Self-paced
P1
It might reasonably have been expected that the adoption of cooking by early humans would not have led to any changes in human digestive anatomy. █████ ████ ███████ █████ ████ ██████ ██ ████ █████ █████ ████ ██ ███████ ███████████ ███ ████████ ██ ███████ ██████ █████ ███
Other People’s Argument ·
Cooking didn’t lead to changes in human digestive anatomy
Because cooking makes food easier to digest.
Counter Evidence ·
Humans generally cannot survive on only raw food
Too hard to digest.
Author's Position ·
Cooking is obligatory
Other People's Position Wrong ·
That there wasn't enough time for cooking to impact evolution
Evidence of cooking dates back at least 250k years.
Author's Hypothesis ·
Cooking evolutionarily changed human digestion
We evolved to efficiently digest high and densely caloric foods thanks to cooking. Now we are reliant on cooked foods and cannot survive on raw food alone.
P2
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Question ·
Why can't humans digest raw foods?
Answer ·
Tooth and jaw too small
Cooking resulted in decrease in tooth and jaw size. Evidence of cooking techniques developing and decreases in tooth and jaw size support the cooking hypothesis.
Author's Hypothesis ·
Decrease in size occurred even earlier
Author suggests that Homo ergaster (1.9m years old) could have developed cooking which reduced their tooth and jaw sizes.
P3
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Phenomenon ·
Evolution of our guts
Harder to explain owing to lack of fossil records.
Other People's Hypothesis ·
Human guts evolved to digest raw meats
Smaller gut volume; longer small intestine; smaller colon.
Author's Interpretation ·
But the differences also fit with the cooking hypothesis
These features of our guts also fits with the cooking hypothesis.
Future Research ·
More testing required to better understand raw v. cooked
Passage Style
Critique or debate
Phenomenon-hypothesis (RC)
26.
The authors suggest which one ██ ███ █████████ ██ ███ ██████ ██████████
a
Human teeth and ████ █████████ █████ ████ █████ █████████ ██ ████ █████ ███████ █████ ████
Too strong. There’s no support for the “only” major reduction in size occuring 100,000 years ago. We know that there are signs of a reduction 100,000 years ago; but we also know that there has been a reduction “over evolutionary time.” So there may be further reduction more recently than 100,000 years ago, and some of these might be major reductions.
b
Adaptation to cooked ████ ███████ ███ ███████ ██ ██████ ██ ███████ ██ █ █████████ █████
Not supported, because the “high-meat” diet isn’t brought up in P2. It’s brought up in P3 in connection with a discussion of the soft parts of the digestive system. But the question stem asks us what is suggested in the “second paragraph.” In any case, (B) isn’t supported by P3 either because the author doesn’t suggest that humans have difficulty surviving on a high-meat diet. Rather, they have difficulty surviving on a raw-food diet.
c
The evolution of ███ █████ █████████ ██████ ██ ███ ████ ███████████
This relates to P3. But P2 is about jaw and tooth size, not the human digestive anatomy.
d
Cooking methods changed ███ ████████ ████ ████████████ █████
e
Cooking was adopted ██ ██████████████ ███████ █████ █████ ███████████ ██ ███ ████ █████
Not supported, because nothing in P2 suggests that cooking was adopted by different populations of early humans “at the same time.” Although we do know that