Early human ancestors may have spent more time eating salad than steak, with a new study suggesting that Australopithecus africanus had primarily vegetarian diets.
The Vegetarian Roots of Humanity
Early human ancestors may have spent more time eating salad than steak. A new study on the chemical composition of fossilized teeth in Australopithecus africanus suggests that these bipedal primates had primarily vegetarian diets, which would have provided them with a lot of energy to power their huge brains.
The Science Behind Meat Consumption
Diet has been a crucial component of human evolution. Researchers believe that a switch from a vegetarian diet to the habitual consumption of high-protein foods like meat may have fueled the evolution of humans’ cognitive superpowers. According to Tina Lüdecke, a geochemist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, “These high-quality foods provide us with a lot of energy, which we need to power our huge brains.”
Ancient Diet Revealed Through Fossilized Teeth
To get a better look at diets in the deep past, Lüdecke and her colleagues drilled samples out of the teeth of 43 roughly 3.5-million-year-old fossilized mammals from the Sterkfontein caves in South Africa, including seven different Australopithecus africanus individuals. Locked in the matrix of tooth enamel are tiny bits of nitrogen-bearing organic material, which reveal secrets about ancient diets.
Implications for Human Evolution
The findings suggest that early humans appeared to have had a variable diet, but not one rich in mammalian meat. This challenges the long-held assumption that a shift to a brain-boosting meat-rich diet was a key factor in human evolution. Instead, it may be that adaptations such as shorter snouts, bipedalism, and the ability to thrive in a savanna ecosystem predated the move to a meat-rich diet.
Termites and Other High-Energy Foods
Lüdecke notes that the findings don’t rule out the possibility that early humans occasionally exploited a meaty meal or ate termites, a reliable high-energy food. In fact, she points out that apes today still engage in termite-fishing behavior, suggesting why our ancestors may have done so as well.
Future Research Directions
Now that there’s baseline data, Lüdecke says future studies could use the same methods on the teeth of other, later human species to see how diets may have changed over millions of years. This research has the potential to shed new light on the complex and multifaceted nature of human evolution.
- sciencenews.org | Early human ancestors didn’t regularly eat meat
