Human Diet Evolution: Meat, Fire, and Tapeworms

Abstract

The human diet today is very different than the diets of other primates, implying major changes following the split of the human and chimpanzee/bonobo lineages about 6 million years ago. For example, at various timepoints our ancestors began consistently eating meat, cooking food with fire, and consuming products from domesticated plants and animals. Such dietary shifts are important to study because they were likely associated with important cultural and biological changes like tool use and increased brain size. However, the timing of some of these dietary shifts is extremely difficult to study with only archeological and fossil data, leading to uncertainty. In this article, we discuss how studies of human tapeworm parasites can help. Tapeworms could only have been acquired once meat was being consistently consumed and then may have later adapted to heat stress from human cooking.