The Shocking Diet That Fueled Human Evolution

SciTechDaily ^ | August 10, 2025 | Dartmouth College

[SunkenCiv]

Long before their teeth evolved to handle tough, fibrous plants, early humans were already digging up and eating grasses, sedges, and starchy underground foods.

A new fossil-tooth isotope study shows this behavior began about 700,000 years before longer molars emerged -- revealing that behavioral innovation, not anatomy, drove the change...

As early humans moved from the dense forests of Africa into open grasslands, they began relying on quick, reliable sources of energy. This shift in habitat led them to favor grassy plants, especially grains and the starchy tissues stored underground.

A new study led by Dartmouth researchers reveals that hominins started eating these carbohydrate-rich foods long before they had the dental structures best suited for them. The research offers the first fossil evidence of what scientists call "behavioral drive," in which survival-boosting behaviors emerge before the physical traits that make them easier. The team reports their findings in Science...

Researchers examined fossilized hominin teeth for carbon and oxygen isotopes left behind by eating graminoids, a group that includes grasses and sedges. Their analysis showed that ancient humans began consuming these plants far earlier than their teeth evolved to process them effectively...

Nathaniel Dominy, the Charles Hansen Professor of Anthropology and senior author of the study, says isotope analysis overcomes the enduring challenge of identifying the factors that caused the emergence of new behaviors -- behavior doesn't fossilize.

[SunkenCiv]

The researchers report that hominin teeth, especially molars, became smaller and longer over millennia to accommodate a growing diet of tough grass-like plants known as graminoids and their underground storage organs. They found that the turn toward grasses began about 3.8 million years ago with the distant human relative Australopithecus afarensis (left). About 2.3 million years ago, the early human Homo rudolfensis (center) gained regular access to carbohydrate-rich underground plant organs such as tubers, bulbs, and corms. But this dietary shift outpaced tooth evolution until about 2 million years ago, when species such as Homo ergaster (right) exhibited a spurt of change in tooth size and shape better suited to eating and breaking down cooked plant tissues to derive their nutrients.

Credit: L to R: Public domain; Don Hitchcock; Fernando Losada Rodríguez (rotated)

[SunkenCiv]

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[packagingguy]

Can we eat our lawns then?

[SunkenCiv]

[tumblindice]

Ever eat a pine tree? Euell Gibbons

[SunkenCiv]

The Neandertal Enigma
by James Shreeve
in local libraries

"Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]

[butlerweave]

Can we eat our lawns then?

Do you have a dog ? LOL

[SunkenCiv]

I suggest blue cheese dressing.

[SunkenCiv]

Oddly enough, I’ve been tossing a bunch of pine nuts on my breakfast this week.

[butlerweave]

Now the idiots will want us to go back to grazing ,LOL

[spacejunkie2001]

this is SO stupid.

[zeestephen]

Re: "Eating grasses..."

A lawn mower plus a can of gasoline would have made you the wealthiest human on Earth!

[Scrambler Bob]

How quickly did Abel’s teeth evolve so he could eat meat from his flocks?

[Justa]

Grazing? That’s too primitive. They wouldn’t do that to us. They’ll give us bovine-processed grass, not that raw stuff.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

You can. Not much nutrition in Kentucky Blue though. Not even for animals.

[DuncanWaring]

The branching of early hominids leading to modern humans was driven by a diet of (sometimes rancid) meat and fat. That’s why our stomachs are only slightly less acidic than full-time scavengers like buzzards and vultures.

Dr. Michael Eades - ‘Paleopathology and the Origins of the Low-carb Diet’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY2v6AnEyuU

[airborne]

Cows eat grass.

I eat cows.

So I eat grass, in a roundabout sort of way.

[tumblindice]

I was fed Grape Nuts as a kid. I can eat gravel.

[tumblindice]

I like pine nuts but they’re expensive.

[jjotto]

Corn and soybeans.