activity brings a few interesting elements together: The first is nutrient rich soil, which is excellent for plant growth and would have attracted large herbivores. Geothermal energy and hot springs, which hominins could have utilized to cook their food without fire. This could explain how hominins first got the nutrition to develop the brains to make tools and control fire, which in turn allowed them access to more nutriants. Living in a geologically active region would have exposed hominins to varying environmental pressures, such as changing landscapes, the need for mobility, and adaptation to new food sources. These pressures could have accelerated evolutionary changes, including cognitive and social adaptations. Volcanic regions often have a mosaic of different habitats-open grasslands, forests, and water sources-which would require hominins to develop versatile survival strategies, including the use of tools and possibly rudimentary shelters. Cooking food makes it easier to digest, allowing for more efficient nutrient absorption. This would have been especially important for starchy tubers, meats, and other hard-to-digest foods. Cooking can also reduce toxins and pathogens in food, making it safer to eat. This would have reduced the risk of foodborne illness. Just a thought.
The whole rift valley is known to be great for growing things both because the fresher geology has better diversity of minerals and because the hillier topography pulls a more consistent amount of moisture out of the atmosphere.
@@y00t00b3r The point I was trying to make was that hominins without tools would have had a hard time getting access to the energy surplus needed to evolve a large enough brain to develop the tools they needed to produce such a surplus in the first place. This is a chicken and egg problem that could possibly be explained by hominins taking advantage of what nature in the area provided for free, allowing them to cook without fire. Even if they scavenged carcasses left by carnivores, they would have had a much better chance to utilize such resources had they been able to cook these remains. Similar to how Snow Monkeys in Jigokudani Monkey Park in Japan utilize hot springs to stay warm in the winter, early hominins could have used hot springs to cook their food long before they had the ability to control fire.
Dr. Thompson is one of those humans that seems larger than life somehow. Intelligent, charismatic, well-spoken. Not at all like the average person I see in real life and also different from the movie-star, singer personality. Does anyone else think that?
One signature that would differentiate between eating seeds and eating animals that ate the seeds would be tooth wear, and afarensis tooth wear is incompatible with significant seed eating. I lost half a grade point because I compared walking erect to ground level "soaring" the way vultures do. The earliest flaked stone tools are not "complicated." But you do have to be accurate in placing a blow.
I don't get it. I'm certain I heard about the marrow seeking behavior being key to human development at least 15 years ago. Or is it just that it's being attributed earlier in evolutionary development?
Sort of like how we seek out candies with different filled centers, those strawberry ones, gushers, bonkers, cupcakes, donuts, pinatas, mystery boxes, geodes, eggs, wontons, egg rolls, empanadas, pies, pretty much everything that has some secret inside except for brains and marrow because that's Gross.
If I ever consider the importance of meat to my ancestors' diet, I should remember that the atlatl and the bow and arrow were not invented to hunt cabbage.
Yeah, but the girls always came home with a "cabbage" every day. The dudes, with their bows and arrows, never brought home a woolly mammoth every day... or week, for that matter. That's why "hunter/collector" is a misnomer. It's actually "collector/ hunter".....How come they didn't become extinct before they invented bows and arrows? How could they catch meat in order to live? "But canines tho, bro!"...haha.
@@ceeemm1901 What a ridiculous leap of logic. They were hunter/gatherers for a reason. Seasonality. The women gathered what was in season and available, and in many places where our ancestors evolved, plants become very, VERY scarce for a good part of the year. They were able to survive through the plant-scarce times by hunting the food that lived right alongside them. The animals could survive on plants that the humans could not eat, and as long as the ecosystem could keep animals alive, the humans could survive. Plants supplemented a meat diet in that case. Keep in mind that humans would gather stuff that they could when they could, and hunters would also gather if they were on the march, but you can hunt animals year-round. That has nothing to do with the original post, however, which is pointing out we developed tools to do a job, and that job was gathering meat. My ancestors lived relatively recently very close to what hunter/gathers would do pre-farming - the major part of human evolution.Hunter/gathers and largely nomadic or semi-nomadic following food source availability. Plants when in season but animals all the time. As for how they did not go extinct, that's the evolution part of it. Humans evolved to eat meat more efficiently than plants. That was evolution from tree dweller to walking upright and gaining the ability to go from scavenger to predator. They didn't need bows and arrows to start; they evolved to that level of tools through need and development. They caught small game, fished, gathered clams and ate bugs and they added plants when they could- whatever keeps the body going. They gravitated to better hunting and larger game as efficient return on calorie investment but they ate meat of all types even then. You need to take a survival course or two or maybe attend an applied archeology course. Try your theory out in the real world and see how it works out for you. Work in the time period pre-farming when we did most of our evolution and development. Where I am from, if you are relying on plants, you might survive for weeks, but come winter, unless you had set aside and preserved an amazing amount of plants, you had better have your meat-gathering skills up to par, or you won't see spring. You can go rooting for frozen cat tail roots and pine needles, I will be eating pemmican and attending my trapline while hunting along the way. See ya in spring.
@@antiquegeekassuming a seasonal change with winter scarcity this will be correct. In different climates near the equator, it’s different and it’s more a case of dry season/ wet season ( ie the region she’s discussing)
@ceeemm1901 Try surviving on a mostly plant based diet during a 100,000 year glacial period. We were hypercarnivores who supplemented with everything including tree bark between hunts.
Very interesting and excellent work, however I have a question as you mentioned 25% of the energy is used by our brain and fat which has a high calorie content has helped develop that. However I am also aware of our external stomach which breaks down food for higher nutrition value, namely cooking. So my question is did what would you postulate it's fat from marrow which provided provided the extra calories and provided the fuel needed for the development of a larger brain come before or after our external stomach? Now since they were frequent Savannah fires which left carcasses that were in effect cooked animals and hominids would have accesef this and realize that it provided more nutritive content. So I may humbly suggest that the research you have done highlights that access to the fat in bone marrow started the growth of the human brain and with this growth perhaps hominids realized that's something that burned or cooked as we would say provided additional calories making this the next step in our evolution. So perhaps something you may consider if you haven't already just for use of fire occur during the period that you describe or is it after? Scientia Non Domus, (Knowledge has No Home) antiguajohn
Great work! Not every ancient human could get into an Elephant size thigh bone. This required the largest hominid males with the most upper body strength. You need to pick up a bowling ball size rock, raise it above your head, and smash it down with all your might up to dozens of times. This job was made much easier by letting the large bones dry for over a week, which means many of the bones were carried back to camp to dry. So, we will find piles of smashed-up large bones near hominid camps. Note that marrow stays edible for a very long time if stored within the bone until needed. The hominid sites will have large round top anvil stones surrounded by bone fragments and large two-hand rock hammers. Any bone piece large enough to pick up was put in the soup pot. It was also fun for two or more hominids to play the game of: let's pick up the large bone and drop it on the anvil stone many times. Look in the Sahara and Siberia for the best bone smashing hominid sites. Smashing bone on a flat anvil rock was easier but dangerous, if the large bone is too fresh the hammer rock is guaranteed to bounce back and kill you. If you must get into a fresh large bone you can take a hand held rock and bang out a ring around the center of the large bone to weaken it at the hit point. The most wonderful sound in our collective memory is the change in tone you hear when you hit a large bone that is finally about to open - the whole tribe cheers.
I really enjoyed the talk. I'd heard of the bone marrow idea sometime ago but it was exciting to hear about the research being done now. What she and her colleagues are doing is super cool.
