Humans were actually apex predators who ate meat for 2 million years: study
TORONTO, Ontario (CTV Network) Despite a widespread belief that humans owe their evolution to the dietary flexibility in eating both meat and vegetables, researchers in Israel suggest that early humans were actually apex predators who hunted large animals for two million years before they sought vegetables to supplement their diet.
In a study recently published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, academics from Tel Aviv University in Israel and the University of Minho in Portugal examined modern biology to determine if stone-age humans were specialized carnivores or generalist omnivores.
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Apr. 8, 2021
We humans take vast pride in our brain, not that it’s helped us understand it. Now a new report in Science reveals that the unique structures of the human brain evolved later than thought – certainly after our species began venturing out of Africa 2 million years ago.
Contrasting our fond imaginings, the modern structure of the frontal cortex where we do our advanced-human things such as language hasn’t been with us since our evolution began after all.
We know this because it turns out that the first members of the Homo line to leave Africa – the diminutive primitive specimens found at Dmanisi, Georgia, dating to 1.8 million years ago – had frontal lobe structures like great apes, not like humans, according to a new study published in Science by Marcia Ponce de León of the University of Zurich and colleagues.
Israeli archaeologists crack mystery of cave paintings done in the dark haaretz.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from haaretz.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
During the Stone Age, our ancestors ate only meat
Researchers at Tel Aviv University say only the extinction of larger animals and the decline of animal food sources led humans to consume vegetables.
Photo by Usman Yousaf on Unsplash
Humans were predators for about two million years, introducing vegetation into their diet only when larger animals went extinct and animal food sources declined toward the end of the Stone Age, claims a paper published in the
Yearbook of the American Physical Anthropology Association by archeologists Miki Ben-Dor and Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University, with Raphael Sirtoli of the University of Minho, Portugal.
TORONTO Despite a widespread belief that humans owe their evolution to the dietary flexibility in eating both meat and vegetables, researchers in Israel suggest that early humans were actually apex predators who hunted large animals for two million years before they sought vegetables to supplement their diet. In a study recently published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, academics from Tel Aviv University in Israel and the University of Minho in Portugal examined modern biology to determine if stone-age humans were specialized carnivores or generalist omnivores. “So far, attempts to reconstruct the diet of Stone-Age humans were mostly based on comparisons to 20th century hunter-gatherer societies,” one of the study’s authors, Miki Ben-Dor, a researcher at Tel Aviv University, said in a press release.