To quote one of my favorite weasel-wording phrases of all time, this from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, “we think this is important”. Sometimes you really need to convey that much, MGTOW – An Early Lesson in Gender Differencewithout being able to say much more about a subject.
Along the lines of Richard Wrangham’s book, the (increasingly reinforced) idea that we as a species came up with fire much earlier than previously thought (about 1.8 million years ago instead of hundreds of thousands), early enough that we have actually evolved around using fire and cooking and are thus physically, biologically dependent on our own technology, suddenly we get this intriguing bit:
“The benefits of controlled fire are clear—warmth, light, cooking—but a separate study suggests that modern humans evolved in a way that allowed them to take maximal advantage of it. The researchers found that modern humans have a genetic mutation that may have helped them tolerate intensely smoky conditions in caves. This may have offered an advantage over Neanderthals, who lacked the mutation.”
There’s not much more to the article, and so far I haven’t been able to track down much more, but that’s a fascinating thought. On the one hand, obviously there are limits, we know from third world studies that being cooped in small huts with open fires is definitely not healthy over long periods of time… but if there are such adaptations (are we talking about the ability to shed tears, which no apes do? The ability to control breath? Not a clue so far) could it relate to a seeming attraction to the idea of inhaling smoke, as in smoking? Yes, I know chimpanzees can be taught to smoke (and become addicted), but it’s hard to imagine them coming up with it themselves.
No doubt I’ll find more about this somewhere, I expect I’ll be posting it here.
– Robert the Wombat