What Early Hominids Ate

— -- You are what you eat.A corollary of that adage — hominids of 3 million years ago were what they ate — has providedpaleontologists insight into the diet of our early relatives.

Surprisingly, meat or grass may have been on the menu.

Analyzing carbon atoms locked up in tooth enamel, two researchers challenge the widely held belief that Australopithecus africanus — an upright, walking pre-human hominid that lived in southern Africa — ate little more than fruits and leaves.

No Steak Knives“This does raise the possibility that the consumption of high-quality animal foods arose significantly before Homo or the earliest stone tools,” says Matt Sponheimer, an anthropology graduate student at Rutgers University in New Jersey.“For whatever reason, they are doing something different than what we anticipated.”

Sponheimer and Julia Lee-Thorp of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, report their findings in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

The research looks at four A. africanus fossil skeletons unearthed from South Africa. Living about 3 million years ago, A. africanus may be a direct ancestor of modern humans.

“What we’re trying to do is imbue these cold bones with some life,” Sponheimer says.

There aren’t many clues to deduce the lifestyles of early hominids. How can one figure out the food of creatures that didn’t leave behind pots, food wrappers or recipes?

Toothy Interpretations

The shape of A. africanus teeth offered the first clues.

Large and blunt with thick enamel, they look ideal for crushing nuts and chewing fruit as opposed to the sharp incisors one would want to rip into meat. The first stone tools, which would help in eating meat, didn’t appear until about half a million years later.

“You’d basically be crushing the food. The teeth are just not designed for eating meat,” says Peter Ungar, an anthropologist at the University of Arkansas who doubts the early hominids ate much meat. “It’s like imagining pounding a steak with a hammer as opposed to slicing it with a knife.”