Sunday, July 07, 2024

WAR IS ECOCIDE

World War II shipwrecks are scattered all around Australia. Researchers fear they could be 'ticking time bombs'

By Liz Gwynn
ABC AUSTRALIA

They've been described as "ticking time bombs".

Several World War II shipwrecks in Australian waters, holding unknown quantities of oil and chemicals, have been deteriorating ever since they sank more than 80 years ago.

Some of them are close to popular tourist towns — and with their potential to leak toxic materials into sensitive marine areas, researchers are concerned about the potential to kill marine life and impact people's livelihoods.

"People have seen plastic bottles and ghost nets impacting the ocean, but these potentially polluting wrecks are what we call the biggest problem that people haven't heard of," says Matt Carter, a marine researcher with Major Projects Foundation, a conservation not-for-profit.


"Because of that, there just isn't the research behind it for us to understand the sheer impact."

World War II shipwrecks are scattered all around Australia but six have been identified as a serious environmental threat.(ABC News)

World War II shipwrecks are scattered all around Australia but six have been identified as a serious environmental threat.

They include three US-owned ships — the Lexington, Neosho, and Sims — which are sitting at the bottom of the Coral Sea Marine Park; a vessel called MV Limerick, just 18 kilometres east of Ballina in NSW; and two wrecks off Victoria's coast near Apollo Bay and Wilsons Promontory.

Dozens of wrecks have also been identified as a potential risk overseas in the Federated States of Micronesia, Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands and Papua New Guinea.

"These wrecks are changing, and in a five-year period you can visibly see the decay of these shipwrecks," Dr Carter says.


"It's not a matter of if, but when they will collapse."
Dr Matt Carter says the wrecks are "the biggest problem people haven't heard of".(Supplied: Major Projects Foundation)

There are concerns that these vessels are at risk of breaking up in the near future — and when that happens, it has the potential to be an "unmitigated disaster".

"The fuel is contained for the time being, but if that structure collapses and collapses on a large scale, then it will release all of the contaminants into the water immediately," says Dr James Hunter from the Australian National Maritime Museum.

"If they are close enough to shore then it will have a knock-on effect, not only for the marine eco-system, but for sea birds and animals that might feed on marine animals."

Heritage Conservation Solutions director Ian MacLeod says the sudden release of fuel could spell "the end of fish breeding stocks".

"That could be the end of grade one status on fish exports and people will lose their livelihoods," he says.
What's being done to alleviate the risk World War II wrecks pose?

The Major Projects Foundation has teamed up with subsea oil engineers, marine archaeologists, and historians to carry out research and field work to better understand which wrecks are a threat and need oil removed.

Some of the work involves trawling through historical records to determine how much oil was onboard each ship and how much was lost when it sank decades ago — but it's proving to be a challenging and lengthy process.

"A lot of these records are part records, or they were lost during the war so there's not necessarily complete information and some of the records are in Japanese," Dr Carter says.


"One of our researchers taught himself to read Japanese so that he could go through the Japanese World War II archives."

It is unclear exactly when the wrecks might break up because added stressors such as storms, cyclones, or the depth of water have the potential to speed up the corrosion process


Ian MacLeod is director of Heritage Conservation Solutions.(Supplied)

"One of the things that surprised people on the deep wrecks of Titanic and HMAS Sydney, is that even at a depth of around four kilometres you've got strong ocean currents bringing dissolved oxygen to the wreck," Dr MacLeod says.

"That is making it corrode faster... even deepening a fishing channel nearby can cause an increase of 10-15 per cent in the corrosion rate."

Other factors such as the disposition of the vessel on the sea floor can also have an impact.

"A ship that should have been corroding at a rate of what you would expect at 40 metres, if you turn it upside, it would be corroding as if it was in 25 metres of water," he says.
There is a solution, but it isn't cheap
Experts say the cost of removing oil from a potentially polluting wreck is far less than cleaning up a spill.(AP: Suhaimi Abdullah)

The Major Projects Foundation estimates it would cost at least $3 million to decontaminate a single wreck. However, that figure could rise if the vessel is in deeper or more remote waters.

But the good news is, work to identify, risk assess and ultimately remediate sunken vessels has been successfully carried out overseas.


"What that looks like is sending down divers to drill holes in the hull and pump the oil out where it can then be removed and disposed of in an environmentally-friendly way," Dr Carter says.

Experts say the cost of removing oil from a potentially polluting wreck is far less than cleaning up a spill, which could be between $20 - $30 million.
Dr James Hunter says its not too late to invest in fixing the problem.(Supplied: Heather Berry/Silentworld Foundation)

"It's small enough that if you throw enough money at it, and throw the right methods and ideas at it, then you can actually take care of it before it becomes a massive problem," Dr Hunter says.


