Migration suggests changes in behavior, due to necessity, leading to evolution, such as a switch to meat eating. As you migrate north to cooler climates, one runs into the problem of seasonal local plant food shortage, with winter not a good time to find veggies, for months at a time. What is always available will be animals who can find and survive on the harsher food of dormant plants. If you took a modern vegetarian and they had to survive only on what is local, but not farmed, they would all die in the winters of most northern climates, unless they learn to add meat. The caveman did not have grocery stores of produce from Chile to cherry pick from. The eating of meat solved the problem of seasonal plant food, which becomes the rule as you head further and further north. Neanderthals would need to eat meat. Another consideration also has to do with needs of migration. This consideration connected to the practical benefits of an alliance between humans and wild dogs. Dogs are migratory scavengers, that work in teams, with a chain of command. There are skilled survivors in all climates. Such an alliance would teach early man skills apes don't have instinctively, while offering protection and food support during migration. Rather than wait for a DNA change, why not evolve the first branch of humans based on learning interactions? Migration,in general, forces new behavior such as meat in eating , while learning from other animals, like wild dogs, is a way to develop the skills that could carry them all over the earth. All it would take is the first litter of puppies to forge the original alliance. Pre-humans without the support would not evolve the same way. Last spring my dog, who was then a puppy chewed a short thick stick into a point like a prefab weapon. It made me think, he is not trying to make a weapon but just likes to chew yet, now I had a tool. It made sense that simple stone tools for shaping wood, are like a tooth with the pounding simulating the chewing of the stick to a point by the dog. I can also picture myself migrating, looking for the dogs in the tall grass, thereby spending more and more time erect attempting to keep up with these important helpers and protectors, as they scout ahead. Standing would also help with self protection in pack hierarchy, since it would make you look more alpha to the other dogs. Domestic dogs appear much later, so that would imply the pre-humans were equals or the pets.
When we look at modern scavenger-gatherer tribes we see that hunting is a miniscule contributory to the overall food supply, especially when it comes to large game. It is usually the women and children who gather edible plants, insects, honey, and trap small game. And you can also see that it is in the moderate to cold climate zones where settlements were built much more often than in temperate zones close to the equator and/or areas where food sources were easily accessible and available year round. Dogs apparently domesticated themselves since they did develop the ability to survive scavenging and eating non-meat. According to an article in discoverynews.com dogs were domesticated as early as 31,700 years ago and resembled most closely the Malamute of today, but larger. Ancient breeds such as the Afghan hound were used for hunting; later breeds were introduced to herd and protect cattle and sheep. It seems that domesticated dogs made herding possible. One has only to observe the Akhbash or Kuvasz in action to understand how useful herding breeds are, as they manage to work with only minimal supervision and are capable of feeding themselves while on the job too. Migration of course is a given, else there would not be a modern population. I think there are some studies that show that developing social systems was what propelled human evolution in the first place, and language and symbolic systems in general aided in the development of brain capacity. It’s mostly a matter of various aspects of our instinctual and learned behaviors reinforcing our potential for intellectual development to get us to where we are today.
Considering that we make advances in biotechnology, would this not mean that we are making another evolutionary already? Nanobiotechnology and genetic manipulation are already changing our lives and adding to them.
The real evolutionary trend is the development of the elite. Rich and successful and tall and good-looking people marry each other and have offspring who are RSTG, only more so, and they marry each other. Soon there will be two races, the Elites and the Rest. It is only a matter of time before they will be unable to interbreed, and will become separate species.
I.e. the children of the exceptional (in any aspect) are NOT even on average equal to the average of their parents in that exceptional aspect. They "fall back" towards the mean, not advance further as you falsely assume. Another thing you should note that for more than 10,000 years the rich an good looking have been having children and what you expect has not happened, basically because of "regression to the mean" is a biological fact, with very little cumulative improvement in each generation but NO division into two groups.
