The diets of early hominins

The story of becoming human is, to a significant extent, the story of how our ancestors adapted to a changing world. Dietary transitions, linked to environmental change, have been especially important in this regard. Bipedal locomotion, tool use, and increased brain size have been offered as causes and/or consequences of hominin dietary change. Any such claims, however, are limited by the difficulty of inferring dietary behavior at millions of years’ remove. In this talk, we examine the methods used to explore hominin dietary ecology, their strengths and limitations, and the ways they inform current questions in early hominin dietary research. The enigmatic taxon Paranthropus boisei, better known publicly as “Nutcracker Man,” will receive special attention, as it presents an ideal case study of the problems and prospects of studying early hominin diet, and of how diet may have shaped the rise and fall of hominin species.