More Evidence that Human Meat Eating Goes Back Millions of Years
In September, New Scientist published research providing additional evidence that members of the Homo genus likely began eating meat at least 2.5 million years ago.
According to New Scientist, in 1999 researchers discovered cut marks on bones about 2.5 million years old suggesting meat eating, but there was no proof that the marks were made by hominids nor that hominids that far back had teeth suitable for meat eating.
Peter Ungar of the University of Arkansas decided to tackle the last part of that problem, examining and comparing the teeth of Homo to those of A. afarensis. According to New Scientist’s summary of Ungar’s findings,
Eating meat requires teeth adapted more to cutting than to grinding. The ability to cut is determine by the slope of the cusps or crests. “Steeper crests mean the ability to consume tougher foods,” Ungar says. He has found that the crests of teeth from early Homo skeletons are steeper than those of gorillas, which consume foods as tough as leaves and stems, but not meat.
But the crests of teeth from A. afarensis are not only shallower than those of early Homo, they are also shallower than those of chimpanzees which consumes mostly soft foods such as ripe fruit, and almost no meat.
“Ungar shows that early Homo had teeth adapted to tougher food than A. afarensis or [chimpanzees]. The obvious candidate is meat,” says anthropologist Richard Wrangham of Harvard University.
Source:
Meat eating is an old human habit. New Scientist, September 3, 2003.
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