Kung of the Kalahari desert, but among wild chimpanzees. In forests of western Tanzania and across equatorial Africa, these apes include the meat of other mammals as a small but regular part of their diet. The parallels to what traditional human societies do with meat are often striking. In this book I argue that the origins of human intelligence are linked to the acquisition of meat, especially through the cognitive capacities necessary for the strategic sharing of meat with fellow group members. Instead, the intellect required to be a clever, strategic, and mindful sharer of meat is the essential recipe that led to the expansion of the human brain.
Chimpanzees hunt and eat the meat of a variety of mammals.
They are skilled makers and users of tools. These apes and their closest relatives have large brains and an intellect that surpasses that of all other nonhuman animals. There is only one animal of greater intelligence, and it also lives in an incredibly intricate web of social relationships, navigating its way through life using group-mates as support systems and as tools to be manipulated. This other animal, of course, is humankind. A second key piece of evidence about the behavior patterns that made us human is that our ancestors foraged for meat.