The Homo erectus is in East Africa. Mauricio Anton is a credit.
Large brains were first seen in Homo erectus nearly 2 million years ago. A major shift in the diet is linked to this evolutionary transition towards human-like traits. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences questions the importance of meat eating in early human evolution. The authors of the study argue that the increase in archaeological evidence for meat eating can be explained by more research on this time period, which they say skews the evidence in favor of the "meat made us human" hypothesis.
The Olduvai Gorge is a well-preserved site where paleoanthropologists have found evidence of an explosion of meat eating after 2 million years ago. "However, when you combine the data from numerous sites across eastern Africa to test this hypothesis, that'meat made us human' evolutionary narrative starts to unraveling."
59 site levels dating between 2.6 and 1.2 million years ago were compiled by Barr and his colleagues. They used several metrics to track hominin carnivory, including the number of zooarchaeological sites preserving animal bones that have cut marks made by stone tools, the total count of animal bones with cut marks across sites, and the number of separately reported levels.
1.5 million year old fossil bones were found in Koobi Fora. Credit: Briana Pobiner.
The researchers found that there was no increase in evidence for carnivory after the appearance of H. erectus. The raw abundance of modified bones and the number of zooarchaeological sites and levels all increased after the appearance of H. erectus, but the increases were mirrored by a rise in sampling intensity.
Briana Pobiner, a research scientist at the National Museum of Natural History and co-author on the study, said that their findings were still a big surprise. The zooarchaeological record tells us about the earliest prehistoric meat-eating. It shows how important it is that we continue to ask big questions about our evolution, while we also uncover and analyze new evidence about our past.
The need for alternative explanations for why certain behavioral andatomic characteristics of modern humans emerged was stressed by the researchers in the future. The provision of plant foods by grandmothers and the development of controlled fire are possible alternative theories. The researchers caution that none of the possible explanations currently have a strong foundation in the archaeological record.
1.5 million year old fossil bones were found in Koobi Fora. Credit: Briana Pobiner.
"I think this study and its findings would be of interest to all the people who are currently based their decisions around some version of this meat-eating narrative," Barr said. The idea that eating a lot of meat caused evolutionary changes in our ancestors is not supported by our study.
The research team included Barr and Pobiner, as well as Andrew Du, an assistant professor of anthropology and geography at Colorado State University, and J. Tyler Faith, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Utah.
There was no sustained increase in zooarchaeological evidence for carnivory after the appearance. 10.1073/pnas.
The National Academy of Sciences has a journal.
The importance of meat eating in shaping our evolution has been called into question by a new study.
The document is copyrighted. Any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research cannot be reproduced without written permission. The information provided is for educational purposes.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
