Fat Babies

Fat Babies

Compared with humans, other primates have very little body fat.

One theory which has been advanced is that increased body fat for humans was the result of prolonged involvement with an aquatic environment by an isolated group of our ancestors. There is perhaps a better reason.

It is herein proposed that during the evolution of the human species, there was a prolonged period during which there were serious annual famines and that during this period the gene(s) evolved which were needed to create fat babies and adults. If indeed this occurred, these fat babies and adults would have had a strong selective advantage in that environment over the thin babies and adults. There then would have been a strong evolutionary trend favoring the dominance of the fat babies and adults.

During periods of abundance, the individuals who could store extra body fat would have had a basic advantage over those who could not. For babies who had a lot of extra fat, survival during the first critical year would have been much easier than for thin babies when food resources were scarce. The ability to gorge and build up fat reserves for the lean periods would have been decisive.

It is suggested that a few million years ago such a group safely resided on an island in a river in east Africa. If there were annual floods which denied the group reasonable access to basic food sources such as clams, then there may have been serious annual famines.

There is an argument that the interior of Kenya during this period had a deficiency of iodine which would have inhibited the development of large brains. This argument however is not pertinent as the key factor is the expression of the gene(s) which resulted in producing fat babies and adults. To require that the very same environment also be capable of concurrently producing large brained individuals is not necessary or reasonable.

Once a small group of fat babies and adults on the island were successful (i.e., the fat genes became well established), a population explosion should have occurred -- subsequent migrations (floating down river on logs & debris during flood stage) to the ocean would provide these groups with an iodine-rich coastal region favoring the evolution of increased brain size. These migrations may have been somewhat forced due to the seasonal famines and by basic competition for resources. Due to their fat reserves, these individuals would have had the advantage of greatly increased stamina when faced with famine conditions.

If these things were true, then these hairless, fat clam eaters were our ancestors.

On the other hand, the absence of a migrating or seasonal food source might have been the cause of the annual famines. It is not clear what these seasonal food sources might have been (e.g., nesting birds, migrating fish, crabs). Also seasonal fruit, nuts, roots and/or grain might have been a factor. Any way, fat babies are just as cute, if not cuter, than thin ones.

[At some point, the need to migrate routinely to harvest seasonal food sources may have favored the genetic variations which gave rise to the modern human knee structure and gait. Basic survival arising from an ability to run faster with good knee structures also probably played a major role in this process.]

[A relatively late evolutionary process was the modification of the brain, vocal cords and the hyloid bone in the throat -- results which permit modern human speech. The vocalizations of other primates seems to be a good guide as to the earliest communication patterns used by humans.]

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