Welcome 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.
Read MoreLanguage is the one thing that truly sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. It has enabled us to adapt to new environments and situations much faster than evolution allows. Indeed, many aspects of language act in parallel with evolution. Since speech leaves no physical clues for archeologists to find, little is known regarding when and how we acquired it. Christine Kenneally explains the problem of exploring the advent of language in her book The First Word. She states, "For all its power to wound and seduce, speech is our most ephemeral creation; it is little more than air. It exits the body as a series of puffs and dissipates quickly into the atmosphere. ... there are no verbs preserved in amber, no ossified nouns, and no prehistorical shrieks forever spread-eagled in the lava that took them by surprise." Scientists have had a difficult time piecing together the story of how we developed language. This post will cover some of their findings.
Read MoreWe can produce glucose from the protein we ingest in the absence of fat and carbs in the diet. Making glucose from protein is a process known as gluconeogenesis. The problem is that our ability to synthesize glucose from protein is very limited and will not sustain us longterm. Luckily, we have such an abundance of food today, most people will never have to rely on gluconeogenesis, except for me. Today, I would like to share my story and put the knowledge I gained from my experience into the larger framework of human evolution and biology.
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