Iconic lecture ruined by rubbish videography! The point of video over pure audio is to capture elements of the presentation that will make it easier to understand. So should the camera be trained on the speaker or on the screen? Yeah you all know but this guy didn’t. Ideally you should have two cameras, but if you only have one then it MUST stay on the screen most of the time…this guy got it back to front. But you know he had two cameras (his smartphone) and training that on the screen and camera on the speaker would’ve given a much better result. You can tell by his exposure settings blowing out the screen that he had no idea what his job was all about…so annoying!
Well, I’m a bit late to the party, but as an interested layman, that was an outstanding lecture. The most interesting things happen at the intersections of disciplines. In this case, the application of archeological field methods to paleontological field work. I’m going to have to dig in, as it were, to the outcomes of this approach. Bravo, Dr. Thompson! 😃
In a hundred million years maybe your dog's evolved descendants will be able to drive a car.Sorry cars won't exist in a hundred million years or dogs or humans as we know them.
@@alandean6930 They would need to evolve hands first to handle a steering wheel. Also, intelligence would have to have a reproductive advantage for them. It doesn't always. Large brains use up a lot of energy, which the diet has to provide. They also make it more dangerous for females to give birth.
My dog drives. She sits on my lap and pays attn to the road. She puts her paws on the wheel and knows how to honk the horn. I'm just there as the seat warmer and to do the grunt work.
I have seen a documentary wherein a group of chimpanzees chased down a small monkey and collectively drove it into the reach of the leader which was hiding. The leader killed and ate the monkey and shared it with some of the other chimpanzees.
Chimps do eat meat, primarily from Colobus monkeys they catch. They also hunt an animal we call a Bush Baby where they can find them & eat insects. However, humans eat far more meat. Humans also eat insects, but western culture rejects that.
@@DieFlabbergast You might want to watch that again, coz thats what she was about doing : tearing down the old theory that its all about meat, teeth & stone flakes amking cut marks. A theory aint a living being; a structure, yes !
Very informative talk I identify with as growing up hunting with family who depended on wild meats during the Great Depression. Bull frogs, snapping turtles, and mountain oysters (from our farm) being the more exotic food of our diet. Grandma saved fat next on the stove was a very important flavoring for everything she cooked. That's when my farmer ancestors could burn the 8,000 or more calories they consumed daily. None of them were fat because how hard they worked.
Absolutely enjoyed this and she may well have a point. While I'm sure Lucy's kind would not have turned up the chance to scavenge meat from a fresh kill, bone marrow was indeed a final offering from a dead animal which virtually no other animal could access. I also have to say that the Atkins plan (at least Dr. Atkins' original plan) is not about "lean" meat. It advocates eating both meat and animal fat. The only things it really precludes are processed foods, especially sugars and grains.
50% of the calories in breast milk is saturated fat. The French eat an astronomical amount of butter, but have low incidence of cardiovascular disease, even despite their high rates of smoking. Humans hunted most large animals on earth to the brink of extinction, or beyond, specifically for their fat. We chased whales across the planet on wooden floaty things for their blubber, and the lack of mammoths and giant sloths roaming national parks is likely our fault. The earliest archeological evidence for the most primitive farming is only 10,000 years old; growing anything in intermittent 50,000 year long ice ages would be pretty hard. When you catch the flu or your stomach is upset, you eat bone broth because it's easy on your digestive system. Take a hike on your nearest nature trail and look around at what is edible. You're surrounded by plants, but can't eat any of them. The select few plants we do eat we mostly domesticated in the last few thousand years. Humans are uniquely adapted to consume the majority of our calories from saturated fat. There's no other way we could afford these big fat brains, and that's why we put fat in or on literally everything we eat.
Please provide research that states there are no cardiovascular diseases in French population.. Where are you getting those details? That is sheer folklore..
Having attempted knapping a few times (nothing I would call a success) and reflecting on that now. It's not just pounding involved. There is a lot of angled applied pressures and wrist motions. Some of those wrist motions are sweeping and flicking unwanted bits away from you. I don't think it's a big leap from pounding to swinging and throwing. Which are also two things we do well and a lot of. They are all very similar motions. Maybe cracking open nuts and bones in a group leads to chucking rocks at predators in a group.
You don't have to have a stone tip to make an effective spear. Many tropical humans still use 100% wooden spears. They could have been hunters if they had a decent size stick. Why not mention the obvious.
Because she is talking about fossil proof. There’s probably no evidence of wooden tools left now. Not sure if there are fossil records of the grinding or sharpening stones used to get the sticks sharp. Interesting.
The society of primitive technology postulated in 2001 that there was a bone and wood age before the Stone Age, but there would be nearly no record of it as they don't fossilize.
I am very curious about the time at which primates on the journey to humans stopped making the amino acids that they must consume today that are essential. Yes this makes sense that fat helped the brain development but animal protein is something we seem to have been consuming to the point that we stopped making our own amino acids from an arboreal diet and as she said chimps do not eat a significant amount of animal protein. When did that change and so if we started with bone marrow and later were hunting at what stage were the amino acids essential - in that we had to consume them from the environment. Love the lecture!
In the context she mentions it, you don't lose weight by not eating carbs and fat, you lose weight by not eating carbs and eating protein and fat (saturated animal fat is best)...
Love this lady, so passionate about her subject you cannot help but get hooked. She made it very easy to understand and her hypothesis is so plausible when explained like this. This lady is set to impact and create great conversations in her field.
How much fat is thrown out today by people scared of it? How much that could be used for food in fast food fryers now goes into cosmetics and other nonsense.
Can the rate and time length of transition from mostly forest to mostly grassland be determined? If it was slow and even enough, the advantage of a moment to moment sense of time. neurologically, might have developed then. Finding useful things along the way and also bringing what you know you’ll need, becomes relevant when traveling from one mini-forest to the next.
In 2013, after I had retired, I took a free class in Paleoanthropology from Arizona State. Maybe it is still available online. It is free, if you don’t need any educational documents anymore.
Scientist of the year (R&D Journal) professor James Tour, Rice University. 4 PhD's / 700+ published works / 130+ patents / over a dozen companies founded from the medical field to the oil field. Too many accomplishments to list, but his resume is public. Here's a link to his channel. ruclips.net/channel/UColdwL6T062LNo65OHngXAQ
For all you interested in Philosophy of Science (please, not all hands up at once!) Jess Thompson's talk about the connection between brain evolution, tools, and diet - this is an excellent illustration of Michael Streven's idea of the "iron law" of Scientific practice which he talks about in his 2020 book "The Knowledge Machine" The secret to science's success is an ironclad determination to restrict scientific inquiry specifically to the public sharing of the results of observations; it is the results of the pursuit of universally shared data that ultimately makes or breaks scientific theories. We can tell each other more beautiful stories about our origins, but systematically extracting accurate and relevant data is what will eventually lead to scientific consensus. Ultimately the data tells a better story, but it might not be as beautiful a story as what we intuitively feel about the subject.
Seems a bit of a stretch that there could have been enough large bones laying about to scavenge that it would have supplied enough nutrition to actually drive the evolution of the brain. It would have taken several such animals being killed in a given area at least several times a week to have fed even a small number of these hominids. It seems more reasonable to speculate that they must have hit upon some means of proactively killing large game themselves long before it might otherwise have seemed possible.
Apparently some of the anthropological evidence points to the main brain growth spurt just after we began to hunt, thereby allowing us to have "first pick", if you like. of the fattiest parts. That would make your speculation correct. Not that I've watched the above video yet tho....
