wow, sorry for digging up a disused thread, but i have been gone for a while, and am only now catching up.
there are several things going on here that are of particular interest. first, this is not the first time we have developed agriculture. our first try came a little over 100,000 years ago, but failed because of a minor ice age that plagued that time frame. our second attempt seems to have taken better, around 35 to 40 thousand years ago.
Moreover, there have been several tool complexes since homo erectus. Achulean tool appeared about 1.5 million years ago, and served rather well untill about 200,000 years ago when the Mousterian tool complex came about. Mousterian tools hung around until about 40,000 years ago, with the Aurignacian, and more well known Chatelperronian tool complex. so, here's the thing. Homo Sapien Neaderthalensis used achulean tools (including the "big sharpened rock" Achulean hand axe) because the Neandertals were hunting big animals. the chatelperronian tool complex is marked by finely chipped (two step flaking process), and would have been of little to no use in a world where the fauna was as large as it was for H. erectus and H. S. neandertalensis.
anyway, basically, what i am saying is this: we are no different than we were back then. there were no major changes in brain development and no evidence of much change since homo sapiens sapiens (the wise wise man- so wise he named himself twice
) came about. tooth size and shape, and a bit of the sex dimorphism have changd, but that is about it, and i have never come across any evidence that we actually know when those happened.
i can tell you this. H.s.s. original diet was 85% meat. we werent hunter/gatherers. we were hunters that augmented our meat with some berries. so, for all those people who heard that meat is bad for you, remember this, and the fact that there was virtually no incidence of tooth decay or destruction until we became an agricultural species.
sorry for the long post