Quintessential human traits such as large brains first appear in Homo erectus nearly 2 million years ago. This evolutionary transition towards human-like traits is often linked to a major dietary shift involving greater meat consumption. A new study published on Jan. 24, 2022 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,however, calls into question the primacy of meat eating in early human evolution. While the archaeological evidence for meat eating increases dramatically after the appearance of Homo erectus, the study authors argue that this increase can largely be explained by greater research attention on this time period, effectively skewing the evidence in favor of the “meat made us human” hypothesis.
“Generations of paleoanthropologists have gone to famously well-preserved sites in places like Olduvai Gorge looking for—and finding—breathtaking direct evidence of early humans eating meat, furthering this viewpoint that there was an explosion of meat eating after 2 million years ago,” W. Andrew Barr, an assistant professor of anthropology at the George Washington University and lead author on the study, said.
Did meat make us human? | @theU
“Generations of paleoanthropologists have gone to famously well-preserved sites in places like Olduvai Gorge looking for—and finding—breathtaking direct evidence of early humans eating meat, furthering this viewpoint that there was an explosion of meat eating after 2 million years ago,” W. Andrew Barr, an assistant professor of anthropology at the George Washington University and lead author on the study, said.
Did meat make us human? | @theU
