From 'man the fat hunter' to a unified explanation of human prehistory and evolution - Miki Ben-Dor

(AHS21) In AHS12 in Boston, I hypothesized that Paleolithic humans depended on acquiring fat prey due to their limited ability to metabolize protein to energy. In the next nine years, that simple hypothesis turned out to be the cornerstone of a unified explanation of human prehistory and evolution. That physiological limit and humans need to overcome it by consuming high quantities of fat can explain human's preference for large prey, the extinctions of large prey species, the unidirectional brain expansion during most of the human's evolution, and its volume decline towards the end of the Paleolithic. It can also explain the appearance of language, changes in stone tool cultures, the extinction of the Neandertal, agriculture's appearance, and other phenomena. In the lecture, I will draw the puzzle and explain how each piece connects to the other and how they all stem from overcoming the protein limit.