Food and its role in human evolution

Food and its role in human evolution

     How did food influence on human evolution?

     The changes that our ancestors adopted in their diet throughout the history had an important impact on our physical and intellectual evolution. In the beginning, a strictly herbivorous diet required a large set of teeth with thick enamel, which partly influenced a craniofacial skeleton with highlighted prognathism, and access to this food through the brachiation affected upper extremities elongated compared to the lower ones.

     Different factors not yet fully established (possibly including climate change) influenced the fact that our race was to be adapted to a savannah environment and a more varied diet. The adaptation to this new environment also resulted in bipedalism, freeing the upper limbs which could be used for other purposes, and in the search of new food resources, we began to introduce meat, first as scavengers, later as hunters. This new type of food provided more calories, which led to reduce the number of daily intakes. The teeth reduced both their size and enamel layer. Therefore, facial prognathism diminished.

     On the other hand, the adoption of bipedalism allowed a change in the cranial skeleton, whose capacity progressively increased.

     About 1.5 million years ago, Homo Erectus began to use fire and thus the cooking of meat eventually brought a new tooth modification, such as the reduction of the canines, which again left a mark on the maxillo -facial skeleton.

    
     The next major change took place in the Holocene, about 12,000 years ago. A climate change led to the end of the last ice age, starting the interglacial period in which we are today. The resulting improved climate will facilitate the emergence of agriculture and livestock farming, making our nomadic ancestors sedentary. It is the Neolithic, highlighting the area of the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East. Among the first cultivated plants we find barley and wheat; among the first domesticated animals (for food) and without making hunting disappear we find ovicaprids and a bit later bovine and swine.

     Changing from predator to food producer eventually led to the First Demographic Revolution in History (major and relatively rapid increase in the population) as well as the emergence of urban life and civilization and, with it, writing, which made us leave the Prehistory and go into Ancient History .

QUESTION 1. Why is the fish a symbol of the first Christians?
- Because of the miracle of the loaves and fish;

- Because some apostles had been fishermen;
- Because it was basic in the first Christians’ diet;
- Because we can find the initials of Christ among its letters in the Greek alphabet.

QUESTION 2.  In the seventeenth century, regarding the still lives, which cuisine is more copious, the one from the Netherlands or the one from Spain?

 - Both of them are really stark; 
-  Both of them are really copious,
-  The economic situation of the different territories is reflected in their pictorial works. The cooking from the Netherlands is represented as copious, sumptuous; the Spanish cuisine, in particular the Castilian one, is displayed as sober and light.

 - We cannot deduce anything from this pictorial genre.

QUESTION 3. Which is usually the meaning of fruit in Baroque picture?:
- The different kinds of fruit simbolize different senses or virtues; for example, the orange blossom (the orange tree flower) simbolizes virginity, whereas an apple is a symbol for original sin.
- An important element in the food at that time;
- It reflects the gastronomic or culinary taste of the principal;
- No special meaning.

QUESTION 4. What is usually the meaning of clear, clean water ?

-It rains a lot in the painter’s country,
- There are many droughts in the painter’s country,
- It is the liquid element in contrast to the solid material,
- It reflects truth, purity.