"Unlike global climate change and these sorts of broader issues, this is one of those things you can control."
Who's responsible?

It has been difficult to ascertain exactly who is responsible or liable for these potentially polluting wrecks.

According to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, all shipwrecks and their associated relics that occurred 75 or more years ago are protected under the Underwater Cultural Heritage Act 2018, regardless of whether their precise location is known.

An untold amount of black, toxic oil is contained within the corroding wrecks of the sunken World War II ships.
Australia has not engaged in work to remove oil from historic wrecks, despite this being a routine process in some parts of the world.

In a statement, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said it was not aware of any funding, or proposals for funding, to address such wrecks in Australian waters.

This lack of action has prompted calls for the government to respond before it's too late.

"There are ways of stopping this and it requires money and support from the federal government to be proactive in the management of these at-risk wrecks," Dr MacLeod says.


"Let's make history work for us and be smart and do the right thing."


Denisovans Lived on the Tibetan Plateau, Researchers Suggest

Researchers reveal that Denisovans, ancient humans, lived on the Tibetan Plateau. Credit: Dongju Zhang / Wikipedia / CC BY-SA 4.0

Denisovans lived on the high Tibetan plateau for over 100,000 years, as revealed by a recent study. This sheds light on these ancient humans, first discovered in 2010.

Researchers studied many animal bones found at Baishiya Karst Cave, 3,280 meters high near Xiahe County in China’s Gansu province. This cave is one of just three places where these extinct humans lived.

The study found that Denisovans could hunt, cut up, and cook various large and small animals such as woolly rhinos, blue sheep, wild yaks, marmots, and birds

Archaeologists at the cave found a rib bone fragment in sediment dating back to 48,000 to 32,000 years ago. This discovery suggests Denisovans were alive more recently than scientists had thought.

Lived and thrived on the Tibetan plateau

With limited fossil evidence, understanding how our ancient human ancestors, the Denisovans, lived has been challenging. However, the latest study reveals remarkable resilience among those who inhabited Baishiya Karst Cave.

They thrived in one of Earth’s toughest environments through both warm and cold periods, making the most of the diverse animals in the grasslands.

Dongju Zhang, an archaeologist and professor at Lanzhou University in China, co-authored the study published in Nature. Reflecting on the findings, Zhang emphasized the longstanding presence of Denisovans on the Tibetan plateau and posed questions about their lifestyle and environmental adaptation.

“They used all these animals available to them, so that means their behavior is flexible,” Zhang added.

Frido Welker, an associate professor at the Biomolecular Paleoanthropology Group at the University of Copenhagen’s Globe Institute, noted that the rib likely belonged to a Denisovan who lived during a period when modern humans were still spreading throughout Eurasia. He suggested that future research in the area could reveal whether these two groups interacted there.

“It does put this fossil and the (sediment) layer in a context where we know in the wider region humans were likely to be present, and that’s interesting,” he said.

Fossils found in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia

Denisovans were initially recognized just over a decade ago through DNA analysis of a small piece of finger bone. Since then, fewer than a dozen Denisovan fossils have been unearthed worldwide.

Most of these fossils were discovered in Denisova Cave, nestled in Siberia’s Altai Mountains, which gave the group its name. Genetic studies later revealed that Denisovans, much like Neanderthals, had interbred with early modern humans.

Traces of Denisovan DNA found in present-day populations suggest these ancient people likely once inhabited large parts of Asia.

Notably, it wasn’t until 2019 that researchers identified the first Denisovan fossil outside of Denisova Cave, as reported by CNN.


Lost city of Togu Balik discovered in ancestral homeland of Turks


Turkish academics from Izmir Katip Celebi University conducting joint archaeological excavations with support of TIKA in Mongolia.




AA

The research is taking place in a 100-square-kilometre area encompassing the city ruins on the banks of the Tuul River. / Photo: AA

Excavation work in Tuul Valley, Mongolia, has conclusively proven that the area is the city of "Togu Balik," where the Nine Oghuzes lived and battled with the Gokturks.

Turkish academics from Izmir Katip Celebi University are conducting joint archaeological excavations with the support of the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) in Mongolia.



A 30-person team is participating in the excavation at the archaeological site believed to be Togu Balik, associated with the Nine Oghuzes (the tribes who founded the Uyghurs) mentioned in the inscriptions dating back to the era of ruler Bilge Qaghan and Kul Tigin, located in Tuul Valley, Mongolia.

The research is taking place in a 100-square-kilometre area encompassing the city ruins on the banks of the Tuul River.


SOURCE: TRTWORLD AND AGENCIES

Archaeologists map the lost town of Rungholt

By: Mark Milligan
Date:
July 6, 2024


The Saint Marcellus’s flood was an extratropical cyclone event that triggered a powerful storm tide, devastating the coastal regions of the British Isles, the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Denmark.

