What if early humans never ate meat?

Question

Would are brains be the same? What if we never wore fur or used animals for labor, how would human civilization be effected today?

Answer 1

Early people in India and of the Hindu religion never ate meat and they turned out just fine...

Answer 2

Umm

It has been said that we didn't eat meat in our early times being that we were on the bottom of the food chain (going up against Lions and other meat eaters) and that we really only first started eating meat when the ice age happened and we had to hunt fish out of the frozen rivers due to the fact that all the plants were gone. Our teeth structure is more similar to animals that do not eat meat then to those who do. And yes our brains would be the same being that PROTEIN is what is essential and you do not have to eat meat to get protein.

Answer 3

Then our Homo hablis, and perhaps our australopithecus ancestors, would have evolved in different direction (from who we are today), 2-3 million years ago!

Answer 4

we would be healthier.

Answer 5

pre-humans have been eating flesh for 3 to 400,000 years, at least. I would need to research this.

It wasn't until our ancestors discovered flesh (protein) that they had time to spend...thinking. Before that they spent all day just trying to get enough to eat.

Our digestive systems are not really designed for the digestion of flesh. Take a look at the digestive system of the great cats, that is a system designed for flesh.

Our system is designed for ripe fruit as is that of our cousins, the other primates.

Answer 6

Well we wouldn't exist only thing some of the humans could live off of back then was meat. And if they didn't eat meat then they would starve and die out and we would apparently never exist.So that's why we barley never found the animals existed back then because the people who needed to survive killed them all off and ate them for nourishment.

Answer 7

we would not exist.  the ones that didn't starve to death, would have frozen.  ever heard of the ice-age?  There were not enough plants to support life.  and leaves do not insulate as well as fur.  remember man has a brain that is far more evolved than other animals.  back then we still knew how to use it!

Answer 8

no, they would not.  People need the protein and iron from meat as well as fat.  People are omnivores not herbivores.  What is worse, a starving family on the street or a bunny cooked for dinner?  I say the family.

Answer 9

I am an anthropology student, but this is not a very anthropological answer. I have been a vegetarian for about twenty years, after reading about factory farms and their cruelty.

Lately I have been suffering from exhaustion, got Epstein Barr virus, probably from pushing myself so hard at school, (I am no spring chicken). Anyway after getting Vitamin B!@ treatments and doing lots of research I find that B!@ can only be found from animal sources, which has broadened my perspective on the need of animal products in the diet.

I still would rather give myself the shots though. I just love critters, lol.

Answer 10

What if modern humans never used their brains?

Answer 11

The eating of a lot more meat coincided with the sudden increase in brain size of hominids. You can't get away from the fact that humans need a lot of omega three oils for the brain, and there are no sources of good omega three in the vegetable kingdom.

Also, vegetation take a lot of metabolic energy to digest, and the more you give to digestion the less will be available for the brain (which takes about 25% of our calorie intake to run).

Also, vegetable sources of some vitamins are pretty uncommon, although that could have been adapted too.

In essence, you need a diet very high in omega three and fat generally to run a big powerful brain. You wouldn't have got super-smart bald primates if they just age veggies.

All the smart veggie animals (like parrots) eat a h**l of a lot of nuts! High in fat, with a little O3 thrown in.

We would never have left Africa if we couldn't have used animal furs to built shelters or wear as clothes, the colder climates and even the middle east would have been out of the question (it can get freezing cold at night in places like Israel)

Further down the line, animal domestication played an important part of building the first civilisations, pigs seem to have been domesticated before wheat was grown.

Answer 12

We wouldn't be here... the human body needs protein for fuel. Where would the protein have come from? They were hunters and gatherers...not farmers and merchants. They didn't grow soybeans or peanuts or make cheese. During the Ice Age they would have died because they had no vegetation to sustain any kind of life. They used their brains to survive.

Answer 13

Mooo, Moooo, Moooo.

Answer 14

STREAKING!!!!

Answer 15

It is not the nutrition in the meat that made us smarter or the fat in the bone as is so often stated.  It is more that being a hunter allowed us greater range and it probably made it more important to create weapons and tools.  Hunting takes more intelligence and cooperation than gathering roots.  Hunting also equips you to be aggressive killers that dominate other hominids.