Outline: The article takes you back in time to understand our primates and learn their activities and lead you to the present time, explaining where we are and what we are doing in terms of our lifestyle. This article is more focused onto food and health of human beings.
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In the universe, on the planet earth,, there is life. Plants thrived on earth for a long time and evolved long before animals started existing one earth. There are about 8.7 million animal species on earth and one must understand that we are just one among them.
We still live in an ice age but towards the end of its cycle. Such a time period when the the earth is getting warmer is called interglacial period. During this time, chimpanzees and apes lived on trees. They nested on the branches of trees and lived together. While the weather became warmer over time, ice began to melt. The trees and plants were now getting more greener and the leaves were getting drier during the hot weather. This caused forest fires and a vast area of forests were lost due to this. Such a scenario made way for the formation of savannahs. While this was happening, one of our unrelated primates were unable to accommodate themselves on trees since they are depleting in quantity. One of those species were Australopithecus. There are many sub categorization of this species. some of them are Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis etc. While they started to find a space to accommodate themselves, they climbed down and initiated exploring on the surface of earth, that is on the land. They were able to find fallen fruits, nuts, seeds, insects, grasses, plants and other things for food, They sometimes slept on the ground near the trees but mostly spent the night on the trees itself since they had the ability to climb them as well. While they started to spend more time on earth in walking and running, their body started to adapt these new traits and changed happened to various body parts in order to accommodate these traits. This was the result of bipedalism in those species. Bipedalism gave them the ability to stand up straight and look more far for potential dangers or to look out for food. It enabled them to use hands to carry things such as leaves, wood, stones etc. It helped them regulate body temperature by standing erect such that the temperature on the ground does not affect the torso or the head part of the whole body. One of the species who started using stone tools were Australopithecus Afarensis. These tools were later developed by Australopithecus Garhi and it was seen that usage of such tools lead to a new item in their diet, which is meat.
It was seen in Australopithecus Garhi that usage of stone tools lead to developing of their hands and palms. The length of the fingers decreased which enabled them to hold onto the stones and other similarly sized items in their custody. Further, not usage of hand to walk shortened the length of the hand and they were less strong like they used to be because they no longer hung on trees or used them to pass on from branch to branch. Having a meat based diet had a significant assistance to the cerebral development as there were more protein and fat coming into the body this caused an expansion of cranial space to accommodate a larger brain. This is the start of evolution of the species to other decedents ultimately leading to the evolution of human beings. Australopithecus species later on went extinct due to a competitive fellow primates other stronger and developed primates evolved known as Neanderthals' and Homo species. Neanderthals and Homo species, such as Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus lived closely sharing values. They also had cross breeding as well and you can see that todays human beings, few of them share DNA with that of the Neanderthals'. Because of the fact that they were lazy to push themselves to tackle the changing climate and attaining a share of the resources, the homo habilis and homo erectus went eventually extinct. To a certain level, the homo sapiens and Neanderthals' interbred together but later on Neanderthals' also went extinct. What is remaining today is the species Homo Sapiens and we human beings are one among them
Human beings are one of the most intelligent species on earth for they can think, make quick and optimistic decision and have values among themselves. Human beings were hunter gatherers initially. Throughout the time, we inherited the technologies of stone tools, bone tools and tools made of timber from our non related primates and they were used by us to hunt animals and collect other resources. We lived in groups and each member were an active member to go and hunt the animals, collect the meat, honey, fruits, nuts, seeds, plants, etc and gather them and bring it to the dwelling area. Also we were nomads and we moved around after staying at one place for some time. The stone age diet was one of the most fitting lifestyle for human beings always for there was a rhythm in it.
A group of hunter gatherers mostly rely on plant based food such as leaves, fruits and nuts. It is only at times they hunt big animals for meat. Once they decide to hunt them down, they start to find their territory and start preparing the tools and other required needs. Hunting an animal is not a one day job. Some animals do not have sweat because of the absence of the sweat glands. For example, a cat or a dog do not sweat. To maintain the thermal equilibrium they put their tongue out and the body heat is exchanged through it. Similarly pigs spend most of the time in mud and a deer pant heavily to dissipate heat. On the other hand, human beings have sweat glands and can dissipate heat through sweating. Thus while hunting a deer for an example, a deer runs swiftly while human run in lesser speed. But the deer can get exhausted after a run and stops to breathe heavily. Meanwhile the humans or the hunters can track the deer track and smell leading to the place where the deer has stopped. This is a bit lengthier process and finally the hunter can attack the deer for its meet.
