concept

hominins

Also known as: hominin

Facts (61)

Sources

Psychedelics, Sociality, and Human Evolution frontiersin.org Frontiers 23 facts

claimIt is likely that ancestors of humans ingested psychedelic mushrooms from the genus Psilocybe since the Pliocene epoch, which began 5.3 million years ago, as semi-arboreal hominins intensified ground foraging activity.

claimHominin entry into the socio-cognitive niche is explained by positive feedback loops among various aspects of hominin life rather than a single causal factor or critical adaptive breakthrough.

claimEarly hominins likely pursued exogenous chemical analogs of serotonin (psychedelics) due to the high metabolic cost of serotonin production, its importance in adaptive brain function, and selection pressures for sophisticated social cognition.

claimTraditions of medicinal use of psychedelic mushrooms among hominins may have originated during periods of extreme food scarcity when ill or hungry individuals experimented with new foods and subsequently associated their recovery with the new dietary item, as hypothesized for non-human primate self-medicative behaviors by Huffman (1997).

claimThe human socio-cognitive niche acts as both a selection pressure and an adaptive response, having been constructed and reshaped by hominins who modified the evolutionary pressures acting on themselves and their descendants.

claimEarly hominins likely faced deficits of tryptophan due to a low reliance on tryptophan-rich foods such as seeds, nuts, red meat, and fish.

referenceEarly hominins were omnivores that relied substantially on forest floor foods, including mushrooms, according to Sayers and Lovejoy (2014).

claimHominins developed an egalitarian political system where interdependence and the availability of lethal weapons, such as wooden spears and lithic points, allowed groups to control their leaders.

claimPsychedelics could have increased adaptability and fitness in hominins by serving as instruments to enhance performance in non-drug-related behaviors, specifically managing psychological distress, treating health problems, improving social interaction, facilitating collective ritual and religious activities, and enhancing group decision-making.

claimThe presence of mycophagy and self-medication in primates and Paleolithic humans suggests that hominins incorporated fungi with bioactive properties into their diets, as documented by Huffman (1997), Hanson et al. (2003), Hardy et al. (2013), and O’Regan et al. (2016).

claimPsychedelic use could have created a feedback loop in ancient hominins by increasing social cognition and symbolic behavior, which in turn selected for further increases in those capacities by enriching the social and semiotic environment.

claimNiche-construction and gene-culture coevolutionary processes explain how the dietary and societal incorporation of psychedelics may have become evolutionarily significant for hominins.

claimHominins evolved larger group sizes of 100–200 individuals by developing indirect, non-physical ways of triggering endorphin activation to produce community bonding.

referenceHublin and Richards edited 'The Evolution of Hominin Diets: Integrating Approaches to the Study of Paleolithic Subsistence', published by Springer in 2009.

claimEarly hominin ancestors likely ingested psychedelic mushrooms throughout their evolutionary history, as supported by evidence regarding paleodiet, paleoecology, primate mycophagical behaviors, and the biogeography of psilocybin-containing fungi.

claimThe integration of psilocybin into ancient diet, communal practice, and proto-religious activity may have enhanced the hominin response to the socio-cognitive niche, while simultaneously aiding in the creation of that niche.

referenceHominins partially constructed the socio-cognitive niche through their metabolism, activities, and choices, according to Laland et al. (2016).

claimThe authors of 'Psychedelics, Sociality, and Human Evolution' propose that the incidental ingestion of psilocybin-containing mushrooms served as an environmental factor affecting hominin populations across millions of years of evolution.

claimAn image-based cognitive modality provided hominins with a meta-cognitive system for representation, problem-solving, and strategic planning for millions of years.

claimThe dietary incorporation of psilocybin and its integration into communal and proto-religious practices may have helped hominins respond adaptively to their socio-cognitive niche.

claimTryptophan deficits were likely less common in later hominins as meat became a more pervasive part of their diet, because meat contains high quantities of tryptophan, as noted by Friedman (2018).

claimThe authors hypothesize that the presence of psychedelics in the hominin social environment influenced the selective regime driving hominin cognitive and behavioral evolution by facilitating the construction of adapted social environments.

claimWhile psychedelics may have initially been used by hominins to treat serotonin (5-HT) depletion, their continued use in later human societies was likely sustained by the adaptive benefits of their ritual and symbolic instrumentalization.