The storm tide peaked on the 16th January, the feast day of St. Marcellus, resulting in the deaths of around 25,000 people/

In 2023, archaeologists discovered a two-kilometre-long chain of medieval terps (settlement mounds) in the North Frisian Wadden Sea, including the possible remains of a large church.

In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, archaeologists have presented a detailed reconstruction of the medieval landscape of Rungholt, featuring a network of drainage ditches, a sea dike, the proposed church, and 64 newly identified dwelling mounds.

Excavations have also unearthed imported high-quality objects, including lead-glazed redware and stoneware, cast bronze cauldrons, hammered brass cauldrons, swords, and hispano-moresque faience.

According to the study authors: “The basis of our prospection work is multi-channel magnetic gradiometry, which is applied during low tide. At key locations, the magnetic map is complemented by Electromagnetic Induction (EMI) measurements or marine seismic reflection profiles.”

This enabled the researchers to interconnect isolated settlement structures and reconstruct the wider settlement area, extending over an area of at least 10km2. Four main areas have been identified that have several rectangular terps arranged in a row.

A geophysical survey of a prominent terp, believed to be the site of the town’s church, has revealed two magnetic anomalies indicating a rectangular feature and a semi-circular structure.

Image Credit : GeoBasis-DE/LVermGeo SH/CC BY 4.0

By comparing their survey data to other known medieval churches still preserved in North Frisia, the researchers suggest that the structure is a Late Romanesque church with an integrated tower.

“The building must have been among North Frisia’s main churches and is most likely the one that provided a home and place of work for the clerical collegium,” said the study authors.

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to cultural heritage reasons to protect the site.

Header Image Credit : Scientific Reports (Sci Rep)

Sources : Wilken, D., Hadler, H., Majchczack, B.S. et al. The discovery of the church of Rungholt, a landmark for the drowned medieval landscapes of the Wadden Sea World Heritage. Sci Rep 14, 15576 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-66245-0

Archaeologists In Austria Find 1,500-Year-Old Relic Possibly Linked To Moses, Ten Commandments


Curated By: Rohit
News18.com
Last Updated: JULY 07, 2024
New Delhi, India

Austrian archeologists just discovered an early Christian relic that depicts Moses receiving the 10 Commandments. (@jjauthor/X)

Archaeologists from the University of Innsbruck have made a remarkable discovery at a church excavation site in southern Austria. Unearthing a marble shrine, they found a rare 1,500-year-old ivory box adorned with Christian motifs, believed to be connected to Moses and the Ten Commandments.

In a press statement, Innsbruck University said this relic holds immense significance due to its rarity among early Christian artifacts. Gerald Grabherr, the lead archaeologist, expressed astonishment at the find: “We know of around 40 ivory boxes like this worldwide, and the last discovery during excavations was about a century ago. Most of these pyxes are either housed in cathedral treasuries or displayed in museums.”

The intricately carved box was discovered beneath an altar inside a chapel atop Burgbichl, a hill in Irschen municipality. The area, part of the Carinthian Drava Valley, has been under excavation since 2016 by the University of Innsbruck. “The depiction on the box likely represents Moses receiving the laws on Mount Sinai, marking the covenant between God and humanity from the Old Testament,” Grabherr explained. He noted the historical context of the find, citing the uncertainties of the late Roman Empire era, particularly in outlying provinces like Austria.

The discovery underlines the archaeological significance of early Christian artifacts in this region. It sheds light on religious practices and beliefs during a transformative period in history. The University of Innsbruck plans to further study and preserve this significant artifact, contributing valuable insights into Austria’s ancient Christian heritage. Since its discovery, the 1,500-year-old, very fragile ivory reliquary has been conserved at the University of Innsbruck.

“Ivory, especially ivory stored on the ground like in the marble shrine, absorbs moisture from its surroundings and is very soft and easily damaged in this state. In addition, uncontrolled drying out can lead to shrinkage and cracks and thus to damage that can no longer be repaired,” said Ulrike Töchterle, head of the restoration workshop in Innsbruck.
NICE BUTT

7-Foot Statue of Greek God Hermes Uncovered in Bulgaria

ByTasos Kokkinidis
July 7, 2024
GREEEK REPORTER
The marble statue had been placed in the sewer and covered with dirt. 
Credit: @thandojo/X

Archaeologists near Bulgaria’s southeastern border with Greece uncovered a nearly 7-foot statue of the ancient Greek god Hermes during a dig this week.

The unexpected find happened during the excavation of an ancient Roman sewer in the abandoned city of Heraclea Sintica, which was founded by King Philip II of Macedon between 356 and 339 BC.Credit: X/Twitter

A powerful earthquake around 425 AD destroyed the majority of the city’s infrastructure, including the civic basilica, and also caused the nearby Strumeshnitsa River to flood the forum. After 457 AD, groups of people returned to live in the ruins, but life in Heraclea gradually dissipated with no indications of permanent habitation by 500 AD.



