Carnivore Kin

Is there anything more annoying than a vegan? Since when did eating a chunk of cheese spell the demise of civilization? Don’t get me wrong, I stand with the v’s on their animal rights platform and abhor the trend in industrial farming. In fact, my precious niece and her lovely wife are vegans and, although I admire their integrity and applaud their dedicated activism, I have a distinct urge to stuff an egg down their throats. I just don’t get the vegans.

As a committed carnivore, I must stand up for the meat eaters. We humans evolved to eat meat. Don’t believe me? Reach over and pry open the jaws of the person next to you. What you’ll see is living proof that we are meant to consume a wide range of foods – many of which had parents. The proof is in our teeth.

You can tell a lot about a critter from its teeth. From paleontology to paleoanthropology, teeth afford a handy way of identifying fossils, be they archaeopteryx or australopithecines, for teeth say a lot about how an organism lived, and, most importantly, what they ate.

Close your eyes and picture a crocodile, preferably with its mouth open. What you should see in your mind’s eye are teeth that vary in size but are all the same shape. The homodontous dentition of a croc is designed for one thing: grabbing flesh, which they do with lethal precision. Crocs don’t chew, thus they have no need for molars. They simply grab hold of that wildebeest, crush and tear what they can, then swallow as big a chunk as possible.

Now picture your own teeth. They come in an array of shapes and sizes, for they have various functions. Our incisors and canines are for biting and tearing, our molars, for chewing. As omnivores, our heterodontous array opens us up to myriad foodstuffs, from seeds and nuts to plants and the all-important meat. And when I say meat is important, I don’t just mean for today’s burgermunchers. The consumption of meat played a critical role in human evolution.

Some of the earliest evidence for meat eating comes from the dusty plains of Gona, Ethiopia, where butchered animal bones dating back to over two and a half million years ago were discovered in 1994. Carnivory was pushed back another million years by a discovery a few years back in nearby Dikika, where a goat-like critter was butchered almost three and a half million years ago. And what benefit would meat eating incur? None, really, unless you’re interested in evolving a giant brain.

Meat eating meant a valuable source of protein for our hominin ancestors, which is critical for certain bodily functions, especially a metabolically demanding brain. Our brains consume about twenty percent of our overall energy intake. By exploiting high-quality foods like meat, our ancestors were able to supply their expensive brains without spending the majority of their day grazing like gorillas. 

Our gorilla cousins are forced to spend endless hours munching their way through the forest in order to obtain the nutrients required for survival. And to process all that vegetation requires an enormous gut, thus their Buddha-like physiques. For the hominins, better foodstuffs meant a reduction in our guts. And since all of evolution is a tradeoff, smaller guts requiring less energy may have freed up fuel to grow our bigger brains. Not only did our guts get smaller, so did our teeth. As our teeth got smaller, so did our faces; thus we lack the forward-jutting snouts of our ancestors.

More meat meant more people. A higher-quality diet, combined with the benefits of cooking (which boosts nutrients and kills pesky pathogens), would have enabled earlier weaning of infants, allowing women to have more babies more often, thereby spreading the human race far and wide.

Meat also fueled our social evolution. Communal hunting instilled cooperative behavior and communication. As populations got bigger, meat on the hoof would have become scarcer, thus the domestication of animals provided a steady supply without the need to hunt. A steady supply meant populations could grow even larger, ushering in complex society, social stratification, and, eventually, industrialization; all made possible because of our love of meat.

So the next time you are enjoying a juicy steak and some disapproving vegan gives you the stink-eye, take heart. If it weren’t for our carnivorous ancestors, we’d still be wandering the African plains with our dinky brains and a fistful of tubers.

Hurray for the carnivores!

Here's a great read on the environmental repercussions of meat eating (a nod to my favorite vegans!)

Join me next week when we explore another "hot" topic in human evolution. Stay tuned! 

Related Posts
Eating our Own
Eruption in Your Mouth
Humans... Tasty, Tasty