Did eating meat make us human? New research casts some doubt

The new paper hinges on the argument that quintessential human traits, like larger brains, first appeared in the human ancestor Homo erectus, and that these traits are linked to a dietary shift toward increased meat eating. But the study authors claim their analysis of published data can’t demonstrate an increase in evidence for meat eating after the emergence of the Homo erectus, challenging the “meat made us human” viewpoint.“It’s clear that eating meat has been important for many groups of humans throughout much of human history and prehistory,” said lead author W. Tim White, the co-director of the Human Evolution Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an email that the available data compiled in the study is “inadequate” to test whether or not “Homo erectus behavior and anatomy depended on an increased amount of meat in the diet.” White, who was not involved in this study, said it is difficult to come to a conclusion with the information available: For example, it is not possible to definitively say which Homo species was responsible for the stone tools and bone modifications because of overlaps in the fossil record, and the methodology used to discern which markings on bones were created by humans changes across the studies included in the overall analysis.