Credit: X/Twitter

Hermes statue in Bulgaria in “very good condition”


“Its head is preserved. (It’s in a) very good condition,” lead archaeologist Lyudmil Vagalinski said, explaining that the marble statue had been placed in the sewer and covered with dirt, possibly as Christianity was adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire and pagan symbols were banned.

He added that the statue was a Roman copy of an ancient Greek original. “Everything pagan was forbidden, and they have joined the new ideology,” Vagalinski said. He added, “but apparently they took care of their old deities.”

Since 2007 archaeological excavations have been taking place at Heraclea Sintica, led by Vagalinski, of the National Institute with Museum of Archaeology in Sofia. They noticed strange structures above it: tunnels and an arch. Later on, after geosonar examination by Russian specialists, a large studio for producing ceramic masks for an unknown and as yet unrevealed ancient theatre was discovered.

Hermes, the herald of the Greek gods

Hermes in Delos. Credit: Egisto Sani/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In Ancient Greek mythology, Hermes is known as the herald of the gods; he is in charge of protecting travelers, as well as thieves and liars, and he also guides souls to the underworld or Hades. For his great cunning and insight, he is also considered the god of thieves.

Initially, Hermes was a god associated with the underworld. In ancient Greece, he was worshiped as “the god of the way between the lower and upper world.” This position gradually expanded to include roads in general and then borders, travelers, sailors, and commerce.

Hermes was born to Zeus and Maya, daughter of the titan Atlas, and one of the Pleiades. The legend goes that he was born on Mount Cilene in Arcadia in a cave. However, some traditions say that his birth was on Mount Olympus itself.

The main characteristic of Hermes in Greek mythology is the role of herald, or messenger, of the gods. He was a messenger when eloquence was required due to his great ability as a speaker in achieving the desired goal; hence, the tongues of sacrificed animals were typical offerings for him.

Hermes was also the god of prudence and skill in all relationships of social exchange. He is the god of deception, of the uncertain, of what happens from one place to another, and that is why he was also responsible for taking the souls of the dead into the afterlife. Hermes was renowned for doing everything he accomplished, whatever it was, with a certain skill, dexterity, and even grace.

Related: Hermes, the God of Thieves in Ancient Greece


Statue of Greek god uncovered by archaeologists during excavation of ancient Roman sewer in Bulgaria

The marble statue was found well preserved after being placed in the sewer and covered with dirt around 2,000 years ago

 By Brie Stimson Fox News
Published July 6, 2024 

Archaeologists are now working to restore the head

Archaeologists near Bulgaria’s southeastern border with Greece uncovered a nearly 7-foot statue of the ancient Greek god Hermes during a dig this week.

The unexpected find happened during excavation of an ancient Roman sewer in the abandoned city of Heraclea Sintica, which was founded by King Philip II of Macedon between 356 and 339 B.C.E.

The sprawling city was devastated by an earthquake in 388 A.D.



Archaeologists near Bulgaria’s southeastern border with Greece uncovered a nearly seven-foot statue of the ancient Greek god Hermes during a dig this week. (Reuters/Spasiyana Sergieva)

"Its head is preserved. (It's in a) very good condition," lead archaeologist Lyudmil Vagalinski said, explaining that the marble statue had been placed in the sewer and covered with dirt, possibly as Christianity was adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire and pagan symbols were banned.


The statue was found during an excavation in the ancient city of Heraclea Sinitica, near what is now the village of Rupite, Bulgaria. (Reuters/Spasiyana Sergieva)

He added that the statue was a Roman copy of an ancient Greek original.

"Everything pagan was forbidden, and they have joined the new ideology," Vagalinski said.

He added, "but apparently they took care of their old deities."



The statue was well-preserved, archaeologists said. (Reuters/Spasiyana Sergieva)

Heraclea Sintica, now the Bulgarian village of Rupite, was abandoned around 500 A.D. after going into rapid decline following the earthquake.





 

The Only Known Roman Brewery, Discovered in Central Italy

Archaeologists from the University of Macerata have discovered the only brewery from the Roman era found to date on the peninsula, famous for its winemaking tradition, in the region of Macerata, in central Italy.


This is how the University of Macerata’s 30th excavation campaign at Urbs Salvia and Villamagna came to a successful conclusion.

Archaeologists discovered the mentioned brewery and a Roman villa with striking monumental structures in Villamagna. This unexpected finding may have its origins in the region’s ancient Gallic culture since the Celtic tribes were well-known for their beer-drinking before they came to Italy.

