Evolution de l’alimentation humaine. Généralités.

Effects of Evolution, Ecology, and Economy on Human Diet: Insights from
Hunter-Gatherers and Other Small-Scale Societies [PDF]
Pontzer & Wood
Annual Review of Nutrition, 2021

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The energetics of uniquely human subsistence strategies [Abstract]
Kraft et al.
Science, 2021

humans afford expanded energy budgets primarily by increasing rates of energy acquisition, and not through energy-saving adaptations (such as economical bipedalism or sophisticated tool use) that decrease overall costs. Relative to other great apes, human subsistence strategies are characterized by high-intensity, high-cost extractive activities and expanded day ranges that provide more calories in less time. These results suggest that energy gained from improvements in efficiency throughout human evolution were primarily channeled toward further increasing foraging intensity rather than reducing the energetic costs of subsistence.

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The evolution and changing ecology of the African hominid oral microbiome [PDF] [Texte]
Yates et al. (Warinner)
PNAS, 2021

We find major taxonomic and functional differences between the oral microbiomes of Homo and chimpanzees but a high degree of similarity between Neanderthals and modern humans, including an apparent Homo-specific acquisition of starch digestion capability in oral streptococci, suggesting microbial coadaptation with host diet.

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The evolution of the human trophic level during the Pleistocene [Texte]
Ben-Dor et al.
American Journal of Biological Anthropology, 2021

The evidence shows that the trophic level of the Homo lineage that most probably led to modern humans evolved from a low base to a high, carnivorous position during the Pleistocene, beginning with Homo habilis and peaking in Homo erectus. A reversal of that trend appears in the Upper Paleolithic, strengthening in the Mesolithic/Epipaleolithic and Neolithic, and culminating with the advent of agriculture. We conclude that it is possible to reach a credible reconstruction of the HTL without relying on a simple analogy with recent hunter-gatherers’ diets.

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Supersize does matter: the importance of large prey in palaeolithic subsistence and a method for measuring its significance in zooarchaeological assemblages [PDF]
Ben-Dor & Barkai
In Human-elephant interactions, from past to present, Tübingen university press, 2021.

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The importance of large prey animals during the Pleistocene and the implications of their extinction on the use of dietary ethnographic analogies [Abstract]
Ben-Dor & Barkai
Journal of anthropological archaeology, 2020

Many hypotheses humans’ evolution and behavior are based on estimates of their trophic level. We introduce an additional factor that should be considered – the availability of large prey animals.
Large prey animals were essential to humans as an economical source of fat and calories. The decline of megaherbivores during the Pleistocene resulted in technological adaptations to the acquisition of smaller prey. The Recent ethnographic dietary record may not be analogous to most of the Pleistocene and may represent adaptations to the end of Pleistocene and Holocene’s prey size decline.

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Origins of the Human Predatory Pattern. The Transition to Large-Animal Exploitation by Early Hominins [PDF]
Thompson et al.
Current anthropology, 2019

We propose that the regular exploitation of large-animal resources—the“human predatory pattern”—began with an emphasis on percussion-based scavenging of inside-bone nutrients, independent of the emergence of flaked stone tool use.

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New evidence of broader diets for archaic Homo populations in the northwestern Mediterranean [Texte]
Morin et al.
Science advances, 2019

The current consensus in Western Europe is that ungulates formed the bulk of the human diet during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic, while small fast prey taxa were virtually ignored. Here, we present a multisite taphonomic study of leporid assemblages from Southern France that supports frequent exploitation of small fast game during marine isotope stages 11 to 3.

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Nutrition and its role in human evolution [Texte]
James et al.
Journal of internal medicine, 2019

More recently, an ability to retain lactase persistence into adulthood has evolved rapidly under the environmental stimulus of pastoralism with the ability to husband lactating ruminants. Increased amylase copy numbers seem to relate to the availability of starchy foods, whereas the capacity to desaturase and elongate monounsaturated fatty acids in different societies seems to be influenced by whether there is a lack of supply of readily available dietary sources of long‐chain polyunsaturated fatty acids. The process of human evolution includes genetic drift and adaptation to local environments, in part through changes in mitochondrial and nuclear DNA. These genetic changes may underlie susceptibilities to some modern human pathologies including folate‐responsive neural tube defects, diabetes, other age‐related pathologies and mental health disorders.

