T2K Cuisine - Food in the aftermath

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Targan

I understand your point completely Paul but Robustus wasn't one of our direct ancestors, it was one of the Hominid species that co-existed with our direct ancestor Homo Habilis. Well that seems to be the current scientific consensus anyway (when I was younger it was believed that Australopithecus Africanus and Robustus co-existed). It is fairly certain that we and Robustus both descended from the more gracile lines of Australopithecus but our line didn't have the big sagittal crests that Robustus and Australopithecus Boisei had (needed to attach those big herbivore jaw muscles to the top of the skull).

I agree with you on the brain development point. Even though Robustus probably had a very basic level of tool use they almost certainly never developed the use of fire or spoken language before they died out leaving no descendants.

The reason I used A. Robustus as an example is that Robustus is the sort of thing you get when you have a pre-human creature that subsists primarily on vegetable matter. You don't evolve a big brain that way. Considering what we did to this planet, maybe it would have been for the better if pre-humans decided not to eat meat...