In the 4th century B.C., the Senon Gauls, a Celtic population from the French province, had occupied several areas in the Marche region, including the province of Macerata. This population significantly influenced the history and culture of the region. The owners of the villa probably followed in the footsteps of an ancient regional tradition.

A Roman brewery found in central Italy. Photo: University of Macerata
A Roman brewery found in central Italy. Photo: University of Macerata

The excavation at Urbs Salvia, which is located in the municipal territory of Urbisaglia, has uncovered remarkable artifacts in the area of the cryptoporticus and the Roman colony’s forum. The University has announced the finding of Republican-era metal forges and pottery-making kilns, which throws new light on the Romanization of the Piceno.

With these discoveries, the Regional Directorate of Museums of the Marche plans to enhance the public’s experience by expanding the area that is open to the public.

The site of Urbs Salvia, the modern Urbisaglia, colonia romana of the 2nd century BC, is located along the via Salaria Gallica, which connected Ausculum and the via Salaria with the via Flaminia, along the Adriatic coast. First called Pollentia and re-baptized Urbs Salvia at the time of Augustus, the town has been intensively explored since 1995.

It is the only known Roman brewery on the Italian peninsula. Photo: University of Macerata
It is the only known Roman brewery on the Italian peninsula. Photo: University of Macerata

The archaeological excavations brought to light a major complex comprising a Cryptoporticus-temple, dedicated to the Salus Augusta. The nearby Amphitheatre, Theatre, ancient fortifications, and the sub-urban villa of Villa Magna, the focus of recent digs, have been included in the Archaeological Park of Urbs Salvia founded in 1994.

Today, visitors can see well-preserved monuments like the Theater, which can hold 3,000 people, and the Temple, which is devoted to Salus, the goddess of health.

Stile-Arte

Cover Photo: University of Macerata

'We've always been omnivores': Why 'meatfluencers' are wrong about what our ancestors ate
published 20 hours ago

Nutrition influencers claim we should eat meat-heavy diets like our ancestors did. But our ancestors didn't actually eat that way

What did humans' ancestors eat? A wide range of plants and animal proteins, studies find. (Image credit: monticelllo via Getty Images)

Paul Saladino is stripped to the waist, biceps bulging as he works a butcher's saw back and forth across a cow femur. When he finally severs the bone, a crowd of onlookers erupts in cheers. Flashing a smile, he checks to make sure he's being filmed, then scoops a spoonful of marrow from the center of one piece of bone. He then deposits it in the mouth of an eager young woman like a priest giving communion.

Saladino, a medical doctor, is a popular proponent of an animal-based diet that exalts meat and organs and demonizes vegetables. Through videos like this one on TikTok, as well as the podcast he hosts, he preaches the value of eating beef and liver, marrow and testicles to millions of followers on social media. He is the author of the 2020 book "The Carnivore Code" and a companion cookbook. He founded the company Heart and Soil, which sells organ-based supplements, and co-founded Lineage Provisions, which sells protein powder and meat sticks. Saladino contends that the traditional food pyramid, with its broad base of plant foods that narrows into animal foods, is upside down and that the medical establishment's view that high cholesterol causes heart disease is wrong. He says that meat and organs are the key to health, strength and vitality.

Saladino is not alone in his carnivorous pursuits. TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are teeming with influencers peddling meat-centric menus. Like the so-called paleo or caveman diets before them, these diets shun ultraprocessed foods such as potato chips, breakfast cereals, packaged breads, sodas and hot dogs. But they are significantly more restrictive than the paleo diet where plant foods are concerned. Some advocates, Saladino and celebrity adventurer Bear Grylls among them, allow for a limited amount of fruit but discourage vegetables, which they contend are loaded with defensive chemicals that are toxic to humans. Others, such as Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and his podcast host daughter, Mikhaila, champion a diet of beef, salt and water alone. Many, like social media personality Brian Johnson, aka Liver King, recommend consuming animal products — including dairy and eggs— raw.

Meatfluencers, as they are known, often charac­terize their regimens as "ancestral," made up of the foods our ancient predecessors ate. If this is what our ancestors ate, they argue, then this is what the human body is supposed to consume. "If you align your diet and lifestyle with millions of years of human and hominid evolution," Saladino says in another TikTok appearance, "that is how humans thrive."

Studies of the remains of our forebears, as well as observations of living primates and modern-day hunter-gatherers, refute the idea that humans evolved to subsist primarily on animals. Meat did play a significant role in our evolution. Yet that doesn't mean we're meant to eat like lions. Real ancestral human diets are difficult to reconstruct precisely, but they were vastly more varied than the mostly meat diets of carnivores, a finding that has important implications for what people today should eat to be healthy.

