Schmools

At UChicago where I attend, most of my big lecture style classes give the prof a round of applause at the end of each quarter (except for one very bad physics lecturer I had once).

Yeah, I realized that as soon as I posted, an interesting paper nonetheless. I thought I had also read a paper discussing protohuman hunting practices earlier in the year but I couldn't find it here. Certainly anatomically modern early humans had much more of an impact on our environment then we often give them credit for.

There's actually some evidence (though also some debate) that early human hunting led to the extinction of megafauna in North America in the late Pleistocene age. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/306/5693/70.full

Interestingly in the intro to "Animals in Translation" Temple Grandin discusses the fact that is highly possible that in fact human brain size decreased with the domestication of animals (she discusses dogs specifically who she also posits we may have helped us develop social relationships with eachother).