I always had a pet theory that Omega-3 kick-started the development of the human brain. Not sure if the science agrees completely but it does suggest a correlation.
Aquatic ape hypothesis [^1] is quite convincing.
I have learned about it at freediving course as it explains our natural capabilities of apnea.
Turtles were also very important to early man, along with shellfish the were easy meals for tool users.
Fascinating. I feel like every year or so a new book is written along the topic of something like this though: Fish, Salt, Grain, Money, Paper, etc and how that thing was responsible for modern civilization. I commend the author for bringing this idea to the forefront but its likely disingenuous to think that Fish and Fishing has as the author says, "created the modern world" more so than any of these other things.
Still makes for a fascinating read... Plus eventually we'd be able to run ml on the articles to reach a concensus maybe xD
I'd speculate that all modern humans were capable of forming civilizations, and like a supercooled fluid would crystalize into one around any workable nucleation site.
If they wanted to. Agriculture has been one of the worst changes for average quality of life.