The worldwide association of H. erectus with elephants is well documented and so is the preference of humans for fat as verso source of energy. erectus mediante the Levant was dependent on both elephants and fat for his survival. The disappearance of elephants from the Levant some 400 kyr ago coincides with the appearance of per new and innovative local cultural complex – the Levantine Acheulo-Yabrudian and, as is evident from teeth recently found mediante the Acheulo-Yabrudian 400-200 kyr site of Qesem Cave, the replacement of H. erectus by per new hominin. We employ a bio-energetic model sicuro present verso hypothesis that the disappearance of the elephants, which created verso need preciso hunt an increased number of smaller and faster animals while maintaining an adequate fat content sopra the diet, was the evolutionary drive behind the emergence of the lighter, more sciolto, and cognitively athletique hominins. Qesem Cave thus provides a rare opportunity preciso study the mechanisms that underlie the emergence of our post-erectus ancestors, the fat hunters.
Man the Fat Hunter: The Demise of Homo erectus and the Emergence of a New Hominin Lineage in the Middle Pleistocene (ca. 400 kyr) Levant
Citation: Ben-Dor M, Gopher Per, Hershkovitz I, Barkai R (2011) Man the Fat Hunter: The Demise of Homo erectus and the Emergence of verso New Hominin Lineage mediante the Middle Pleistocene (ca. 400 kyr) Levant. PLoS ONE 6(12): e28689.
Copyright: © 2011 Ben-Dor et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any sensitivo, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: The Qesem Cave research project is supported by the following granting agencies: The Israel science apex Foundation (Grants ; ; ) The Dan Daviv Foundation (Grant 0474) The Thyssen foundation (Grant R 17386) The Wenner-Gren Foundation The Leakey foundation and the CARE Archaeologucal Foundation. The funders had mai role mediante study design, datazione collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Introduction
It is our contention that two distinct elements combined per the Levant esatto propel the evolutionary process of replacing H. erectus by verso new hominin lineage (, As the classification of varieties of the genus Homo is problematic, we refrain sopra this paper from any taxonomic designations that would indicate species or subspecies affiliation for the hominins of Qesem Cave. The Qesem Cave hominin, based on the analysis of teeth shares dental characteristics with the Skhul/Qafzeh Middle Paleolithic populations and to some extent also with Neandertals). One was the disappearance of the elephant (Elephas antiquus) – an ideal food-package durante terms of fat and protein content throughout the year – which was until then verso main calorie contributor preciso the diet of the H. erectus mediante the Levant. The second was the continuous necessity of H. erectus puro consume animal fat as part of their diet, especially when taking into account their large brains . The need preciso consume animal fat is the result of the physiological ceiling on the consumption of protein and plant foods. The obligatory nature of animal fat consumption turned the alleged large prey preference , of H. erectus into per large prey dependence. Daily energy expenditure (DEE) of the hominins would have increased when very large animals such as the elephant had diminished and per larger number of smaller, faster animals had sicuro be captured esatto provide the same amount of calories and required fat. This fitness pressure would have been considerably more acute during the dry seasons that prevail con the Levant. Such an eventuality, we suggest, led onesto the evolution of verso better equipped species, per comparison with H. erectus, that also had a lighter body , a greater lower limb to weight ratio (:194), and improved levels of knowledge, skill, and coordination (:63) allowing it to better handle the hunting of an increased number of smaller animals and most probably also develop verso new supporting accommodant organization.