Are we rewriting history or what are we doing? ● We are in a process of total extinction that no one is talking about anymore ● How did we get such a big brain?

Are we rewriting history or what are we doing?

With the publication in the journal Science of information that 2.9 million-year-old stone tools have been discovered at the Kenyan site of Nyayang, headlines have once again appeared that, unfortunately, history needs to be rewritten, hallucinatory, even shocking, but no one could imagine such a discovery.

Sit quietly, put back the sheets of paper that you wanted to add to the golden book of history, leave your pens too, because we don’t need to rewrite anything! The discovery is important to the world of science, no doubt, but it is by no means the first. It is not even the earliest evidence of tool use.

The fact that before the genus Homo there were species that also created tools has been a proven fact for more than ten years. If the old concept of what defined the genus Homo had to be rewritten, namely the ability to create tools and the appearance in the Quaternary period (2.58 million years ago), that too was rewritten long ago.

As I said, since 2010 primitive tools have been found in Ethiopia (Dikita site) 3.39 million years old. Practically with this discovery, it became clear that some species of Australopithecus had made the mentioned technological progress. Moreover, half a million years before the mentioned today. Then, five years later, 3.3-million-year-old tools were identified at the Lomekwi 3 site in Kenya.

The difference would be that the recently discovered tools would be slightly more sophisticated in the sense that they show traces of percussion, making them compatible with the so-called Oldowan culture, the first material culture originally attributed to the genus Homo. But this does not in any way deny either older discoveries or the ability of species that preceded the genus Homo to make tools. It’s just the ability to innovate. An ability that, after all, is even a defining feature of the genus Homo.

We are in a process of total extinction that no one is talking about anymore

For more than two decades, it has been said that we are in one of the fastest and most severe episodes of extinction of life forms in the history of the Earth. It has even been suggested that the process we are witnessing today is comparable to the Dead Sea 252 million years ago, when about 80-90% of life forms disappeared, only that the current episode is happening much faster.

The fact is that when we talk about the extinction of life forms, we usually talk about the animal world and less about the extinction of plants. This is exactly what the study, published yesterday in the journal Plants, People, Planet, emphasizes. Namely, that while observing the animal world, we have missed the fact that the plant world is undergoing a much greater decline.

How big? Well, let the numbers do the talking! Every third tree species is close to extinction. This means about 17,500 species. And this is twice as many as mammals, birds, amphibians or reptiles combined.

It is not difficult to imagine what will happen if all these species become history. In fact, it will have a domino effect for the entire food chain, experts say. And I also say that there is a point when the process becomes irreversible. And we would not be very far from him.

How did we get such a big brain?

An international group of specialists from the Netherlands, Germany and Australia recently published a study in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, in which they presented the newest and most interesting hypothesis about the development of the brain in humans.

Until now, he agreed with the idea that access to seafood, rich in Omega-3 and other beneficial acids, determines the development of gray matter, implicitly leading to the evolution of a larger and more efficient brain. However, everything could have been different.

In particular, the development of the ability to find food brought an influx of nutrients and energy that eventually led to the development of the brain. To come to this conclusion, experts lived for a year with a community that was still at the level of hunter-gatherers, the BaYaka, in the Congo.

Thus, they observed that from a very early age, BaYaka children develop the ability to find food on their own. Not only that, but it’s a diversified food that allows them to consistently consume nutrients. BaYaka children developed amazing skills for their age, whether it was identifying places to dig up tubers, seeds, fruit or honey.

Such specialization and the need to store a wealth of information about the nutritional value of each plant, where and how it could be obtained, and the ability of early humans to share and exchange such foods, was actually the engine that led to the development of the brain. It was mainly about a varied diet, even about the possibility of creating reserves and reserves, a fact that led to a great evolutionary step, the development of the brain.

This is worth remembering, especially considering that not all prehistoric communities had access to marine food sources.

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