culture, Rod Fleming's World, Page 8

10/06/2025

Who we are 2: Cooking, Chattering and Time

Originally posted 2020-04-23 17:59:17.

Cooking is now seen as the definitive characteristic of modern humans, from which all others followed. It seems to have directly led to the development of tools, especially blade design, but it had many other consequences.

Cooking, particularly of meats and fats but also starches, partially pre-digests the food, making more energy available to us and allowing us to use less to digest it. We put this extra energy into growing brains. Growing big brains burns many calories and just running them consumes a significant part of our daily food intake. We know that the physical structures which allow us to speak were evolving at the same time as our brains were growing larger. Speech allowed more complex and efficient communication and cooperation. This encouraged conceptual thinking and other intellectual skills, again leading to the development of bigger brains.

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10/06/2025

Who We Are 1: the beginning of culture

Originally posted 2020-04-20 16:46:22.

Modern humans first appeared in Africa around 150,000 – 180,000 years ago; one of a closely-related group of hominids that had populated the savannah over the preceding three million years. During that time, our ancestors learned how to talk, how to make fire and cook and how to cooperate in groups. We probably lived in a similar way to earlier hominids, but something extraordinary happened: we developed culture.

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10/06/2025

Gender Sex and Sexuality

Originally posted 2022-03-07 16:39:23.

Perhaps surprisingly, gender seems to still be a mystery to many, so let me try to explain.

First of all, let’s state what gender is not – it is not sex. Sex and gender are not synonymous. We might summarise it by saying ‘gender is what gets us into bed and sex is what we do once we’re there.’

Sex

Sex refers to a system of reproduction. In sexually dimorphic species, like us, there are two sexes. One has a system that produces a large, immotile gamete, or sex cell and the other a small, rapidly moving one. The former is called female and the latter male. The small gamete, called a sperm cell, carries an X or a Y chromosome. The larger one is called an ovum and, since these are produced in females, who only have X sex chromosomes, all ova are X. When the sperm and ovum come together, they produce a new individual with either XX (female) or XY (male) chromosomal sex or karotype. Thus, sex is fixed for life and cannot be changed.

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