Knowledge Tree
Homo erectus
Facts (10)
Sources
The role of Plant Foods in the evolution and Dispersal of early Humans kernsverlag.com Jul 30, 2022 5 facts
claimThe increase in meat consumption associated with late Australopithecus and early Homo correlates with the evolution of larger relative brain size, increased body size, simplified digestive anatomy, and expanded geographical range observed in Homo erectus by 1.8 million years ago, as noted by Wood and Collard (1999).
claimCooking may not have been a key driver of earlier hominin evolution, including the physiological and behavioral changes observed in early Homo erectus.
referenceK. Choi and D. Driwantoro provided cut mark evidence of shell tool use by early Homo erectus members at the Sangiran site in Central Java, Indonesia, in a 2007 study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
referenceM. Ben-Dor, A. Gopher, I. Hershkovitz, and R. Barkai published 'Man the Fat Hunter: The Demise of Homo erectus and the Emergence of a New Hominin Lineage in the Middle Pleistocene (ca. 400 kyr) Levant' in PLoS ONE in 2011.
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).
The Evolution of Diet - National Geographic nationalgeographic.com 3 facts
claimLeslie Aiello and Peter Wheeler proposed that the consumption of a higher-quality diet with less bulky plant fiber allowed Homo erectus to develop smaller guts, which freed up energy to fuel a larger brain.
claimHomo erectus fueled the evolution of a larger brain by consuming calorie-dense meat and marrow instead of the low-quality plant diet consumed by apes.
claimHomo erectus and subsequent human bodies depended on a diet of energy-dense food, particularly meat.
Evidence for Meat-Eating by Early Humans | Learn Science at Scitable nature.com 1 fact
referenceAntón, S.C. published 'Natural history of Homo erectus' in Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 46, 126-170 (2003).
(PDF) Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Diet and Nutrition academia.edu 1 fact
claimIn the fossil record, both total energy expenditure and energy required by the brain increased substantially with the emergence of Homo erectus.