Carnivory shortened breast-feeding periods during human evolution

A recent news report on the impact of carnivory in human evolution begins with a blunt statement:

Carnivory is behind the evolutionary success of humankind. 

Hunting is known to have been a crucial event in human evolution. According to Science Daily:

Learning to hunt was a decisive step in human evolution. Hunting necessitated communication, planning and the use of tools, all of which demanded a larger brain. At the same time, adding meat to the diet made it possible to develop this larger brain.

However, developmental psychologist Elia Psouni, lead author of a new report published in PLoS ONE, points to another crucial role of carnivory:

... the strong connection between meat eating and the duration of breast-feeding... Eating meat enabled the breast-feeding periods and thereby the time between births, to be shortened. This must have had a crucial impact on human evolution."

Learn more at Science Daily and PLoS ONE.

Comments

[john mclaughlin II m.d.]

I became a hunter as a child in Panama with my father. We hunted and bowfished and spearfished for basically all of my family's food. I am now a serious bowhunter as I enjoy the peace and solitude of bowhunting and it requires getting closer and understanding/appreciating the animal more. I hunt elk, antelope, bighorn sheep, mule and whitetail deer, and boar primarily. Occasionally my son and I have hunted exotics on other continents but only on government-sanctioned cull hunts. (Trophy hunting is not my thing) My wife and I have cooked almost exclusively game meat for our kids for their entire lives. Our son is developmentally delayed but we were told he would never read or run. He reads well and is an avid outdoorsman albeit sometimes more clumsy at times in the woods than most bowhunters. I feel that our diet and rigorous daily exercise schedule as a family helped him develop to his utmost. Since going to one of Dr. Oro's lectures recently we have adopted a pretty straight up paleo diet and already I feel an increase in energy and my mind seems clearer. I am a family doctor and colleague of John's. Although family medicine does not require the intricate anatomical knowledge of neurosurgery, it requires what I think of as "nimbleness" of the mind. One patient has congestive heart failure, five minutes later one has depression, and ten after than one has a GI bleed. And I must say that our consistent game meat as primary diet over the years has helped, I think. And being even stricter has helped recently even more.