After hunting the deer, they cut it into multiple pieces and bring it to their camp. The other members join them in preparing a meat based meal. The skin can be used as a clothing, the horns have other purpose, the bones have other purpose and the surplus meat is stored for the next day until it go stale. Next they don't go out to hunt another animal sooner but they just walk around for days collecting other food. Meanwhile they have plant based food to sustain themselves. During this plant based diet, the body gets more rest and it is an opportunity for the body to repair itself from all those heavy muscle involved activity as well as the cuts and bruises. This was the primary lifestyle of hunter gathers and it went on until about 12000 years ago when agriculture was discovered.
Human beings later on found out that they could grow eatable plants and fruits. They also domesticated animals such as cocks and roosters for food. When agriculture was introduced, there were surplus of food items. This surplus enabled humans to store them in a safe place. Such a practice lead us to stop travelling around because we are able to grow food around ourself and all we need is a strong shelter to dwell. The focus of evolution later on changed to developing of social values, cultural aspects such as daily activities and practices, formation of different religion and religious values. While human beings started to live an extended life, there were competition amongst ourselves for getting our hands on resources such as food and later this was extended to having a control of land. In the last few thousand years, we have managed to create a matrix in which every society found a common point accepted by all. This matrix was controlled by certain elements within it.
Let me explain the rest of the points from a perspective of the culture in Kerala. Agriculture was one of the important aspect in Kerala and almost everyone had farming land and were farmers. There will be a rich and powerful landlord who lend his land to farmers to cultivate crops. The farmers work hard under the hot sun no matter what the result is and earn a small amount of money as their fee. Meanwhile the landlord have one full rice meal thrice a day everyday doing nothing. It can be observed that the farmers have about equal carbs that the landlord have but they are fit while the landlord has attained more fat in their body.
Carbohydrates are one of the main food in Kerala and we have them in abundant. These carbs are not a bad thing as far as we are burning them through some or the other physical work. If we are sitting in front of a computer, we don't really need food to eat. Those farmers burnt carbs everyday and that's the reason they are more healthy. When a carbohydrate enters the body, it is converted into sugar. When a body is physically active, it demands energy and these sugars are converted into energy. when a body is not demanding energy, these sugars are surplus entity. When unused, the body converts them into fat and stores them in the pockets of muscles initially. If these spaces are fully occupied by the surplus fat, the body will dump them into spaces around our vital organs and later one inside these organs. One of the result of this dumped fat is blocked artery that leads to a heart attack.
This is one of the prime reason why a human body is required to be physically active. Having food in a timed way everyday is not really needed. A fixed time to have food is actually a part of the matrix that i mentioned above. How can we have food then? Let us look at what our ancestors did. As mentioned above earlier, hunter gatherers ate meat once in a while and otherwise they had fruits and nuts. This means that one should have something or the other once in four hours. We should ensure that the food we eat should only fill a small part of the stomach and never fill it up to the brim. When a stomach is fully filled, the body has to focus on breaking this food into the respective nutrients and will not help us in building and repairing the body effectively. Another point to remember is that our heart plays an important role in absorbing nutrients. A healthy flow of blood is important for the body to absorb nutrients efficiently and this is why one should exercise regularly. This was something that was automatic in the case of our ancestors. Hunting itself was a natural exercise. To maintain that or as an excuse we invented the concept of going to gym and other activities such as Yoga and meditation. Thus one should note that not filling the stomach to the brim, to maintain the physical fitness and to monitor and ensure that the heart is working effectively is what we have to concentrate today.
This is a very boring but interesting perspective I have on ourself. For I was just amazed to see that whatever we are doing today to maintain our health is something the nature had already given us long ago. Our own decision made us not to use them effectively. Thus we are managing to age quickly eventually causing death.
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I took references from certain website to make my points stronger. Some part of this articles is a bit of my own imagination that occurred to me while they were acting as a bridge between two referred points. Also you can comment below if i had made a blunder and this article is open for discussion as well. Not sure how many is going to read them but thank you.
References
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