The role of Plant Foods in the evolution and Dispersal of early Humans kernsverlag.com Kerns Verlag Jul 30, 2022 13 facts

measurementHominin activity in the Philippines dates back to at least 709,000 years ago, according to the 2018 study 'Earliest Known Hominin Activity in the Philippines by 709 Thousand Years Ago' published in Nature.

measurementArchaeological evidence for nutcracking by hominins dates to approximately 790,000 years ago.

referenceBrain and Sillen (1988) presented evidence from the Swartkrans Cave regarding the earliest use of fire by hominins.

referenceRoebroeks and Villa (2011) examined the earliest evidence for the habitual use of fire by hominins in Europe.

claimAquatic environments were relevant to hominins, as demonstrated by a case study from Trinil, Java, Indonesia, published in the 2009 Journal of Human Evolution.

measurementRepeated and consistent use of fire by hominins is not apparent in the archaeological record until 400,000 to 200,000 years ago.

measurementArchaeological evidence for the use of fire by hominins is absent prior to approximately 1.5 to 1 million years ago.

measurementArchaeological evidence for the use of uncooked starchy plant foods by hominins dates to approximately 1.2 million years ago.

measurementHominin dispersal into the Wallacean Archipelago and Sahul is evidenced by stone tools found on Flores (1 million years ago), the Philippines (709,000 years ago), and Sulawesi (200,000 years ago).

referenceAnalysis of dental calculus from the Sima del Elefante site in Spain reveals the diet and environment of Europe's oldest hominin 1.2 million years ago, according to a 2017 study by K. Hardy et al.

claimBunn (2007) argues that the addition of hunting to the hominin behavioral repertoire provided a high-calorie, low-fiber food resource.

referenceBlasco and Fernández Peris (2012) documented a broad spectrum diet among hominins during the Middle Pleistocene at Bolomor Cave in Valencia, Spain.

claimThe 'hyper-carnivore hypothesis' posits that Homo erectus and later Middle Paleolithic hominins, including Neanderthals and early modern humans, derived over 70% of their caloric intake from animal foods (Ben-Dor et al. 2011, 2021; Ben-Dor and Barkai 2021).

Changes in Diet Drove Physical Evolution in Early Humans home.dartmouth.edu Dartmouth Jul 31, 2025 6 facts

quote“One of the burning questions in anthropology is what did hominins do differently that other primates didn’t do? This work shows that the ability to exploit grass tissues may be our secret sauce. Even now, our global economy turns on a few species of grass—rice, wheat, corn, and barley.”

claimHominins and two other primate species maintained similar plant diets until 2.3 million years ago, when carbon and oxygen isotope ratios in hominin teeth changed abruptly.

claimFor comparative analysis, the research team examined the fossilized teeth of two extinct primate species that lived during the same period as the hominins: giant terrestrial baboon-like monkeys known as theropiths and small leaf-eating monkeys known as colobines.

claimResearchers propose that later hominins gained regular access to underground plant organs, specifically tubers, bulbs, and corms, which contain oxygen-depleted water and carbohydrates.

quoteLuke Fannin, a postdoctoral researcher at Dartmouth and lead author of the study, stated: “We can definitively say that hominins were quite flexible when it came to behavior, and this was their advantage. As anthropologists, we talk about behavioral and morphological change as evolving in lockstep. But we found that behavior could be a force of evolution in its own right, with major repercussions for the morphological and dietary trajectory of hominins.”

measurementHominins began consuming carbohydrate-rich graminoids approximately 700,000 years before they evolved the longer molars necessary to efficiently chew tough plant fibers.

