The first major evolutionary change in the human diet was the incorporation of meat and marrow from large animals, which occurred by at least 2.6 million years ago.
Eating Meat and Marrow
The diet of the earliest hominins was probably somewhat similar to the diet of modern chimpanzees: omnivorous, including large quantities of fruit, leaves, flowers, bark, insects and meat (e.g., Andrews & Martin 1991; Milton 1999; Watts 2008). Tooth morphology and dental microwear studies suggest that the diet of some hominins may have included hard food items such as seeds and nuts, and underground storage organs (USOs) such as roots and tubers (Jolly 1970; Peters & O’Brien 1981; Teaford & Ungar 2000; Luca et al. 2010). By at least 2.6 million years ago, a remarkable expansion in this diet started to occur; some hominins began incorporating meat and marrow from small to very large animals into their diet. Let’s explore the evidence for this dramatic shift using the 5 “W” questions: When, Where, Who, What, Why (and How).
When and where did hominin carnivory first occur?
The strongest evidence for meat and marrow eating are butchery marks found on bones. Slicing meat off a bone with a sharp-edged tool can leave cut marks (Figure 1). Pounding a bone with a large stone to break it open and extract the marrow inside can leave percussion marks. Cut and percussion marks, which together are called butchery marks, may be the result of skinning, disarticulation, and bone breakage for dietary and non-dietary reasons (Blumenschine & Pobiner 2006). Scientists began to recognize these butchery marks on Early Stone Age fossil assemblages in the 1980s (e.g., Bunn 1981; Potts & Shipman 1981; Blumenschine & Selvaggio 1988). Experimental and prehistoric evidence for human chewing on bones has only recently begun to be explored (e.g., Landt 2007; Delaney-Rivera et al. 2009; Fernandez-Jalvo and Andrews 2011; Pickering et al. 2013).
