Bob Yirka is a writer for Phys.org.
The Neolithic Revolution involved changes in behavior and technology to allow access to novel food resources. Humans paid higher energy costs in order to get a greater number of calories in less time, depicted through transitions from left to right. Human subsistence reduces time costs but not energy costs, resulting in improved return rates and similar to that of other great apes. The illustrations are by Samantha Shields.
The Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, France, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany have collaborated on a study that suggests early humans gained an energy budget by increasing their rate of energy acquisition. Their paper was published in the journal Science.
The researchers noted that humans and the other great apes differed in some ways. They decided to look at energy intake and expenditure. People and animals have to put in a lot of work to get an energy intake. A banana is a simple example. The amount of energy required to climb a tree is more than the benefit of eating a single banana. If a single person is able to throw down multiple bananas, then the overall energy intake may surpass the effort of climbing a tree a single time. The researchers studied two groups of modern people, one in a rain forest and the other in a hunter gatherer's camp.
They found that both groups spent more energy on food, but achieved the same amount of energy efficiency. Bipedalism and the use of tools can decrease the amount of energy used to get food. The acquisition of more food was much higher than the great apes. The researchers suggest that humans are not cost-savings but are instead creatures that operate in high throughput ways that lead to large payoffs. They think that the production of so much food was a result of diverging from the great apes. They suggest that the development of larger brains and other unique human attributes can be traced back to such socializing and the activities involved in obtaining food.
The energetics of uniquely human subsistence strategies is a paper by Thomas S. There is a science.abf0130
Science journal information.
The Science X Network will be launched in 2021.
Early humans gained energy budget by increasing rate of energy acquisition, not energy-saving adaptation.
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