So is meat that made us brainy?

Homo sapien is an omnivore. This means humans eat both meats and vegetable matter.

Meat has different meanings for different people, but essentially it means the muscle or flesh from living animals, birds and seafood.

Vegetarians and Vegans will usually define meat as being from animals, birds and seafood, whereas there are other people that will only call the material from animals meat.

Regardless of what each person calls meat, it has now been found that it is likely that humans have been eating it regularly for 1.5 million years.

This finding is based on the discovery of a human skull in Tanzania. The skull was from a two year old and showed evidence of anemia and was also lacking B9 and B12. All of which indicates that the child, or it’s mother, was not eating any meat at the time of it’s death.

The size and development of the skull also reinforces the new research that it is the regular eating of meat that has allowed the human brain to develop to the point it has. Previously it was believed that humans were meat eaters when the opportunity arose, however this new study is showing that the species was an active hunter and meat eater more than a million years ago.

The study said; “The presence of anemia-induced porotic hyperostosis…indicates indirectly that by at least the early Pleistocene meat had become so essential to proper hominin functioning that its paucity or lack led to deleterious pathological conditions.”

This study would support the belief held by many medical and nutritional specialists that children should not be given a purely vegan diet, as there may be a reduction in brain development as a result.

For those adults choosing to live a vegetarian lifestyle, this study supports the concept that it is essential to have a well balanced diet with regular consumption of good quality secondary protein sources.