|
|
|
|
How Diet May Have Changed the Way Humans Speak
"Ancient hunter-gathererers often had front teeth that met together, unlike today's more common alignment where the upper front teeth 'overbite' the lower front teeth," writes Slashdot reader omfglearntoplay. "This malocclusion is a result of changes to the ancestral human diet and introduction of soft foods, according to a new study published in the journal Science." ABC News reports: More than 2,000 different sounds exist across the roughly 7,000 to 8,000 languages that humans speak today, from ubiquitous cardinal vowels such as "a" and "i" to the rare click consonants found in southern Africa. Scientists had long thought this range of sounds was fixed in human biology since at least the emergence of our species about 300,000 years ago. However, in 1985, linguist Charles Hockett noted that labiodentals -- sounds produced by positioning the lower lip against the upper teeth, including "f" and "v" -- are overwhelmingly absent in languages whose speakers are hunter-gatherers. He suggested tough foods associated with such diets favored bites where teeth met edge on edge, and that people with such teeth would find it difficult to pronounce labiodentals, which are nowadays found in nearly half the world's languages.
To explore Hockett's idea further, researchers developed computer models of the human skull, teeth and jaw in overbite, overjet and edge-on-edge bite configurations. They next analyzed the amount of effort these configurations needed to pronounce certain labiodental sounds. The scientists found that overbites and overjets required 29 percent less muscular effort to produce labiodental sounds than edge-on-edge bites. In addition, overbites and overjets made it easier to accidentally mispronounce bilabial sounds such as "m," "w" or "p," which are made by placing the lips together, as labiodental ones. The researchers also discovered that hunter-gatherer societies only have about 27 percent the number of labiodentals found in agricultural societies.
"Moreover, when they focused on the Indo-European language family -- which stretches from Iceland to the eastern Indian state of Assam and has records stretching back more than 2,500 years on how sounds in some of its languages were pronounced -- they found the use of labiodentals increased steadily following the development of agriculture," the report says. "All in all, they estimated that labiodentals only had a 3 percent chance of existing in the Indo-European proto-language that emerged about 6,000 to 8,000 years ago but are now found in 76 percent of the family's languages." |
|
|
|
There are no conversations. |
|
|
cauz |
March 20, 2019, 4:41 p.m. |
|
|
|
Lord Hailsham |
The introduction of religious passion into politics is the end of honest politics, and the introduction of politics into religion is the prostitution of true religion. |
Edwidge Danticat |
That's whatever news topic, whatever political process any country is going through - whenever they are in the news, that's when they exist. If you don't see them they don't exist. |
Gilbert K. Chesterton |
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. |
Orson Scott Card |
God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause. |
Ray Bradbury |
Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible. |
Niccolo Machiavelli |
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. |
Joel Salatin |
Get in your kitchens, buy unprocessed foods, turn off the TV, and prepare your own foods. This is liberating. |
A. J. Jacobs |
I tried the paleo diet, which is the caveman diet - lots of meat. And I tried the calorie restriction diet: The idea is that if you eat very, very little - if you're on the verge of starvation, you will live a very long time, whether or not you want to, of course. |
Drew Gilpin Faust |
As a scholar, you don't want to repeat yourself, ever. You're supposed to say it once, publish it, and then it's published, and you don't say it again. If someone comes and gives a scholarly paper about something they've already published, that's just terrible. As a university president, you have to say the same thing over and over and over. |
Thomas R. Insel |
Unlike the heart or kidney, which have a small, defined set of cell types, we still do not have a taxonomy of neurons, and neuroscientists still argue whether specific types of neurons are unique to humans. But there is no disputing that neurons are only about 10 percent of the cells in the human brain. |
|
|
For the past few days I've been planning my day around a spider. This giant wolf spider comes out at sunset every night and just sits in front of my front door and it makes me not want to leave my house.
|
|
|
|
#quotesoutofcontext "They are exquisite...and so SOFT!" Context? "I bet you have some nice looking kitties feeding a raw diet"
|
|
|
|
Well.... that's good for your teeth!
This post is a comment.
|
|
|
|
Do you ever think about how you don't know how many teeth are in your head?
|
|
|
|
"it'll take the skin off your teeth" - JP
|
|
|
|
"Every moment is an opportunity to brush your teeth" - Jacob Pointon
|
|
|
|
brushing teeth is like jazz. a nightly improvisation of technique and artistry.
|
|
|
|
Lately I've been really into brushing my teeth when I feel: (a) gross, (b) like eating when I'm not hungry, (c) like procrastinating, (d) like chewing gum.
|
|
|
|
But yeah... I guess not often enough. More importantly though -- don't clench your jaw and grind your teeth. Get a bite guard.
This post is a comment.
|
|
|
|
Salt Makes You Hungry, Not Thirsty, Study Says
Salty diet makes you hungry, not thirsty. Science Daily reports: "In a study carried out during a simulated mission to Mars, an international group of scientists has found exactly the opposite to be true. 'Cosmonauts' who ate more salt retained more water, weren't as thirsty, and needed more energy." So if you don't want to gain weight on your trip to Mars, don't eat salty chips. If you don't want to gain weight at home, maybe you should stay away from them as well. From the report: "The studies were carried out by Natalia Rakova (MD, PhD) of the Charite and MDC and her colleagues. The subjects were two groups of 10 male volunteers sealed int...
|
|