Our ancestors started eating meat probably about 2.4 million years ago. This assumption will be tested by researchers at the German Max Planck Institute. in Mainz using a new method for analyzing tooth enamel. Scientists will study amino acids that can be found after more than two million years, writes ARD in an extensive publication on the subject.
Scientists use a special nitrogen isotope analysis to determine the chemical fingerprint in tooth enamel. "For the first time, we can derive direct evidence of meat consumption based on individual teeth of proto-humans," geochemist Tina Lüdeke from the research team tells ARD.
She has already found that the new method works well in analyzing dinosaur teeth, and is currently testing it on monkey teeth. As Lüdeke expected, evidence of only plant food was found in the dinosaurs, ARD specifies.
Very soon, the researchers from Mainz will proceed with the analysis of dental fossils from prehistoric people with the new method.
Did meat make us modern humans?
How did the consumption of meat affect the development of modern man? Experts have been arguing about this for a long time. In the 1950s, but also later, especially in the 1990s, it was widely believed that meat made us who we are today.
According to this theory, it was only thanks to the consumption of meat that humans were able to evolve into the modern, large-brained Homo sapiens. Because bigger brains need more energy: "The easiest way was to find a food source that very easily supplied the body with a lot of energy. And that was the meat," Ludeke says.
Although the brain makes up only two percent of the human body's weight, it consumes about 20 percent of total energy. But was meat really the decisive source of energy?
When did people start cooking meat?
New theories, such as that of Harvard's Richard Rangham, believe that the discovery of fire was crucial to the development of mankind. This is because cooked food provides much more energy than raw food.
Scientists hope that with the help of the new method, they will also be able to answer this question of when our ancestors stopped consuming raw meat and began to process it thermally.
Such studies have been done before. They build on the fact that finds containing evidence of human meat consumption suddenly increased in a period between 2.6 and 2.4 million years ago. However, these data are not sufficient proof that it was then that man began to eat meat as well.
The new analysis of tooth enamel should finally provide more reliable facts so that we no longer have to rely on interpretations of finds from stone tools or cave paintings.
The first results of the research are expected by the end of this year, the ARD publication also informs.
Author: Pascal Kiss (ARD)