Online "meatfluencers" point to our ancestors' diet to support the idea that going carnivore will yield health benefits.
 (Image credit: Olaia Salvador via Getty Images)

To be fair to the promoters of flesh-forward diets, scientists have traditionally paid a lot of attention to meat eating in human evolution, as have journalists who write about our origins (including me). Several factors have contributed to this trend. For one thing, we humans are unique among primates in regularly hunting animals that are as large as or larger than ourselves, and scientists are particularly interested in understanding traits that set us apart from other creatures. For another, stone tools and butchered animal bones are more readily preserved in the archaeological record than fragile plant remains. And then there's the fact that the hunting of animals — particularly large, dangerous mammals such as elephants — is inherently more exciting than the quiet business of gathering berries, nuts and tubers. In any case, it doesn't take a lot of googling to turn up a heap of scientific papers and popular articles touting the idea that hunting and eating meat made us human.

Interest in the role of meat and hunting in human origins has deep roots. Charles Darwin even speculated about its importance in his 1871 treatise, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Ideas about how carnivory shaped human evolution have shifted over the years, but the prevailing wisdom is this: around two million years ago Homo erectus, an early member of our genus, began evolving modern human body proportions, with longer legs, shorter arms, a smaller gut and a larger brain. The earliest stone tools and animal bones bearing cut marks date to before that period. The timing suggests that the invention of sharp-edged stone tools allowed early humans to butcher large animals and have access to a rich new source of calories. This nutritious food required less processing in the gastrointestinal tract, which allowed our energetically expensive gut tissue to shrink. Calorie-dense meat also provided fuel that allowed our energetically expensive brains to expand. A feedback loop took hold: as brains ballooned, our increasingly clever ancestors dreamed up ever more effective tools for procuring energy-rich animal foods, fueling more brain growth in Homo


Humans evolved to eat a variety of foods, not just meat. Versatility has been the secret of our success.
 (Image credit: Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

If that were all we knew about human evolution, it'd be tempting to conclude that we evolved to eat a meat-based diet. But that's only a piece of what anthropologists and archaeologists have learned about food and human origins, and even that chapter of our story has undergone revision over the past 15 years in light of new evidence. Fresh fossil discoveries and novel DNA analyses are revealing what our ancestors ate in unprecedented detail. For a clearer understanding of the evolution of humans and our diet, we need to take a closer look at what happened before and after that two-million-year mark.

Let's start at the beginning. Humans, monkeys and apes make up a subset of primates known as the higher primates, which evolved to eat fruit. The hominin lineage (Homo sapiens and its extinct relatives, including Ardipithecus, Aus­tralopithecus, and others) dates to roughly six million to seven million years ago. Fossils of the earliest known hominins indicate that they walked upright on two legs but still spent a lot of time in trees. They don't appear to have made stone tools and probably subsisted on a diet similar to that of chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest living relatives — which is to say mostly fruits, nuts, seeds, roots, flowers and leaves, along with insects and the occasional small mammal.

For the entire first half of our known history, hominins seem to have maintained this plant-based diet — they left no material trace of meat eating. It's not until nearly three million years after our lineage got its start that there's any evidence that they exploited large animals for food.

The oldest possible evidence of meat eating by hominins comes from Dikika, Ethiopia. There researchers found fragments of bone from goat- and cow-size mammals bearing marks suggestive of butchery that occurred at least 3.39 million years ago. The butcher, in this case, was probably Australopithecus afarensis, the small-brained, small-bodied hominin species to which the famous Lucy fossil belongs—the only hominin species known from this time and place. Although no tools were discovered, based on the pattern of damage to the bones, the researchers concluded that A. afarensis used sharp-edged stones to strip flesh from the bones and struck the bones with blunt stones to access the marrow inside.

The oldest stone tools come from the site of Lomekwi in northwest Kenya. Like the cut-marked bones from Dikika, these 3.3-million-year-old implements significantly predate the origin of our genus, Homo, and seem instead to be the handiwork of the small-brained australopiths. Both occurrences also appear to be isolated in time, a flash in the evolutionary pan, separated by the next oldest evidence for stone tools and butchery by hundreds of thousands of years.


Archaeological evidence suggests that early humans, like modern humans, were most often omnivores.
 (Image credit: franck metois Getty Images)

It's only after two million years ago that hominins started to incorporate large game into their diet more routinely, according to Briana Pobiner, a paleo­anthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, who studies the evolution of meat eating in humans. The site of Kanjera South in south­western Kenya, which records hominin activities from around two million years ago, is one of the earliest sites to preserve evidence of what researchers call persistent carnivory. There early members of Homo transported choice rocks from as many as 10 kilometers away to make their stone tools. They used these tools to extract meat and marrow from a variety of mammals that lived in the surrounding grasslands, from small antelopes to bovids the size of wildebeests. Some of the antelopes appear to have been acquired intact, presumably through hunting. The larger animals may have been scavenged. However they procured the carcasses, the Kanjera hominins butchered animals at this site repeatedly, over generations, the bones spanning a sediment layer three meters thick.

