Picture this: You're a Homo Erectus, or perhaps Adam and Eve, wandering under the vast canopy of the sky, the sun your guide to finding the next meal. For 3 million years, our ancestors thrived under the sun, their days spent hunting, gathering, and moving through landscapes rich with vitamin D, not vitamin D supplements. Fast forward to today, and we're advised to avoid this celestial body like it's the villain in our health narrative. But let's pause and ask, did evolution screw up, or have we misunderstood the sun's role in our biology?
Read MoreWelcome to part five. The use of toothpicks is uniquely human. The famous dental anthropologist Peter Unger discovered tiny striations in teeth that could not be caused by chewing. He concluded that the marks could only have been caused by the overuse of toothpicks made of hard materials like bone. He also drew a parallel between tool use and the introduction of meat to humans' diets. Ungar said toothpick use is one of the first lines of evidence from the hominid fossil record that shows our genus consuming significant amounts of meat in the ancient past. Tooth picking likely served to remove food, especially meat, but it caused visible damage. To quote him, "Teeth are not well designed for eating meat, so our early ancestors had to use toothpicks." This post will cover the evidence and discuss the proper use of toothpicks.
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