It's a supplement to a diet. Not a main supply for it. Also, yeah. If there's a crap load of carcasses around from multiple predators, it's absolutely possible to get multiple sources of bone marrow in a week.
@@Cbd_7ohm But the question is how occasional of a supplement was it? I'm sure that early hominids would have taken advantage of it when they found it, but what I question is the amount available. It seems to me that you would have needed at least dozens of such kills daily in a relatively small area consistently over hundreds of thousands of years for it to have been the major driving environmental factor in the evolution of the brain. Finding a bone here and there every few months and sharing it with a group of a dozen or so would not seem to be able to provide enough nutrition for that purpose.
Excellent and entertaining lecture. No talking down or padding out, just nice confident, concise delivery. Thank you, professor.
I was going to comment, but you said it perfectly. So, I'm not going to comment.
Brilliant! It seems very reasonable that "we" learned to use large stones to smash skulls & femurs long before we learned how to flake stone knives.
Thank you Dr Berry
And since when is this a new idea? Even in the 1969, Space Odyssey film, the primitive apes are shown smashing bones to eat marrow. This is not a new idea, nor is the fact that fat was also more valued. Ever since I was a kid, anthropologists always emphasized the importance of fat and bone marrow in the early development of humans.
@@Metal0sopher Recent studies of the Y-Chromosomes linage shows NO Genetics from any Ape/Chimpanzee... In fact it only shows Genetics from the Neanderthal which we now know were just a race of human beings... also the recent study by Harvard Graduate Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson indicates the Y-Chromosones "Clock" places the human linage back to about 4500 years or the time of the Biblical flood... before you Poo-Poo it you should watch the 24 part series from this fantastic biologist here: ruclips.net/video/xP297DOy-Pc/видео.html I'm always amazed how some of the Evolutionary Biologist try to link fossils of Ape skulls to human beings, but are later shown to be only another specie of Ape(knuckle draggers) Example: The very first Artist renderings of Neanderthal man were portrayed as -"Ape Like Hairy beings", but now they are known to have been just as intelligent as modern humans.
Scientist of the year (R&D Journal) professor James Tour, Rice University. 4 PhD's / 700+ published works / 130+ patents / over a dozen companies founded from the medical field to the oil field. Too many accomplishments to list, but his resume is public. Here's a link to his channel. ruclips.net/channel/UColdwL6T062LNo65OHngXAQ
@@CosmicComedyLab Trying to twist real science into Biblical stories is a fools errand. If you want to believe in adult fairy stories, by all means refer to the Bible. If you want to seek truth, incomplete though it is, you need to use the scientific method. The fact you were watching this on a computer that was invented using the scientific method illustrates which method is more useful for the development of the human species. All religions are just human constructs, and the Bible is just one example of our ignorance. Science offers us a way to really understand our origins, for us to learn to find solutions to important problems, and a way for us to survive into the deep future.
She’s so impressive in every single way. Amazing lecture and presentation style !
The presenter was well cast and dressed : All evidence of intelligent life evolved on Earth.
She hot boiii
Very good lecture, no hints of 'I want to be on TED Talks' at all. Hypothesis, supporting evidence and future directions, without hyperbole, or emoting. SUCH a relief. (NB. I am fine with people having and expressing emotions, but not as an integral part of a science lecture.)
Thank goodness this demand is growing; I can't stand TED anymore.
Imagine dropping a Nota Bene in a RUclips comment.
@@ShadowWizard123 Nota good idea? ;)
@@michaeljames5936 not so bad 😁highly unexpected maybe
Emotions, within reason, I part of normal people's behavior and, within reason, should be present more and more. For example, it's normal to get excited about new information uncovered that illuminates our origins. Other than that emotion, I can't really imagine and have never seen other researcher's emotions beyond excitement. Basically, I feel like "what on earth do you mean?"
Presentations like this are what keep me watching RUclips. It's thoroughly gratifying for this curious layman to be able to observe systematic advances to a field of science as they happen, and Dr. Thompson is an outstanding communicator. I'm somewhat surprised to learn the extent to which hominid paleontology had yet to be contextually systematized, as compared to archaeology.
@Michael Gerber Your point is well-taken, but the existence of this presentation belies the argument that RUclips is devoid of worthwhile information.
Goodness… what a satisfying thing to listen to someone for an hour and not hear a single ‘..eehmm… aahh… like… you know… right?… ‘ ! Thank you for the interesting information you share -
I’m only 1:40 in and I’ve heard 3 of them. Oh well.
Quite a few, “right?“s, actually.
I don't have a problem with "erm", "um" etc. "Placeholder" or "filler" sounds or words exist in all natural spoken communication in all languages. "Right?" checks audience reaction. Excellent talk.
@@pynn1000 - yes, they exist in all languages - using them excessively and in places where they have no use other than filling the empty mind of the speaker, is just that... excessive use - and the "..right..?" that most people add to the end of their sentences is in most cases not used to check the audience's reaction but as an - kind of subconscious- attempt at confirming one's claims to oneself; the speaker very rarely actually awaits and checks any actual reaction from the audience after using the "..right..?", but simply immediately continues on in the speech - besides, in a video presentation there certainly is neither need nor even ability to 'check audience reactions' anyway - - in any case, just listen to JTrudeau, for example, to hear what excessive use of 'ehh.. ahhmm.. uuhh... ' sounds like and how it makes a speaker appear quite not bright -
@@PeterQuentercrimsonbamboo Jessica Thompson's "right?"s were accompanied by a glance at the audience at the venue. We're a secondary audience. (On my second listening I really appreciated her fast delivery but noted more use of "right?" than the first time.)
As a drummer I can totally understand the percussion thing. I can give the smallest child a drumstick and they immediately know the motion, and getting them into a tempo and going faster or slower is easy as well.
Hitting things with sticks in new and interesting ways is the story of human dominance
We have the best sticks
@@alexanderofrhodes9622 And we have the unique ability to throw those sticks in deadly fashion for more effective hunting.
@@luddity I am human, make stick go weeeee
Who knew that Ringo Starr was so perfectly cast in Caveman.
Nice point my niece plays drums well
Hammer-stone in your hand aiming at bone on an anvil-stone on the ground. You’d soon notice the sharp flakes that happen when particular stones hit each other. Might get you thinking eh.
Scientist of the year (R&D Journal) professor James Tour, Rice University. 4 PhD's / 700+ published works / 130+ patents / over a dozen companies founded from the medical field to the oil field. Too many accomplishments to list, but his resume is public. Here's a link to his channel. ruclips.net/channel/UColdwL6T062LNo65OHngXAQ
Yeah, I think it made a few people think, but it didn’t go very far, most people just pounded bone like they’d been shown. Then came along a Newton, but everyone laughed at him, and before he could convince anyone there was something amazing about striking rocks together, the neighbours killed him for his stuff during a shortage of stuff. Thousands of years later an Einstein worked out how to make a spear point, and everyone was astonished. Thousands of years later, as people marvelled at their slightly better spear heads, along came a Tesla...
@@randyhughens5138 I'm not sure what Dr. Tour's work has to do with the content of this video.
@IfWhiningAtProblemsWorks, WhyDoCorporationsLobby? Yep! When my Lord and Savior tasked me to watch out for his 'sheep' - He was being generous. Sheep act in their own self interest, people . . .not so much.
Yup makes sense that they'd notice. Especially if they had accidentally cut themselves with the sharp edge.
It would have been nice to see all of her slides. She addressed several the camera person never showed but kept her in the picture. Even in some cases, when her body language says "look at this" and turns to the slide display to talk about it.
