Human evolution: our precise tasting mechanism (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, April 05, 2021, 01:14 (1326 days ago) @ David Turell

The arrangement of our nasopalate:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933282-200-how-losing-a-bone-in-our-noses-gave...

"this knowledge tells the story of how we have been led by our noses through evolutionary history, turning from chimp-like primate precursors to modern, dinner-obsessed Homo sapiens.

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"As primates, our experience of smell and flavour is unusual, in that we experience retronasal aromas – the smells that rise up from our mouths into the backs of our noses. This is because we have lost a long bone, called the transverse lamina, that helps to separate the mouth from the nose.

"The loss had important consequences for olfaction, enabling humans to search out tastes and aromas so complex that we have to associate them with memories in order to individually categorise them all.

"The story of how H. sapiens developed such a sophisticated palate is also, of course, the story of how it contributed to the extinction of hundreds of the largest, most unusual animals on the planet. Delicious is a charming book, but it does have its melancholy side.

"To take one dizzying example, the Clovis people – direct ancestors of roughly 80 per cent of all living Indigenous populations in North and South America – definitely ate mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, bison and giant horses. They may also have eaten Jefferson’s ground sloths, giant camels, dire wolves, short-faced bears, flat-headed peccaries, long-nosed peccaries, some tapir species, giant llamas, giant bison, stag moose, shrub-oxen and Harlan’s muskoxen.

“'The Clovis menu,” say the authors, “if written on a chalkboard, would be a tally of a lost world.'”

Comment: Another way in which we are most unusual.