On Mon, 9 Aug 2010 17:35:20 +0200 (CEST), Dave U. Random
> wrote:

>(NPR) - Our earliest ancestors ate their food raw — fruit, leaves,
>maybe some nuts. When they ventured down onto land, they added
>things like underground tubers, roots and berries.
>
>It wasn't a very high-calorie diet, so to get the energy you
>needed, you had to eat a lot and have a big gut to digest it all.
>But having a big gut has its drawbacks.
>
>"You can't have a large brain and big guts at the same time,"
>explains Leslie Aiello, an anthropologist and director of the
>Wenner-Gren Foundation in New York City, which funds research on
>evolution. Digestion, she says, was the energy-hog of our primate
>ancestor's body. The brain was the poor stepsister who got the
>leftovers.
>
>Until, that is, we discovered meat...
>
>Continued: http://sn.im/EatMeat

It also allowed humans to move into areas where there was not
enough good vegetation to support humans, and to cross seas and
oceans, etc... Hunting also taught humans to act as a group, and
probably was the reason humans learned to develop language.