Dave Franklyn I think this video was made by somebody from the audience, not a designated video pro. If the cameraman is pre assigned, he will have all the access and the cue when a subject needs to be highlighted.
That is a fault in a lot of the Tedx talks as well. It can leave the YT audience in the dark.
terrible camera work regarding the subject.
The solution is simple:
TWO cameras.
And then edit with jumpcuts. Even if you’re on the slide for only a split second, we viewers can pause to see it. It is inexcusable in the 2020s to not do the bare minimum coverage. If this was 1970, then I can understand the excuse of being able to afford only one cam. But not in the age when everyone has one in their pocket.
@@dartfatherthe problem with your thinking is that even when she postures and points to the slide; the camera person will decide to zoom in on her while she is still pointing and looking at the slide. She points and looks at the slide and the camera person says “ok I’ll take the slide out of the shot and zoom in on the speaker for no reason.” The constant and unnecessary transition between the slow and long zooming in and out is distracting.
Great lecture. No doubt.
Just abysmal camerawork. Zero awareness from the camera person professional or not.
After watching the passion and excitement with which Dr. Thompson delivered this presentation, I’m rooting for her to have a big impact on her field.
Me too! This was brilliant!
She will get stuck with doing presentations. The true hotshots are out in the field. He job is super important and very well done. Thanks
Are you against women or just against her? If the former, your username is apt. She was in the field and is presenting data from, in part, what her work there was. @@cavemancaveman5190
This and the shoreline gatherers theory are intriguing. Keep in mind that otters use percussion to open shellfish. Some birds drop bones on rocks to get the marrow fat... not the biggest brains.
Yes however they use a lot of neuro calories.
@@Charbenaro usually a smart investment
Maybe the change in flora allowed the abundance of new fauna that made those primitive behaviors become a lot more profitable...
Flying is much more energy expensive. It is not very likely to have really big brains and ability to fly.
Its the brain to body ratio that i hope shes talking about because obviously elephants have bigger brains
Excellent presentation! A slight correction: The Atkins diet is not a HIGH protein, LOW fat, low carbohydrate diet. It is a HIGH fat/MEDIUM protein/low carb diet. A ketogenic diet, at least initially, then as ketogenic as it needs to be to maintain weight-loss or weight.
Let's hope that you don't have children!
Yeah It's the diet that made Bob Atkins obese and gave him heart problems. Go for it Gomer!
Yes. The Ducan diet is high protein, low fat, low carb initially. Awful but effective.
Excellent presentation. It all makes total sense to me. Thanks so much for your excellent work!
Speaker has fantastic speaking abilities no teleprompter no notes and continues without missing a note
Gorillas ingest no fat, but they digest fat (fat from their gut microbes)... up to 80% of their calories are from saturated, short chain fats. This is true for cows, too. Imagine, if you could just eat fat directly (like from a dead elephant), you could get rid of your giant gut, and use the surplus energy to, say, grow a bigger noodle. Thought she'd talk about this complimentary evidence from nutrition science, but I guess any talk will have time limits.
You hit the nail on the head man
A successful lion pride has plenty of surplus energy, including from fat, to afford a bigger brain. They didn't need one (one could argue that they could sure use one now to save them from extinction at our hands). We did need one just to survive with lions around. Coming down from the trees was a dangerous gambit. Scavenging big caucasus with hyenas around was even more dangerous. Lucy was brave!
Scientist of the year (R&D Journal) professor James Tour, Rice University. 4 PhD's / 700+ published works / 130+ patents / over a dozen companies founded from the medical field to the oil field. Too many accomplishments to list, but his resume is public. Here's a link to his channel. ruclips.net/channel/UColdwL6T062LNo65OHngXAQ
That sounds unlikely. Do you have source material one might verify?
@@philipb2134 Amber O'Hearn has a talk where she references the biology. It really doesn't sound unlikely to me when you think about grass and leaves. If she's right that mammals can't break down cellulose (I was taught that in biology class), then how can that sugar be the energy source for the animal? That microbes can break it down (the cell wall, I mean) and use that sugar for energy isn't surprising. That they produce short chain fatty acids as some byproduct doesn't seem odd either. But I'll look for that reference and post it later today. Cheers!
Beautifully presented, Thankyou for imparting this knowledge to us, I hung on every word.
My first ‘meat’ that I ate after about five years of ovo-lacto vegetarianism was some delicious bone marrow. Thank god I am no longer plant-based for my diet. I eat meat, organs, fat, no seed oils, no seeds, dairy, and the least toxic plant foods: fruits and honey. Doing fantastic!
How do you feel about cheese?
So you are carnivore or lion diet ?
@@williammccartney4833 Neither if they eat fruit and honey.. more Paul Sugarino misinformation.
carnivore diet here. ruminant meat, fish, salt and water. doing fantastic. all my non communicable diseases have gone. i was vegan and ill, but now iam cured.
This isn't your diary.
I may not agree with every premise but the flow of logic was presented very well.
Utterly fascinating. A lesson in the scientific method. As another wrote "She is impressive in every single way. I hope to yet find her subsequent work presented.
I'm not impressed. Lots of animals fight for a carcass. Do you really think Lucy and her family could fight off a pack of ancient hyenas to get possession of the bones? Seems unlikley to me. Perhaps they found novel way to process seeds and nuts. Plenty of those to go around. Also, why is there no trace of people getting cravings when they see raw bones? Dogs have those cravings. Humans get cravings for things like mangos and watermelon
@@yogiyoda Evolution changes creatures slowly and relentlessly. Homo sapiens looks and acts much different than predecessors, quite naturally. You are skeptical, and that is not bad. The key is to find evidence that supports your evolutionary hypothesis.
@@ivarhusa454 - I mean you can just look at little lucy and know she doesn't stand much of a chance against a hyena. Hell, hyena can chase off lions. Little lucy with her rock doesn't stand much of a chance
@@yogiyoda Lucy lived in a group, she had back up 😅
Maybe lucy ate more plants and her 'backup' group ate more meats@pinchebruha405
This is an extraordinary lecture in form and content. It stuns me how brilliant she is.
There is also the fact that one, or the group, could be chased from their prey by a larger predator and return to claim the marrow at a later time when safe
Perhaps thats where the phrase 'I'll come back to marrow' comes from :-)
@@chrisnicholson2609
Quite, maybe 👍
@@chrisnicholson2609
Best comment
Probably happened more often than not. They knew the carnivores were only there for the meat, their fat was safe inside the bones and it would keep for several days. Hell, they were probably always scavenging marrow off discarded kills, there would be plenty of them. Lots safer than killing something and defending it like those boneheaded lions. ;- )
It seems to me that scavenging the bones from and accessing the marrow that the non human predator could not access would be ‘step one’ in the development process.
Stumbled on this, clicked on it and could not stop watching/listening.
Amazing! My brain wants more!
Would it not be amazing if a netflix type of company would invest in a full size show that used CGI to bring this old world and species to life?
Pbs has done some cool things. There's definitely shows out there.
Your inner fish is also a great read.
I'm glad I found your channel. Time to binge watch all your content.
Bone marrow has a rich, buttery, semi-sweet flavor with a delicately creamy texture. When roasted, the marrow takes on slightly nutty, umami notes. Normal large animals typically have more than 80% fat in their bone marrow, while animals that may have died from starvation may have less than 20%. 21:10
That is why some people boil the bones after eating or preserving the meat (from chickens to goats or beef) to create bone broth. Rich in minerals and can be used as the fluid to boil rice or as a base for soups.
Fascinating. I will be following Dr. Thompson's research with great interest!
