Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Meat Eating Accelerated Face Evolution

Recent studies have found that the eating of raw meat and the making of stone arrows contributes to the smaller faces and teeth of the ancient relatives. Meat and tools, not the advent of cooking, was the trigger that freed early humans to develop a smaller chewing apparatus. This change could have allowed for other changes such as improved speech or even shifts in the brain size. Cooking meat became common much later in time. The earliest members of our genus, Homo, are only sparsely represented in the fossil record. And when the Homo Erectus specie appeared two million years ago humans had bigger heads and bodies contributing to more energy requirements. A reason for these changes, cooking, does not make sense any more. Since was only common around 500,00 years ago so it couldn’t have much of an effect. Prof Lieberman explained that, "At some point in human evolution, there was a shift - we started to eat less. This shift is made possible by two factors: we eat a much higher quality diet than our ancestors, but we also eat food that has been heavily processed." The scientists evaluated chewing performance by feeding adult experimental subjects samples of meat, and the kind of vegetables our early ancestors might have consumed before incorporating meat into their diets. They measure how much was chewed and how much effort it took to chew it. broken up before swallowing.
The findings suggest that by eating a diet of one-third meat, and using stone tools to process the food - slicing the meat and pounding the plant material - early humans would have needed to chew 17% less often and 26% less forcefully. This shows how much humans have changed over time. We leave in a world where food is heavily processed, so we don’t use as much effort as we used too.
I thought that this was a very interesting article that made me think a lot about the way I eat. It also allowed me to imagine the way people used to eat. I think the only thing they could fix would to add more relevance to the article. But other than that I thought the article was clear and interesting.

"Meat Eating Accelerated Face Evolution - BBC News." BBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2016.

9 comments:

  1. Megan,
    I enjoyed reading your review of the BBC article: “Meat Eating Accelerated Face Evolution". This article is a very good choice because this is an area of study that is constantly discovering new things about our ancestors when new technologies come around and the information gained can provide a lot of insight as to why we are the way we are. I liked how you included the specific changes that eating meat created like smaller jaw and brain size differences. I also liked how you quoted specific scientists and their insight as to what was discovered and what it means. This makes your article more factual and research based which develops your review into a more accurate and reliable source. I also thought you did a very good job at describing the relevance of this article and the importance of something like this because it isn't as obvious as some other topics. This review was overall very well written and thought out and I thought you did a good job at displaying your thoughts in a descriptive yet concise manner.
    I felt that the primary problem with your review was a lack of detail. You had many good points and presented some facts, but your arguments would have been much stronger if you had provided a more in depth description of what changed in our skull structure and how scientists figured it out. All of the information that was provided told us that it was modified but not as much specifically how and why. Another aspect that was detrimental to your review was that you had a lot of careless mistakes. Typos, sentence fragments that didnt make sense or flow well, these are all things that made your article seem less authoritative and made it sometimes diffiicult to understand what you were trying to get across.
    Overall I really enjoyed reading your review and was especially interested by this topic because I think it is cool to figure out exactly what reasons there are for why we evolved into what we are. To me, one of the most interesting pieces of information in this review was the whole concept in general. That something as small as eating something raw vs. cooked and/or having meat vs. plants could totally change our skulls and their structure.

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  3. A look into our ancestry is always interesting to see and think about. Your review correctly addressed this wonder and curiosity by explaining how information on our ancestors is constantly changing and evolving. Additionally, you very successfully implemented information and statistics directly from the article which, abnormally, made the information more digestible rather than boring an confusing. After having read the article, it became evident that you also did a good job of choosing all the facts necessary to understand the concept, no vital information was left out.

    While all these aspects were positive, there were areas in which your review could have improved. For example, it would have been nice to have seen more of a personal opinion at the end. Secondly I would have liked to have seen a bit more elaboration on the implications of this information. Specifically the sentence that mentioned how changes in eating habits could have impacted brain and skull size in general.

    Seeing information like this is always humbling because it goes to show how even scientists can be wrong and nearly any information can be reevaluated. Thinking of humans as something that evolves is always weird because of how today's world effectively negates natural selection.

    "Meat Eating Accelerated Face Evolution - BBC News." BBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2016.

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  4. Meagan,

    I was intrigued by your review because of the topic. Ancestral discoveries are constantly being made and each one is just as fascinating as the last. You did a great job of analyzing the article and describing the findings made. Your first sentence, for example, was very strange because it claimed that the making of arrows contributed to smaller teeth of ancient relatives. I immediately thought, why would that happen? What is the link? This was a great hook. However, you included the appropriate evidence to link the two together, which was great. Furthermore, I thought your quote integration was well done and effective. This boosted your credibility and helped prove your points. Your relevance connections were insightful as well because they described the importance of this research.

    One problem I had with your article review was that you did not include the title and author (if it was provided) or the hyperlink to the actual article. This made it hard to pinpoint what exactly I would be reading, but like I said before, your first sentence made up for that. In addition, you had a few missing commas in places where you could have used them, such as in the sixth sentence after the word “ago” and before “humans”. Grammar mistakes such as these are small, but very crucial to the whole piece. Having just one or two can reduce your credibility as an author, so make sure you proofread!

    I was glad I read your review because I like to know how and why we as humans evolve. Something small such as eating cooked meat versus non-cooked meat brought us a very long was and I find that kind of stuff interesting.

