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In 2018 I was recruited to the University of Helsingfors in Finland to explore the future of Finnish agriculture from a perspective of entrepreneurial thinking. I used a mix of approaches: chronostratigraphy, neuropsychology, nutrition, and paleoanthropology to establish an understanding about who we are as a species, how we interact with the environment, and why we produce and eat various food items.
Due to changes in the climate, visible life emerged during the Cambrian explosion ~538 million years ago (Mya). The conditions was the following:
- Carbon dioxide (CO2): 5000 - 7000 ppm.
- Oxygen (0): 4-10%.
- Temperature: It was ~50% warmer compared to the present.
~470 million years later when an asteroid hit the Earth, the Chicxulub event, a new era was introduced - Cenozoic, or the age of the mammals (Cohen et al. 2023).
Another ~57 million years forward in time, two super volcanic eruptions occurred in what is now Wyoming (Knott et al. 2020). Soon after, our lineage emerged. One theory place them, Orrorin man, in the Tugen hills (Pickford, 2006).
And not long after that, the Messinian salinity crisis occurred (6-5.33 Mya), during which the Mediterranean Sea was nearly completely dried-up. Soon after, our ancestors started to put bone marrow and meat onto their “plates” (McPherron et al. 2010; Mann, 2018; Pobiner, 2016; Thompson et al. 2019).
This new diet started a transformation, a reduction of their guts and an expansion of their brains - from the occipital lobe and forward (Aiello and Wheeler, 1995).
With a larger prefrontal cortex, and the emergence of our genus - Homo (Kimbel och Villmoare, 2016; Villmoare, 2018; Villmoare et al. 2015), new mental faculties emerged:
- a cultural language (Aiello and Dunbar, 1993; Everett, 2017)
- social cognition, executive functions including prospection - the ability to model scenarios forward in time (Ardila, 2008; Barkley, 2001; Coolidge and Wynn, 2018; Diamond, 2013; Gilbert and Wilson, 2007; Kaku, 2014).
- After the emergence of our species, Homo Sapiens (320 000 years befor the present; Hublin et al. 2017), and yet two other super-volcanic eruptions dating ~74 - 70 000 years before the present, constructive memory emerged, introducing combinatory thinking, or creativity (Ambrose, 2010; Pringle, 2016).
It's fair to say that modern humans', that is Homo Sapiens Sapiens, with our ability to model scenarios forward in time, including combinatory thinking, emerged as a result of changes in the climate as because our ancestors changed their diet (Österberg, 2022).
The first sign of agriculture was seen during the Epipaleolithic (~25 000 ~11 600 years before the present; Hodder, 2018), that is, the very last part of Pleistocene (2.58 Mya - 11 600 years before the present), when the weather became warmer and more stable.
The Epipaleolithic was the time when the first bread was baked and the first beer was brewed. Putting bread and beer on “the table” wasn't the staple diet, but rather something that was served for special occasions. One reason was the effort-to-nutrition-ratio; the energy and time used to bake bread and to brew beer gave less nutrients and energy compared to hunting for marrow and meat (Arranz-Otaegui et al. 2018; Liu et al. 2018).
The Epipaleolithic was also the time of great upheavals; in parallell to the introduction of bread, the first of four huge melt pulses occurred, causing sea levels to rise. 1500 years later, the Younger Dryas (YD) impact occurred, throwing Earth back into a significant colder climate. YD lasted for ~1200 years.
Between 14 400 to 7000 before the present, several melt pulses occurred, causing sea levels to rise more than 100 meters.
When the climate changed, again, from Pleistocene/The Epipaleolithic/Younger Dryas to Holocene (11 600 years before the present),
- the weather again became warmer and more stable.
- the first agricultural revolution occurred. It was a game changer, but not a positive one, as it caused conflicts and malnutrition (Kohler et al. 2017; Mummert et al. 2011).
- our ancestors also started to consume dairy (Curry, 2021).
Studies also revealed that the small amount of people (~2%) who for various reasons decide to abstain from animal source food, the food that gave us a large prefrontal cortex, also report mental issues: anxiety, depression, and neuroticism (Dobersek et al. 2023). Notice that neuroticism is the precursor to anxiety, depression (Zinbarg et al. 2016).
Therefore, I concluded that meat, eggs, and whole dairy are crucial to sustain physical and mental health, and that politicians should support that kind of agriculture (Österberg, 2021 (in Swedish)).
A few month ago, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) concluded the same (EFA, 2023).
A longer version: “Perception versus facts”: What is the future for sustainable food? The case for prospective thinking (UH)
Also: Finnish consumers still prefer healthy meat over plant-based alternatives, but Finnish researchers and journalists report the opposite
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More about my expertise:
Executive coaching for CEOs/managers and workshops to facilitate Organizational Performance, Learning, and Creativity for Problem Solving | Lectures: Nutrition for physical and mental health | Course/lecture: children's emotional and social adjustment and cognitive development | Language training - Swedish | Academy Competency | CV | Teaching skills and experience | Summary of research project | Instagram | Linkedin | YouTube-channel | TikTok | Twitter
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