Wonderful talk. Very interesting but I found it frustrating that she was referencing the board and using a pointer to highlight what she was talking about but the camera remained focused on her on did not show the board.
My family think it gross that I love to bite into bird bones and suck out the marrow - did it since childhood.
Now I have an excuse.
Me too.
One of my family's favorite foods is bone marrow soup. It's funny how many families think it's gross to eat the marrow from bones (which is healthy as long as it's from a healthy animal) but yet think it's perfectly fine to give their kids sugary cerial and drinks that give them diabetes down the road. People have it so backwards for the most part.
@@billygauthier9512 I knew I wasn't alone. Great to hear other people have similar tastes.
My family love the marrow. It’s getting rare to find meat on the bone in western countries, that’s probably why people think it’s gross. It’s hard to find organ meat in the supermarket.
@@sexysilversurfer Can't find organ meat? I think that's offal for you.
Very interesting video. It is along the lines of another palaeontologist I saw discussing human evolution who came to the field later in life after a main career in economics. He and his team brought a perspective of “follow the money” that is emphasized in economics and applied it to chemical energy to give new insights into how brain size was selected for.
People often think of the “nature” in natural selection as being the mostly climate and other animals as competition or threats but refocusing on energy budgets as a selective pressure can be helpful and seems to be along the lines of missing the “fat” part of the story because we aren’t thinking about it when we look for “meat eating” in our history.
Brilliant lecture. Finally someone who recognize that hypotheses should be a. Testable AND b. Make sense. The whole scavanging makes sense this way. The first weapons could well be stones too. Throwing stones is basic human skill that can be used to drive hynas jackals and voltures off carcasses
Tying fat to brain size is brilliant. Nutrition information on essential lipids in modern diets is creating new theories about the development of modern neurological diseases.
My understanding is that the ph of the human stomach is on par with that of scavengers, and would have been protective against bacteria in carrion. Would the low ph have been an advantage for marrow eaters?
Nice talk. Doesn't understand that the Atkins diet IS high fat....but I will forgive; she is an anthropologist.
Atkins diet let's you eat high fat, it doesn't demand high fat
I bet she doesn't care if you forgive her 😂🤣😂
Anyone who eats a whole food diet knows how much one has to eat to get enough calories - a lot! Now imagine trying to find that much food in nature, all year and on a daily basis. Without calorie dense fat and marrow it would be very difficult. That's why nature's junk food, grains, was such a game changer. It messed up our health but gave us access to fast calories.
Well said
@hicoteo So true, we fed the masses but at a cost...I've finally broken my chains to the grains...and my health is recovering. Our modern food system makes addiction to carbs almost unavoidable--not to mention every week there's a sugar bomb being served for some occasion--always a holiday or some kiddos birthday--we've tied celebrating life with eating cake--pure junk for our bodies. Give me wild salmon with the skin on and stick a candle in it for my birthday....
@@ravenwolf7128 So, true. I've stopped giving people and kids sugar. I usually give nuts, cocoa nibs, coconut oil, cheese, .... anything but. Food quality is now one of the political campaign issues in the US. More people will open their eyes.
Stay healthy 👍
anthropology informs me that the average traditional hunter-gatherer today spends roughly 4hrs a day or 20hrs a week on survival and food collection tasks. Even those in africa
It would seem more onerous to us because our knowledge of wildfoods is minimal at best. So we would take longer, it would require for us to work on survival tasks every hour of the day to collect the few foods we know of and be missing the abundance at our feet
@@kim-ys2fsYes, back then people knew their stuff. They had to, to survive. I spend more time than that going to the stores, buying food, cooking and eating. 😊
Such a good presenter. I could watch this all day.
So if this significantly proves that fat is essential for health and intelligence why do governments/health organisations promote low fat and that fat is dangerous?
I believe it's because there is no control in having us be intelligent and no money in having us be healthy.
@@zachary4376 Agreed. Fit, healthy, happy, balanced people are not addicts capitalism depends on addicts. What's interesting we used to be hunter gatherers and when we started farming they could tithe and tax and dominate us..............
@@velvetindigonight That's the truth, If ever I've heard it.
Blame the sugar industry.
Blame Ancel Keys - godfather of fat is bad for you movement
Fascinating - everything about this video was great. Professor‘s passion for her subject fantastic, thank you.
And what about the theory that hominids depended heavily on river's shelfish molusks and crustaceans ?
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth the first, the Scottish commoners complained they had to subsist on Salmon.
During the 19th century the people of the island of St Kilda would plunder "mutton bird" (a cliff nesting sea bird) for their eggs and their very fatty meat.
Coastal living reduces the competition with predators and provides a lot of Omega 3 fat and Vitamin D. Shellfish are also very high in fats.
Hunting and gathering provides a wide variety of food sources.
I'm just 10 mins into this lecture and she is excellent!
Discard
,o
Dr. Thompson is a wonderful speaker and clearly a sharp instrument in the toolbox of human achievement.
She crushed it!
An exceptional speaker! An exceptional presentation!
Silly me, I went to an Ivy League school and never had a professor as engaging or attractive as Dr. Thompson. I like that she is speaking of real science here, the factual record, rather than trying to draw speculative inferences about hominid behaviors from inadequate data as many of her colleagues are doing. Frankly, I thought her central point was already the established view of how tool-making arose from earlier tool-using (rocks and sticks being basic tools), but she does tie it all together neatly.
One aspect she glossed over deserves more emphasis: if Lucy was on the open savannah using a rock to get at the bone marrow of a large animal, she was most likely not alone. Angry predators and other scavengers would have abounded, and Lucy alone would have been no match for them. Other members of her clan or tribe went with her, driving scavengers away and using rocks, sticks, and vocalization to intimidate other predators and keep them at bay. There is safety in numbers. Then all members of the clan shared in the marrow extracted from the bones. It was a cooperative effort. We probably scavenged in groups, just as we later hunted in groups. This group behavior was likely the beginning of socialization and the sharing of other resources, which are among our characteristic human behaviors. Along with bigger brains, scavenging on the savannah may have also been vital to the start of our cultural evolution 3.5 million years ago. They all likely evolved together.
Scientist of the year (R&D Journal) professor James Tour, Rice University. 4 PhD's / 700+ published works / 130+ patents / over a dozen companies founded from the medical field to the oil field. Too many accomplishments to list, but his resume is public. Here's a link to his channel. ruclips.net/channel/UColdwL6T062LNo65OHngXAQ
Maybe when you went to that Ivy League University, all the professors were primarily men, and a few old out dated women. And now that you are probably older than many of those professors were back then, there are many academic hotties.
As for being foragers that scared off other predators... I agree that being in larger groups are what made this possible. I also believe this is how we began our progressive advances in intelligence. We couldn’t exploit every kill, so we learned how to predict other animals behaviour and use that against them. Back in the age of Lucy, the competition made us very diminutive. We were smaller then... not physically adapted for the environment we where in, there was no choice but to wise up, and then group up.
Me too, and it was at her 'Ivy League" school. Sadly, it was 60 years ago, and women were not faculty OR students then:)
I like your comments, second paragraph, we thought through. What's interesting is that now it looks like you dig up the area look for what you want then return everything back that you dont. To me it just means someone who has a new idea will have to go back and dig up everything again. In this case it's all been mixed up. Every item should be recorded, its location, position, description, depth, etc so that you get a true picture or 3d layout of the dig or find. What they are doing is not very scientific,. They find lots of smashed bone in one area, why. What is near this, you bring bone back home to open and feed others or to keep until needed...
