A recent Baylor University research study has shed new light
on the diet and food acquisition strategies of some the earliest human
ancestors in Africa.
Beginning around two million years ago, early stone
tool-making humans, known scientifically as Oldowan hominin, started to exhibit
a number of physiological and ecological adaptations that required greater
daily energy expenditures, including an increase in brain and body size,
heavier investment in their offspring and significant home-range expansion.
Demonstrating how these early humans acquired the extra energy they needed to
sustain these shifts has been the subject of much debate among researchers.