Source: HEALTH.IN.GR
The discovery of cooking meat and plants, probably made by Homo erectus until about 1.8 million years.
"And cultural developement"
New York - The discovery of the culinary arts has played a catalytic role in the development of advanced cognitive capacities of the human brain, and by extension culture, Brazilian scientists argue in their article published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The researchers, led by Professor Susan Cherkoulano-Chouzel Biomedical Sciences Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, calculated that if people ate only raw foods without cooking them, they would have to eat at least nine hours each day in order to maintain the approximately 86 billion neurons of the brain developed today.
Human neurons are much more numerous than the brain cells of great apes: the chimpanzee has about 28 billion neurons and gorilla 33 billion.
The researchers measured the number of neurons in 13 species of monkeys and more than 30 other species of mammals. So, first discovered that brain size is directly related to the number of neurons and also that the number of neurons is directly related, in turn, with the amount of energy (calories) that the brain needs maintenance.
Scientists point out that if our ancestors had not invented the cooking fire as a method to increase in a short time the number of calories consumed, their brains could not grow. This explains, they say, why big gorillas, who have three times body weight than humans, have significantly smaller brains - just because they continue to depend on raw foods.
The brain is so "hungry" for energy that modern humans, although it is only 2% of body mass, is responsible for approximately 20% of human metabolism in resting conditions (compared to 9% in great apes).
The discovery of cooking meat and plants, probably made by him ("upright man») Homo Erectus until about 1.8 million years ago, turned the brain of metabolic energy-significant weight advantage, gradually giving people new skills in and making personal and social life more flexible and complex.
As stated by Dr. Cherkoulano-Chouzel, "the most obvious answer to the question why other related primate species (great apes) can not do everything and people, is that we only ever learned to cook and this led to an explosive development of the human brain. "
The theory was first argued at the end of the '90s, Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University Richard Rangkam. Dr. Rangkam and colleagues have recently done laboratory experiments show that various animals (rodents, pythons, etc.) grow faster and more when you eat cooked instead of raw meat.
But there is also the scientific riposte that ancient fires that have been discovered, dating back only 800,000 years ago or so, while the regular use of fire for cooking, according to the paleontological and archaeological findings, it seems that more recently spread. In this case, say the skeptics, it is doubtful that cooking actually played a key role in the first "explosion" of the human brain that occurred before 1.6 to 1.8 million years, but cooking may have played an important role in the second phase of rapid brain development that occurred before about 600,000 years.