@@brucepad1019 archaeologist don't just "return everything they don't use". The literally have multiple specialist from different areas on digs, To try and get as much information as possible, from the excavation at the time. Most archaeologist will make a sample catalogue that is open and accessable to others, that can research the materials later, to learn more from them.
Would love to hear your thoughts about the discovery of fire and the role in digestion amd nutrition.
I wish they would have done a better job of showing her graphics, but over all a great presentation.
Wonderful, comprehensive update with a lot of sophisticated "new stuff." Thank you Prof. Thompson! Minor quibbble: The video might have benefited from more picture-in-picture (more like zoom) so the slides could have been visibile through the whole talk.
Not only hyenas break bones. At least one species of vulture drops bones from height in order to break them open.
The lammergeyer.
@@carolnorton2807 Gypaetus barbatus, family Accipitridae. 🤓
Vultures, exactly where my mind went too 🙂↕️
Even if they were around back then which I don t know smashing by dropping is way harder, if the bone is too small it wont break because of low terminal speed, if its too big or can t be grabbed because of it s shape then it also stays intact, and when they find the right bones they must also find a hard surface to drop it on and most likely that s not near the carcass
Wolves too.
Interesting to hear the clear distinction she draws between what paleontologists are looking for and what archaeologists are looking for in the field. Makes sense that the quest for fatty food sources (brains, marrow, liver, etc) would be drivers of human evolution.
I remember watching a RUclips of some guy who actually went and lived among some hunter-gatherers for short periods. He asked them at one point what they thought the most important thing in life is. He was trying to see if they gave much attention to philosophical questions. Maybe they thought about love, or their familial bonds as being most important?
Nah. The response was quick and unanimous: meat. Meat was the most important thing to them.
Turns out that being a hunter-gatherer on the African savannah doesn't leave a lot of time for sitting around philosophizing. Planning the next hunt takes priority, apparently.
Ok, I'm a year late but will look further; this is very interesting stuff.
Scientist of the year (R&D Journal) professor James Tour, Rice University. 4 PhD's / 700+ published works / 130+ patents / over a dozen companies founded from the medical field to the oil field. Too many accomplishments to list, but his resume is public. Here's a link to his channel. ruclips.net/channel/UColdwL6T062LNo65OHngXAQ
lol
Fascinating. Looking forward to this being tested out. It sounds very plausible.
Very interesting. Not my field, but allow me to throw out a wild hyphothesis:
The Afar Triangle, where Lucy was discovered, is one of the most geologically active regions on Earth, known for its unique geological features, including rifting, volcanic activity, and tectonic movements. This area is part of the East African Rift System, which is a major geological fault system that extends across Eastern Africa.
Perhaps this is not by chance. Volcanic activity brings a few interesting elements together:
The first is nutrient rich soil, which is excellent for plant growth and would have attracted large herbivores.
Geothermal energy and hot springs, which hominins could have utilized to cook their food without fire. This could explain how hominins first got the nutrition to develop the brains to make tools and control fire, which in turn allowed them access to more nutriants.
Living in a geologically active region would have exposed hominins to varying environmental pressures, such as changing landscapes, the need for mobility, and adaptation to new food sources. These pressures could have accelerated evolutionary changes, including cognitive and social adaptations.
Volcanic regions often have a mosaic of different habitats-open grasslands, forests, and water sources-which would require hominins to develop versatile survival strategies, including the use of tools and possibly rudimentary shelters.
Cooking food makes it easier to digest, allowing for more efficient nutrient absorption. This would have been especially important for starchy tubers, meats, and other hard-to-digest foods.
Cooking can also reduce toxins and pathogens in food, making it safer to eat. This would have reduced the risk of foodborne illness.
Just a thought.
Plus it is geologically researched really well. That helps with dating the finds immencely!
The whole rift valley is known to be great for growing things both because the fresher geology has better diversity of minerals and because the hillier topography pulls a more consistent amount of moisture out of the atmosphere.
meat is not hard to digest
@@y00t00b3rcorrect. It is easily digestible due to our highly acidic stomach acid.
@@y00t00b3r The point I was trying to make was that hominins without tools would have had a hard time getting access to the energy surplus needed to evolve a large enough brain to develop the tools they needed to produce such a surplus in the first place. This is a chicken and egg problem that could possibly be explained by hominins taking advantage of what nature in the area provided for free, allowing them to cook without fire. Even if they scavenged carcasses left by carnivores, they would have had a much better chance to utilize such resources had they been able to cook these remains. Similar to how Snow Monkeys in Jigokudani Monkey Park in Japan utilize hot springs to stay warm in the winter, early hominins could have used hot springs to cook their food long before they had the ability to control fire.
Great video! Thanks for taking me away from current events!
Dr. Thompson is one of those humans that seems larger than life somehow. Intelligent, charismatic, well-spoken. Not at all like the average person I see in real life and also different from the movie-star, singer personality. Does anyone else think that?
I definitely agree
I see intelligent well spoken people every day. Maybe you need a better circle of people. Just kidding I actually agree with you!
And beautiful
A very engaging speaker and obviously in love with her work. Excellent lecture/talk.
One signature that would differentiate between eating seeds and eating animals that ate the seeds would be tooth wear, and afarensis tooth wear is incompatible with significant seed eating. I lost half a grade point because I compared walking erect to ground level "soaring" the way vultures do. The earliest flaked stone tools are not "complicated." But you do have to be accurate in placing a blow.
They are memory mark imbedded.
In this number is the knowlege of all promethius
35:39
I don't get it. I'm certain I heard about the marrow seeking behavior being key to human development at least 15 years ago. Or is it just that it's being attributed earlier in evolutionary development?
you didn't hear it, you watched "Predator"
Sort of like how we seek out candies with different filled centers, those strawberry ones, gushers, bonkers, cupcakes, donuts, pinatas, mystery boxes, geodes, eggs, wontons, egg rolls, empanadas, pies, pretty much everything that has some secret inside except for brains and marrow because that's Gross.
Great talk, logical and testable theory.
Your idea seems like common sense in hindsight. I will be referencing and citing your lecture in my own work. Thank you for the talk.
If I ever consider the importance of meat to my ancestors' diet, I should remember that the atlatl and the bow and arrow were not invented to hunt cabbage.
Yeah, but the girls always came home with a "cabbage" every day. The dudes, with their bows and arrows, never brought home a woolly mammoth every day... or week, for that matter. That's why "hunter/collector" is a misnomer. It's actually "collector/ hunter".....How come they didn't become extinct before they invented bows and arrows? How could they catch meat in order to live? "But canines tho, bro!"...haha.
@@ceeemm1901 What a ridiculous leap of logic. They were hunter/gatherers for a reason. Seasonality. The women gathered what was in season and available, and in many places where our ancestors evolved, plants become very, VERY scarce for a good part of the year. They were able to survive through the plant-scarce times by hunting the food that lived right alongside them. The animals could survive on plants that the humans could not eat, and as long as the ecosystem could keep animals alive, the humans could survive. Plants supplemented a meat diet in that case. Keep in mind that humans would gather stuff that they could when they could, and hunters would also gather if they were on the march, but you can hunt animals year-round. That has nothing to do with the original post, however, which is pointing out we developed tools to do a job, and that job was gathering meat. My ancestors lived relatively recently very close to what hunter/gathers would do pre-farming - the major part of human evolution.Hunter/gathers and largely nomadic or semi-nomadic following food source availability. Plants when in season but animals all the time. As for how they did not go extinct, that's the evolution part of it. Humans evolved to eat meat more efficiently than plants. That was evolution from tree dweller to walking upright and gaining the ability to go from scavenger to predator. They didn't need bows and arrows to start; they evolved to that level of tools through need and development. They caught small game, fished, gathered clams and ate bugs and they added plants when they could- whatever keeps the body going. They gravitated to better hunting and larger game as efficient return on calorie investment but they ate meat of all types even then. You need to take a survival course or two or maybe attend an applied archeology course. Try your theory out in the real world and see how it works out for you. Work in the time period pre-farming when we did most of our evolution and development. Where I am from, if you are relying on plants, you might survive for weeks, but come winter, unless you had set aside and preserved an amazing amount of plants, you had better have your meat-gathering skills up to par, or you won't see spring. You can go rooting for frozen cat tail roots and pine needles, I will be eating pemmican and attending my trapline while hunting along the way. See ya in spring.