The hominins at Kanjera went back to this place again and again to butcher animals, but their pattern of persistent carnivory was not widespread elsewhere. Nor was it followed by a steady increase in meat eating over time, as would be expected in the feedback-loop scenario. W. Andrew Barr of George Washington University and his colleagues, including Pobiner, analyzed the evidence for hominin meat consumption in the zooarchaeological record of eastern Africa from between 2.6 million and 1.2 million years ago. Although the evidence for meat eating increases shortly after two million years ago with the debut of H. erectus, the first hominin to attain modern body proportions, the study found that this pattern is the result of a sampling bias: researchers have simply collected more archaeological material from this time period than from earlier intervals. Their findings, Barr, Pobiner and their co-authors concluded, did not support the hypothesis that meat made us human.

"When I think about changes in diet over time, I don't think the change was linear," Pobiner says. In many ways, the changes have been more about broadening the diet rather than progressing from vegetarian to meat eater, she explains. "Humans are omnivores," she says. "We've always been omnivores."

Even at Kanjera, with its impressive accumulation of butchered bones, meat wasn't the only food on offer. Analyses of the cutting edges of a sample of stone tools from the site revealed that most of the implements exhibit wear patterns characteristic of tools that have been used in experiments to chop herbaceous plants and their underground storage organs — those tubers, bulbs, roots and rhizomes that plants produce to store carbohydrates. A smaller proportion showed signs of animal-tissue processing.


“Humans are omnivores. We’ve always been omnivores.”Briana Pobiner

As much as the evolution of meat eating is a focus of her work, Pobiner says, "that doesn't mean that I think that it was ever the most significant component of early human diets."

It's possible that early humans were target­­ing fat rather than meat when they first started butchering animals. Jessica Thompson of Yale University and her colleagues argue that before hominins invented stone tools suitable for hunting large animals, they may have used simpler implements to scavenge abandoned carcasses for their nutritious marrow and brains. Lean meat such as that from wild animals is energetically expensive to metabolize, and in the absence of fat in the diet, it can cause protein poisoning and other ills. Smashing scavenged bones to get to the marrow could have produced the extra nutrients needed to fuel brain growth before our ancestors developed the more complex technology needed for hunting.

The fat and meat of terrestrial mammals weren't the only pos­sible source of extra calories for hungry hominins. Fish, shellfish, and other aquatic animals and plants sustained our forebears who lived near rivers, lakes and oceans. As early as 1.95 million years ago, Homo was exploiting fish and turtles, among other aquatic foods, in Kenya's Turkana Basin.

Our ancestors may have also wrung more calories from plant and animal foods by cooking them. Richard Wrangham of Harvard University has proposed that cooking, which makes food easier to chew and digest, may have provided Homo with the extra fuel needed to power a bigger brain. In 2022 researchers announced that they had found remains of fish that may have been cooked with controlled heat 780,000 years ago at the site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in Israel.

There is another place where scientists can look for clues to what early humans ate: their teeth. When researchers analyzed the tartar preserved in the stained teeth of two Australopithecus sediba individuals from South Africa, they found microscopic bits of silica from plants these hominins ate nearly two million years ago, including bark, leaves, sedges and grasses.


Ancient teeth can provide clues into what early humans and hominins ate, and these too point to an omnivorous diet.
 (Image credit: Drbouz via Getty Images)

Even the Neandertals, our burly cousins who ruled Eurasia for hundreds of thousands of years and are known for having been skilled big-game hunters, consumed plants. Amanda Henry of Leiden University in the Netherlands and her colleagues found traces of legumes, dates and wild barley in the tartar on their fossilized teeth. And researchers led by Karen Hardy of the University of Glasgow discovered roasted starch granules in Neandertal teeth, in­dicating that they ate cooked vegetables. Some Neandertals might have even forgone animal flesh entirely: in a study co-led by Laura Weyrich of Pennsylvania State University, analyses of DNA preserved in the tartar of Neandertals found in El Sidrón cave in Spain turned up traces of pine nuts, moss and mushrooms — and no meat whatsoever.

Researchers have developed other techniques for studying what hominins put in their mouths and chewed, such as measuring the chemical isotopes in teeth, but these methods have important limitations: they can't determine the proportion of animal versus plant foods in the diet. To that end, another tartar study offers an inkling. James Fellows Yates of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and his colleagues analyzed DNA from bacteria preserved in Neandertal tartar and compared it with bacterial DNA from the teeth of modern chimps, gorillas, howler monkeys and modern humans. The team found that the Neandertals and modern humans in their sample had a group of Streptococcus bacteria in their mouths that the nonhuman primates didn't have. These strep bacteria eat sugars from starchy foods, such as roots, seeds and tubers. Their presence in the mouths of the Neandertals and modern humans — but not the nonhuman primates, which eat mostly nonstarchy plant parts — indicates that Homo had adapted to eating an abundance of starchy plant foods by the time Neandertals and modern humans split from their last common ancestor around 600,000 years ago. This timing hints that a high-carb diet helped to power brain expansion in Homo.