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  5. Hi Meagan! One thing I loved about your review was the topic that you chose. This is such an interesting topic that I haven’t heard very much about. You also did a great job of explaining why humans eating meat contributed to faster evolution. You were very clear in explaining your topic and I understood it fully. I also enjoyed how clear your sentences were and the advice you gave to the author to add more statistics.
    One thing I thought you could've improved on was that you seemed to forget a title for your article. I also would recommend writing a paragraph on why this information is relevant to us. There were also some small spelling mistakes such as when you meant to say “live” you said “leave”.
    Something I learned from your review was that studies could be conducted on humans today to test whether eating food our ancestors ate made any difference in how many times they had to chew or swallow. Great job Meagan!

    "Meat Eating Accelerated Face Evolution - BBC News." BBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2016.


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  6. Meagan,

    I thought you did an excellent job reviewing “Meat Eating Accelerated Face Evolution.” One especially strong point of your review was your detail. For example, you included “early humans would have needed to chew 17% less often and 26% less forcefully.” I thought these specifics helped validate your review. Another aspect of your review that was especially strong was that you effectively explained the statistics and data you introduced, ensuring that this helped enhance the reader’s understanding. This is not easy to effectively do, however I felt that all the data and statistics you introduced were sufficiently explained such that it was easy to understand. Lastly, I thought you also did an excellent job of being concise. You were able to integrate all these facts into your review without being especially wordy.

    One area you could have improved in is titling your piece. You correctly cited it, however not including the title of a piece can diminish the credibility of an article. Similarly, you made a few spelling and grammar errors. Although none of these errors were especially heinous, they, too, can compound and ultimately destroy the credibility of an article. These are small mistakes that can easily be improved next time.

    Again, I thought you did an excellent job writing this piece. One thing I learned is that eating meat could have allowed for shifts in face evolution that made way for the advent of speech and increased brain size -- I found this especially incredible.

    Work Cited:
    "Meat Eating Accelerated Face Evolution - BBC News." BBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2016.

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  7. Meagan I really enjoyed your review of the article “Meat Eating Accelerated Face Evolution.” There were a few things that stood out. One, it is always interesting to look into our ancestry and see what discoveries are constantly being made. And you did a great job explaining how eating raw meat has changed the faces of ancient relatives. Two, I liked how you took certain statistics from the article such as “17% less often and 26% less forcefully.” These statistics make it very clear what is going on. Three, I liked your use of quotes because they strengthened your review. It always helps to have an expert in the field talk about your article’s ideas.

    Although your review was great, there are a few things you could do to make it even better. One, It would have been nice to see more of a personal opinion at the end and how this new knowledge affects you directly or society as a whole. Two, I wish you went into a little more detail about the summary of your article. The facts are there, but it would have been helpful if you elaborated on the details a little more.

    I was happy to read your review because it is always interesting to read about how humans have evolved over time. It’s amazing that you can conduct tests on humans today and compare them to our ancestors. Again, I really enjoyed your review.

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  8. A look into our ancestry is always interesting to see and think about. Your review correctly addressed this wonder and curiosity by explaining how information on our ancestors is constantly changing and evolving. Additionally, you very successfully implemented information and statistics directly from the article which, abnormally, made the information more digestible rather than boring and confusing. After having read the article, it became evident that you also did a good job of choosing all the facts necessary to understand the concept, no vital information was left out.
    One problem I had with your article review was that you did not include the title and author (if it was provided) or the hyperlink to the actual article. This made it hard to pinpoint what exactly I would be reading, but like I said before, your first sentence made up for that. In addition, you had a few missing commas in places where you could have used them, such as in the sixth sentence after the word “ago” and before “humans”. Grammar mistakes such as these are small, but very crucial to the whole piece. Having just one or two can reduce your credibility as an author, so make sure you proofread.
    Again, I thought you did an excellent job writing this piece. One thing I learned is that eating meat could have allowed for shifts in face evolution that made way for the advent of speech and increased brain size -- I found this especially incredible.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This article review was very well done and helped to explain how our changing diet effects evolution. I thought that the summary was very well done, and outlined not only how a changing diet effects evolution, but also the move toward more processed food and the effect on the chewing apparatus. Also, the percentages of the effort required when chewing was very helpful at giving the reader a better understanding of the extent to which these earlier peoples sliced their meat in order to break it down to be easily eaten. Lastly, the addition of a quote added reliability to the information, but also helped in the understanding of the shift to eating less food. The quote was able to explain how the quality diet and processed food (which requires less effort by us to prepare) led to this shift.
    Although this review was very well done, there were some changes that could have improved it. This article is extremely relevant because the foods we eat can all affect evolution. I think that there could have also been more information on how processed foods can affect us today, and if this change in eating habit contributed to anything besides the smaller faces and teeth. Additionally, I thought that the connection between the smaller face and teeth relating to the change in diet could have been more clear; although these are both mentioned, there isn’t a clear tie between the two mentioned.
    I think that I learned a lot about how diet can affect evolution. Our ancestors needed the larger face and teeth in order to eat the tougher meats and vegetables, however, natural selection eliminated them because they are unnecessary because of the prominent role of processed foods. I choose to read this article, because I thought it would be interesting to see how food consumption effects evolution. I think that based on this, many other evolutionary changes could be linked to diet, and changes in food consumption, and this would be interesting to learn more about.

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