@@antiquegeeknice very well argued answer.
@@antiquegeekassuming a seasonal change with winter scarcity this will be correct. In different climates near the equator, it’s different and it’s more a case of dry season/ wet season ( ie the region she’s discussing)
@ceeemm1901 Try surviving on a mostly plant based diet during a 100,000 year glacial period. We were hypercarnivores who supplemented with everything including tree bark between hunts.
Great presentation! Very intuitive
Mr or Ms camera operator, when she says "look at this" we want to actually look at whatever it is. PAY ATTENTION!
Yes! Very frustrating.
the operator was a lot more interested in her than the presentation.
@@stoyanb.1668 tough job
Ditto!!!!
Wow, you talk in a very entitled way considering that this is a free content
Clear presentation of a new angle of view on an old methodology.
Absolutely extraordinary insight.
Very interesting and excellent work, however I have a question as you mentioned 25% of the energy is used by our brain and fat which has a high calorie content has helped develop that.
However I am also aware of our external stomach which breaks down food for higher nutrition value, namely cooking.
So my question is did what would you postulate it's fat from marrow which provided provided the extra calories and provided the fuel needed for the development of a larger brain come before or after our external stomach?
Now since they were frequent Savannah fires which left carcasses that were in effect cooked animals and hominids would have accesef this and realize that it provided more nutritive content.
So I may humbly suggest that the research you have done highlights that access to the fat in bone marrow started the growth of the human brain and with this growth perhaps hominids realized that's something that burned or cooked as we would say provided additional calories making this the next step in our evolution.
So perhaps something you may consider if you haven't already just for use of fire occur during the period that you describe or is it after?
Scientia Non Domus,
(Knowledge has No Home)
antiguajohn
Ironic: Vilhjálmur Stefánsson wrote a book called 'Fat of the Land' and it was about how fat was essential to indigenous people he stayed with.
And he noted that men starved if they ate only lean meat with no fat (rabbit meat)
Íslenskur; Icelandic
Note, that the time period Dr Thompson is talking about. Is back when human ancestors were scavengers. Not when they were really capable of hunting.
I don't think that's ironic. I think it's an intentional reference.
why is that ironic?
Great work! Not every ancient human could get into an Elephant size thigh bone. This required the largest hominid males with the most upper body strength. You need to pick up a bowling ball size rock, raise it above your head, and smash it down with all your might up to dozens of times. This job was made much easier by letting the large bones dry for over a week, which means many of the bones were carried back to camp to dry. So, we will find piles of smashed-up large bones near hominid camps. Note that marrow stays edible for a very long time if stored within the bone until needed. The hominid sites will have large round top anvil stones surrounded by bone fragments and large two-hand rock hammers. Any bone piece large enough to pick up was put in the soup pot. It was also fun for two or more hominids to play the game of: let's pick up the large bone and drop it on the anvil stone many times. Look in the Sahara and Siberia for the best bone smashing hominid sites. Smashing bone on a flat anvil rock was easier but dangerous, if the large bone is too fresh the hammer rock is guaranteed to bounce back and kill you. If you must get into a fresh large bone you can take a hand held rock and bang out a ring around the center of the large bone to weaken it at the hit point. The most wonderful sound in our collective memory is the change in tone you hear when you hit a large bone that is finally about to open - the whole tribe cheers.
I really enjoyed the talk. I'd heard of the bone marrow idea sometime ago but it was exciting to hear about the research being done now. What she and her colleagues are doing is super cool.
Great presentation
Iconic lecture ruined by rubbish videography! The point of video over pure audio is to capture elements of the presentation that will make it easier to understand. So should the camera be trained on the speaker or on the screen? Yeah you all know but this guy didn’t.
Ideally you should have two cameras, but if you only have one then it MUST stay on the screen most of the time…this guy got it back to front.
But you know he had two cameras (his smartphone) and training that on the screen and camera on the speaker would’ve given a much better result.
You can tell by his exposure settings blowing out the screen that he had no idea what his job was all about…so annoying!
Well, I’m a bit late to the party, but as an interested layman, that was an outstanding lecture. The most interesting things happen at the intersections of disciplines. In this case, the application of archeological field methods to paleontological field work. I’m going to have to dig in, as it were, to the outcomes of this approach. Bravo, Dr. Thompson! 😃
My dog will only eat McDonalds ... how long will it take him to be able to drive my car?
(this is a joke - the lecture is really interesting)
Homer Simpson's ancestor: "Mmmmm... Marrow fat..."
In a hundred million years maybe your dog's evolved descendants will be able to drive a car.Sorry cars won't exist in a hundred million years or dogs or humans as we know them.
@@alandean6930 They would need to evolve hands first to handle a steering wheel. Also, intelligence would have to have a reproductive advantage for them. It doesn't always. Large brains use up a lot of energy, which the diet has to provide. They also make it more dangerous for females to give birth.
My dog drives. She sits on my lap and pays attn to the road. She puts her paws on the wheel and knows how to honk the horn. I'm just there as the seat warmer and to do the grunt work.
dogs already know how to drive. they pretend not to know how so they can bark out the window while you drive.
The pounding tool would eventually be used for shaping cutting tools.
I have seen a documentary wherein a group of chimpanzees chased down a small monkey and collectively drove it into the reach of the leader which was hiding. The leader killed and ate the monkey and shared it with some of the other chimpanzees.
Chimps do eat meat, primarily from Colobus monkeys they catch. They also hunt an animal we call a Bush Baby where they can find them & eat insects. However, humans eat far more meat. Humans also eat insects, but western culture rejects that.
Chimps don't need to eat animals but they do. Your tale suggests it might be useful for group dynamics as much as for nutrition.
05:45
While discussing meat, and teeth,
_"I'm going to tear this down."_
Nicely done.
What is this juvenile "tear down" phrase? Why not simply say "kill"? You tear down buildings and other structures; you kill living beings.
@@DieFlabbergast You might want to watch that again, coz thats what she was about doing : tearing down the old theory that its all about meat, teeth & stone flakes amking cut marks. A theory aint a living being; a structure, yes !
Brilliantly and flawlessly executed lecture in quite an exciting subject. (I'm a layman)
Very informative talk I identify with as growing up hunting with family who depended on wild meats during the Great Depression. Bull frogs, snapping turtles, and mountain oysters (from our farm) being the more exotic food of our diet. Grandma saved fat next on the stove was a very important flavoring for everything she cooked. That's when my farmer ancestors could burn the 8,000 or more calories they consumed daily. None of them were fat because how hard they worked.
Absolutely enjoyed this and she may well have a point. While I'm sure Lucy's kind would not have turned up the chance to scavenge meat from a fresh kill, bone marrow was indeed a final offering from a dead animal which virtually no other animal could access. I also have to say that the Atkins plan (at least Dr. Atkins' original plan) is not about "lean" meat. It advocates eating both meat and animal fat. The only things it really precludes are processed foods, especially sugars and grains.