Other features of teeth suggest additional leads in the quest to understand what our ancestors ate. If you look at hominin tooth morphology over time, says paleoanthropologist and evolutionary biologist Peter Ungar of the University of Arkansas, you see that australopiths had big, flat teeth with thick enamel — traits that indicate they were specialized for crushing hard foods such as seeds. Homo, for its part, evolved smaller teeth with crests that were better suited to eating tough foods, including meat. Yet we obviously lack the long, sharp canine teeth that carnivores have for stabbing and tearing at prey and the sharp-edged carnassial teeth for shearing flesh.

"We're not pure carnivores, we never were," Ungar says. "Our teeth are not designed for meat eating." That doesn't mean we can't survive on animal tissue, he notes — cutting and cooking both make meat easier for us to consume — but "anybody who's chewed on beef jerky long enough knows that our teeth really aren't designed for that. Or, for that matter, raw steak."

The microscopic pits and scratches that foods leave on the teeth reinforce this message. Whereas Aus­tralopithecus microwear patterns reflect a narrow range of food types, early Homo shows a somewhat wider range. Later members of our genus show microwear texture patterns that indicate they ate even more kinds of foods. Although these lines of evidence are limited, Ungar says, they suggest Homo became a more versatile eater, capable of consuming a wider variety of foods than its predecessors. This versatility would have served our ancestors well as they spread into new environments with a greater diversity of food types on offer.


Meat advocates point to the Tanzanian Hadza as an example of human carnivores, but anthropologists disagree.
 (Image credit: chuvipro via Getty Images)

Proponents of animal-based diets are fond of pointing to the Hadza, a group of foragers in northern Tanzania, to make their case for going hard on meat. Saladino and Liver King name-check them regularly in their social media videos. "I can tell you very clearly that the Hadza don't give a shit about vegetables. They don't really eat vegetables," says Saladino, who once visited the Hadza on an excursion set up for tourists.

Anthropologists who have lived with the Hadza and studied their diet for years would disagree. Herman Pontzer of Duke University notes that for decades researchers have observed that plant foods make up at least 50% of the Hadza diet. The Hadza are not unique in this regard. Hunter-gatherers around the world get roughly half their calories from plant foods and half from animal foods on average. But that average obscures the real value of the hunting-and-gathering strategy, which is that it allows people to subsist on a wide variety of diets depending on what's available in their environment at a given time of year. Long-term studies of the Hadza show that some months they may get most of their calories from honey; other months they may eat mostly plant foods, including root vegetables. There are times they hardly eat any meat at all.

What made humans so triumphant wasn't that we swapped out plants for animals but that we added hunting to our repertoire. Hunting and gathering re­liably produces more calories a day than any other primate strategy, Pontzer says. The reason it works is that it's a mixed portfolio. "You have some people going after high-value, hard-to-get animals with a lot of pro­tein and fat, which is great," he says. "And you have peo­ple who are going after more 
dependable plant foods. It's the balance of those things that makes it so successful."

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Hunting and gathering produces so many calories, in fact, that people can afford to share them with other group members, including children, whose brains take longer to develop than in other species and who need more time to learn how to fend for themselves. A strict plant eater can't do that, because although the number of calories one can get every day eating plants is very dependable, it might not be high enough to produce a surfeit of calories. A strict meat eater, on the other hand, will have long periods of famine between feasts that do not, on average, generate extra calories. But when we put those two things together, Pontzer observes, we generate a surplus. And that surplus, he surmises, is the variable that's made energetically expensive human things such as large brains and extended childhood possible.

What the fossil, archaeological and ethnographic evidence indicates, then, is that there is no one diet that nature prescribed for us. What our ancestors ate varied dramatically over time and space, driven in no small part by what was available to them as seasons changed, climate shifted, and populations spread into new ecosystems. Forged in that crucible of uncertainty, we evolved the ability to survive and thrive on an impressive diversity of foods. Hunter-gatherers around the world eat diets with wildly different proportions of plant and animal foods, and all of them appear to be healthy, protected from heart disease, diabetes, and other maladies that are common in industrial populations.

So what is a person looking to eat healthily supposed to do? "I think what it says is you should feel liberated to try a bunch of different diets and find one that works for you," Pontzer says. But "when somebody tells you that there's only one way to eat, they are wrong, and you can stop ­listening."

This article was first published at Scientific American. © ScientificAmerican.com