Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Revenge of the Nerds 195where they were most useful, and food and children could be carried tosafe or productive areas.A final usher of intelligence was hunting. Hunting, tool use, andbipedalism were for Darwin the special trinity that powered human evolution."Man the Hunter" was the major archetype in both serious andpop accounts through the 1960s. But the macho image that resonatedwith the decade of John Glenn and James Bond lost its appeal in thefeminist-influenced small planet of the 1970s. A major problem for Manthe Hunter was that it credited the growth of intelligence to the teamworkand foresight needed by men in groups to fell large game. But naturalselection sums over the lives of both sexes. Women did not wait inthe kitchen to cook the mastodon that Dad brought home, nor did theyforgo the expansion of intelligence enjoyed by evolving men. The ecologyof modern foraging peoples suggests that Woman the Gatherer provideda substantial portion of the calories in the form of highly processed plantfoods, and that requires mechanical and biological acumen. And, ofcourse, in a group-living species, social intelligence is as important aweapon as spears and clubs.But Tooby and DeVore have argued that hunting was nonetheless amajor force in human evolution. The key is to ask not what the mind cando for hunting, but what hunting can do for the mind. Hunting providessporadic packages of concentrated nutrients. We did not always havetofu, and the best natural material for building animal flesh is animalflesh. Though plant foods supply calories and other nutrients, meat is acomplete protein containing all twenty amino acids, and provides energyrichfat and indispensable fatty acids. Across the mammals, carnivoreshave larger brains for their body size than herbivores, partly because ofthe greater skill it takes to subdue a rabbit than to subdue grass, andpartly because meat can better feed ravenous brain tissue. Even in themost conservative estimates, meat makes up a far greater proportion offoraging humans' diet than of any other primate's. That may have beenone of the reasons we could afford our expensive brains.Chimpanzees collectively hunt small animals like monkeys and bushpigs, so our common ancestor probably hunted as well. The move to thesavanna must have made hunting more appealing. Notwithstanding theteeming wildlife in the Save-the-Rainforest posters, real forests have fewlarge animals. Only so much solar energy falls on a patch of ground, andif the biomass it supports is locked up in wood it is not available to makeanimals. But grass is like the legendary self-replenishing goblet, growing