Homer Simpson's ancestor: "Mmmmm... Marrow fat..."
Homer Saipan: mmmm marrow fat
bashes his finger while holding down the bone: "D'OH!".
after his spiky-haired son snickers: "Why you little!..."
I tried looking for a bias but none found. Very interesting. Thank you.
50% of the calories in breast milk is saturated fat. The French eat an astronomical amount of butter, but have low incidence of cardiovascular disease, even despite their high rates of smoking. Humans hunted most large animals on earth to the brink of extinction, or beyond, specifically for their fat. We chased whales across the planet on wooden floaty things for their blubber, and the lack of mammoths and giant sloths roaming national parks is likely our fault. The earliest archeological evidence for the most primitive farming is only 10,000 years old; growing anything in intermittent 50,000 year long ice ages would be pretty hard. When you catch the flu or your stomach is upset, you eat bone broth because it's easy on your digestive system. Take a hike on your nearest nature trail and look around at what is edible. You're surrounded by plants, but can't eat any of them. The select few plants we do eat we mostly domesticated in the last few thousand years. Humans are uniquely adapted to consume the majority of our calories from saturated fat. There's no other way we could afford these big fat brains, and that's why we put fat in or on literally everything we eat.
the french paradox was solved. They kept poor records. They have just as much cardiovascular disease as the US, because meat is unhealthy.
Native cultures did not hunt the megafauna to extinction. Stop w that propaganda.
So much false information in this comment
ancient cultures did not hunt their prey to extinction. Please stop with the propaganda.
Please provide research that states there are no cardiovascular diseases in French population.. Where are you getting those details? That is sheer folklore..
Having attempted knapping a few times (nothing I would call a success) and reflecting on that now. It's not just pounding involved. There is a lot of angled applied pressures and wrist motions. Some of those wrist motions are sweeping and flicking unwanted bits away from you. I don't think it's a big leap from pounding to swinging and throwing. Which are also two things we do well and a lot of. They are all very similar motions. Maybe cracking open nuts and bones in a group leads to chucking rocks at predators in a group.
You don't have to have a stone tip to make an effective spear.
Many tropical humans still use 100% wooden spears.
They could have been hunters if they had a decent size stick.
Why not mention the obvious.
Because she is talking about fossil proof. There’s probably no evidence of wooden tools left now. Not sure if there are fossil records of the grinding or sharpening stones used to get the sticks sharp. Interesting.
@@peggycearnach8034 so you think they went straight to stone points and didn't use a wood spear.
I understand it doesn't make a fossil under most conditions.
A long bone sliver makes a good spear point. Or, a very good dagger. Modern primitive technology uses bone spear and arrow tips.
The society of primitive technology postulated in 2001 that there was a bone and wood age before the Stone Age, but there would be nearly no record of it as they don't fossilize.
I am very curious about the time at which primates on the journey to humans stopped making the amino acids that they must consume today that are essential. Yes this makes sense that fat helped the brain development but animal protein is something we seem to have been consuming to the point that we stopped making our own amino acids from an arboreal diet and as she said chimps do not eat a significant amount of animal protein. When did that change and so if we started with bone marrow and later were hunting at what stage were the amino acids essential - in that we had to consume them from the environment. Love the lecture!
In the context she mentions it, you don't lose weight by not eating carbs and fat, you lose weight by not eating carbs and eating protein and fat (saturated animal fat is best)...
Excellent presentation. Most interesting.
Brilliant theory which makes perfect sence.
Fantastic presentation...
Love this lady, so passionate about her subject you cannot help but get hooked. She made it very easy to understand and her hypothesis is so plausible when explained like this. This lady is set to impact and create great conversations in her field.
I must totally agree. This person is really an amazing specimen and a pride of your species.
Very interesting thanks. This is a fascinating subject.
How much fat is thrown out today by people scared of it? How much that could be used for food in fast food fryers now goes into cosmetics and other nonsense.
Probably nothing compared to the amount of produce that is thrown out every day
Some of it goes into animal feed, so they get....Fat.
Can the rate and time length of transition from mostly forest to mostly grassland be determined? If it was slow and even enough, the advantage of a moment to moment sense of time. neurologically, might have developed then. Finding useful things along the way and also bringing what you know you’ll need, becomes relevant when traveling from one mini-forest to the next.
This is the weirdest episode of “Bones” I’ve seen yet.
She does look like her. 😂
Yes, now that you mention it. 👏🏻
Lol. She does resemble her, and Lucy Lawless .
underrated comment
Could it be that the bits of stone for cutting might have developed from using for shredding plant materials?
I wish I were 18 again! What an intriguing field of study!! A great teacher!!
In 2013, after I had retired, I took a free class in Paleoanthropology from Arizona State. Maybe it is still available online. It is free, if you don’t need any educational documents anymore.
Great lecture! Filling in the gaps of all the bridging niches will be the next half century.
Excellent talk!
Scientist of the year (R&D Journal) professor James Tour, Rice University. 4 PhD's / 700+ published works / 130+ patents / over a dozen companies founded from the medical field to the oil field. Too many accomplishments to list, but his resume is public. Here's a link to his channel. ruclips.net/channel/UColdwL6T062LNo65OHngXAQ
For all you interested in Philosophy of Science (please, not all hands up at once!) Jess Thompson's talk about the connection between brain evolution, tools, and diet - this is an excellent illustration of Michael Streven's idea of the "iron law" of Scientific practice which he talks about in his 2020 book "The Knowledge Machine" The secret to science's success is an ironclad determination to restrict scientific inquiry specifically to the public sharing of the results of observations; it is the results of the pursuit of universally shared data that ultimately makes or breaks scientific theories. We can tell each other more beautiful stories about our origins, but systematically extracting accurate and relevant data is what will eventually lead to scientific consensus. Ultimately the data tells a better story, but it might not be as beautiful a story as what we intuitively feel about the subject.
Seems a bit of a stretch that there could have been enough large bones laying about to scavenge that it would have supplied enough nutrition to actually drive the evolution of the brain. It would have taken several such animals being killed in a given area at least several times a week to have fed even a small number of these hominids. It seems more reasonable to speculate that they must have hit upon some means of proactively killing large game themselves long before it might otherwise have seemed possible.
Apparently some of the anthropological evidence points to the main brain growth spurt just after we began to hunt, thereby allowing us to have "first pick", if you like. of the fattiest parts. That would make your speculation correct. Not that I've watched the above video yet tho....
It's a supplement to a diet. Not a main supply for it. Also, yeah. If there's a crap load of carcasses around from multiple predators, it's absolutely possible to get multiple sources of bone marrow in a week.
@@supernotfunnyman No, animal foods were a staple in most parts until the agricultural revolution even still in some places after that.
There wasn't 7 billion people on the earth.
@@Cbd_7ohm But the question is how occasional of a supplement was it? I'm sure that early hominids would have taken advantage of it when they found it, but what I question is the amount available.
It seems to me that you would have needed at least dozens of such kills daily in a relatively small area consistently over hundreds of thousands of years for it to have been the major driving environmental factor in the evolution of the brain.
Finding a bone here and there every few months and sharing it with a group of a dozen or so would not seem to be able to provide enough nutrition for that purpose.
Very convincing. I'm sold on the idea.
Nice presentation, Lara Croft!
The resemblance is uncanny.
U can always look at an auricle to promote the complete food group