Our ancestors would have also scavenged the carcasses of animals killed in the frequent grass fires of the African savanna. My favorite idea is that we acquired our taste for barbecue in this early experience with such lightly charred, medium rare viands.
Or we all have a module for repulsion which can be triggered in different ways. I don’t find it implausible that someone who had never smelled cooked meat would experience disgust. Gagging at wholly unfamiliar foods seems like something that would make evolutionary sense. Especially for foods that expose one to a higher risk of food poisoning, like meats.
I don’t know what new books are bound with, but the old classic library paste is made from wheat flour, which is starch and a little protein. So… maybe not the most appetizing way of serving it, but actually fairly high in nutritional value (from the perspective of a genetic cave man anyway).
(In fact, if you search for library paste, the top recipes add equal parts sugar to the flour, and then flavor it with mint or clove oil. If you added yeast and baked it, you’d have desert.)
But when you say “dumb luck” - yes, the genetic predisposition to some random thing may be dumb luck. But when that genetic predisposition provides a survival benefit, it is selected for.
Yep. A few years back Quirks and Quarks had an interesting interview with Rachel Carmody, one of Wrangham’s students, which the OP might be interested in.