How did meat eating influence the evolution of the human brain?

Question

In human evolution, how did brain development, specifically brain size and neocortex complexity, a direct consequence of fire/cooking and softer foods? Did it have any influence?

Answer 1

Diet and brain size certainly had something to do with each other over the course of hominin (human, and other related species) evolution!

I conceptualize it like this: a positive feedback loop- smarter hominins could better manufacture and use tools (such as fire, definitely a useful tool!), which allowed them to exploit a wider variety of food resources, more efficiently. Exploiting food resources better means they had the "fuel", so-to-speak, to support a larger brain, which then, in turn, allowed them to be even smarter. Brains are huge metabolic drains, so absolutely, I would think that an increase in carnivory and the use of fire a couple million years ago influenced the evolution of human (and human ancestor) brains over the course of evolution- carnivory facilitated the encephalization (increase in brain size) that we observe over the course of evolution of humans.

Answer 2

Brain size and diet are definitely related . The theory is that from switching a plant based diet to meet ,our brains got bigger brains from a more nutrient rich food source.by doing this our ancestor Homo Erectus was able to evolve ahead of other hominids

There is a new study in Nature magazine, that states 'it is entirely possible ,that without a early diet ,that included generous amounts of animal protein .We may not have evolved at all !