Evolution of the feeding process
Millions of years ago an ancestor of ours, changing position rising on their hind legs. This fact would have to profoundly and definitively modify his future and that of his descendants.
Until that moment his diet was scarce and he was suspended from what he found on the ground or in the branches of the trees. His diet depended on what he could pick up with his snout. When he stood up he left his hands free, also extending his field of vision considerably.
• Released the hands of the displacement activity, they became useful tools that together with the greater visual reach, facilitated a better exploration, knowledge and use of their environment and the food that this offered them.
• This change of position meant the expansion of its activity and its diet. Anthropologists have not yet agreed on what was the motive that impel that creature to stand upright, but whatever that first impulse, their living conditions changed so radically, that it initiated an evolutionary process that would culminate , after many adaptations and learnings, in the life forms that characterize human beings.
Soon the hunting activity begins, the man uses his hands to handle weapons. With hunting they will change not only the diet, but their customs and their housing. It is then necessary, a place to return with the pieces collected to dismember and distribute them. The first house is established in the shelter of the climate and the vermin.
Many scientists have established the activities of our ancestors in relation to hunting and feeding, as one of the definitive engines in their evolution towards properly human life forms. Around the search for food appeared the first organizations needed to define strategies to hunt and, most likely, the complexity of this process gave rise to the first babbles of language.
The discovery of fire and the learning of its use brought with it, among many other possibilities, the discovery of the kitchen. These primitive beings realized that, by applying fire to the flesh of the game or other food, there was a transformation in them that made them more edible, softer, tastier ... Picking up this first relationship, the path of as many tests and experiences as humans have done in the kitchen. Mixing and combining, they came to establish their tastes, to satisfy them after knowing them and to improve them, risking new possibilities.
A long process of observation and experience led to the first forms of cultivation and the domestication of animals, which made sedentary life possible. All these processes, suppose gigantic advances in the human experience, and therefore, in their intellectual capacity. Each achievement is a test and a trial that, at the same time, makes the following result possible. The tests are increasingly complex, the effort that must be applied must also be. Slowly, it happened to happened, day by day ...
From the most remote times, humans have experimented with food trying to get a diet that would allow them to live healthy and strong. At first they only picked up what they found in their path, verifying, with many tests, which satisfied them more and were more edible. Hunting and fishing introduced new substances of greater nutritional value into their diet. As our ancestors advanced and their ways of life were more complex, they also diversified food products.
Great efforts were made to cultivate and domesticate animals, new tools were introduced that facilitated the work and made possible the cultivation of large areas.
In this way, better and more abundant harvests were obtained that could be stored as a reserve for the periods in which it was not cultivated.
With the advance of societies, the technology of food is developed, extracting processed products from the raw materials. Through the ages, and from generation to generation, the knowledge about food and its methods to elaborate them, were strengthened on the basis of experience in order to achieve a better adaptation of the human being with his environment.
Excellent post, I love looking back into history and seeing how we've all adapted (or haven't in some cases). I do sometimes wonder if humanity has adapted too much at times. Got a little bit lax?