To Follow the Real Early Human Diet, Eat Everything scientificamerican.com Scientific American Jun 25, 2024 5 facts

claimThe earliest known hominins walked upright on two legs but spent significant time in trees and did not appear to manufacture stone tools.

claimHominins maintained a plant-based diet for the first half of their known history, leaving no material evidence of meat consumption.

claimJessica Thompson of Yale University and her colleagues argue that before hominins invented stone tools suitable for hunting large animals, they may have used simpler implements to scavenge abandoned carcasses for nutritious marrow and brains.

claimThe earliest known hominins likely subsisted on a diet similar to that of modern chimpanzees and bonobos, consisting primarily of fruits, nuts, seeds, roots, flowers, leaves, insects, and occasional small mammals.

claimEvidence of stone tool use and butchery by hominins prior to two million years ago appears to be isolated in time, occurring in rare instances separated by hundreds of thousands of years.

Evidence for Meat-Eating by Early Humans | Learn Science at Scitable nature.com Nature 5 facts

claimA hominin is defined as a member of the human evolutionary group of species, encompassing both fossil and modern species.

claimButchery marks on fossilized bones, which include cut marks from slicing meat and percussion marks from breaking bones to extract marrow, serve as the primary evidence for meat and marrow consumption by early hominins.

referenceD. R. Braun et al. published 'Early hominin diet included diverse terrestrial and aquatic animals 1.95 Ma in East Turkana, Kenya' in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA in 2010.

referenceMcPherron et al. (2010) published evidence in Nature indicating that hominins engaged in stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues at Dikika, Ethiopia, prior to 3.39 million years ago.

referencePickering et al. (2013) analyzed the taphonomy of ungulate ribs to demonstrate that 1.2-million-year-old hominins at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, consumed meat and bone.

Study documents how change in diet drove early human evolution ucalgary.ca University of Calgary Aug 27, 2025 3 facts

claimIsotope analysis of fossilized teeth demonstrated that dietary changes in early hominins occurred before the corresponding morphological changes in the size and shape of the teeth.

procedureResearchers identified dietary shifts in early hominins using a two-step procedure: (1) analyzing the shape and size of fossilized teeth, and (2) isolating carbon and oxygen isotopes from fossilized teeth to determine the chemical composition of the diet.

claimEarly hominins shifted their diet from primarily fruits, flowers, and insects to starchy grasses, sedges, and underground storage organs such as tubers.

The Mechanisms of Psychedelic Visionary Experiences - Frontiers frontiersin.org Frontiers Sep 27, 2017 1 fact

claimImitation served as a foundation for human evolution and cultural development in early hominins, rooted in the primordial roles of mimesis in learning and shared experience.

Unknown source 1 fact

claimEarly hominins used stone tools to facilitate a dietary shift from primarily plant-based diets to diets incorporating meat.

Reviewing the Prehistoric Menu | American Scientist americanscientist.org Sandra J. Ackerman · American Scientist 1 fact

perspectiveThe author argues that early human ancestors likely relied on scavenging for meat and marrow rather than hunting, because butchery marks appear on large animals in the fossil record before the existence of hunting technology, and it is implausible that small hominins could take down large animals like elephants without such technology.

How do we know what they ate? - The Australian Museum australian.museum Australian Museum Oct 21, 2020 1 fact

measurementThe oldest stone tools are approximately 2.5 million years old, which makes it difficult to extrapolate information about cannibalism in hominins prior to that time.

Changing perspectives on early hominin diets - PNAS pnas.org PNAS Feb 6, 2023 1 fact

claimStrait et al. authored the paper titled 'Diet and dietary adaptations in early hominins: The hard food perspective,' which was published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in 2013.

Western pattern diet | Nutrition and Dietetics | Research Starters ebsco.com EBSCO 1 fact

accountTwo million years ago, hominins were hunter-gatherers whose diet consisted of fruits, grasses, nuts, seeds, and tubers, relying on small game or scavenged kills before developing tools for hunting larger animals.