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The evolutionary roles of nutrition selection and dietary quality in the human brain size and encephalization [Texte]
Burini & Leonard
Nutrire, 2018

It appears that major expansion of brain size in the human lineage is the product of synergistically interacting dietary/nutritional and social forces. Although dietary change was not being the sole force responsible for the evolution of large brain size, the exploitation of high-quality foods likely fueled the energetic costs of larger brains and necessitated more complex behaviors that would have selected for greater brain size.

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The cooperative economy of food: Implications for human life history and physiology [PDF]
Karen L. Kramer
Physiology and behavior, 2018

The human diet can be characterized by several common elements. These include diverse, high quality foods, technological complexity to acquire and process food, and the establishment of home bases for storage, processing and consumption. Together these aspects of the human diet challenge any one individual to independently meet all of his or her daily caloric needs. Humans solve this challenge through food sharing, labor exchange and the division of labor. The cooperative nature of the human diet is associated with many downstream effects on our life history and physiology. This paper overviews the constellation of traits that likely led to a cooperative economy of food, and draws on ethnographic examples to illustrate its effects on human life history and physiology.

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A brief history of meat in the human diet and current health implications
Neil J. Mann
Meat science, 2018

Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA) : An Ancient Nutrient for the Modern Human Brain [PDF]
Joanne Bradbury.
Nutrients, 2015

Modern humans have evolved with a staple source of preformed docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in the diet. An important turning point in human evolution was the discovery of high quality, easily digested nutrients from coastal sea food and inland fresh watersources. Multi-generational exploitation of seafood by shore-based dwellers coincided with the rapid expansion of grey matter in the cerebral cortex, which characterizes the modern human brain. The DHA molecule has unique structural properties that appear to provide optimal conditions for a wide range of cell membrane functions

When Did Humans Learn to Boil? [Texte]
John D. Speth
Paleoanthropology, 2015

The control of fire and the beginning of cooking were important developments in the evolution of human food-ways. The cooking techniques available to our ancestors for much of the Pleistocene would have been limited to simple heating and roasting. The next significant change in culinary technology came much later, when humans learned to wet-cook (i.e., “boil,” sensu lato), a suite of techniques that greatly increased the digestibility and nu-tritional worth of foods. Most archaeologists assume that boiling in perishable containers cannot pre-date the appearance of fire-cracked rock (FCR), thus placing its origin within the Upper Paleolithic (UP) and linking it to a long list of innovations thought to have been introduced by behaviorally modern humans. This paper has two principal goals. The first is to alert archaeologists and others to the fact that one can easily and effectively boil in perishable containers made of bark, hide, leaves, even paper and plastic, placed directly on the fire and without using heated stones. Thus, wet-cooking very likely pre-dates the advent of stone-boiling, the latter probably rep-resenting the intensification of an already existing technology.

The Importance of Dietary Carbohydrate in Human Evolution [PDF]
Hardy et al.
Quarterly review of biology, 2015

We provide evidence that cooked starch, a source of preformed glucose, greatly increased energy availability to human tissues with high glucose demands, such as the brain, red blood cells, and the developing fetus. We also highlight the auxiliary role copy number variation in the salivary amylase genes may have played in increasing the importance of starch in human evolution following the origins of cooking. Salivary amylases are largely ineffective on raw crystalline starch, but cooking substantially increases both their energy-yielding potential and glycemia. Although uncertainties remain regarding the antiquity of cooking and the origins of salivary amylase gene copy number variation, the hypothesis we present makes a testable prediction that these events are correlated.

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Since early weaning yields shorter interbirth intervals and higher rates of reproduction, with profound effects on population dynamics, our findings highlight the emergence of carnivory as a process fundamentally determining human evolution.

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(citée et déformée par Greger)

The authors also provide evidence that the fossil record shows that some of the earliest hominins were regularly consuming fish.

Meat in the human diet: An anthropological perspective [Texte]
Neil Mann
Journal of dieticians Australia, 2007

Anthropological evidence from cranio‐dental features and fossil stable isotope analysis indicates a growing reliance on meat consumption during human evolution. Study of hunter‐gatherer societies in recent times shows an extreme reliance on hunted and fished animal foods for survival.
Optimal foraging theory shows that wild plant foods in general give an inadequate energy return for survival, whereas the top‐ranking food items for energy return are large hunted animals.
Numerous evolutionary adaptations in humans indicate high reliance on meat consumption, including poor taurine production, lack of ability to chain elongate plant fatty acids and the co‐evolution of parasites related to dietary meat.

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Nutritional Ecology and Diachronic Trends in Paleolithic Diet and Health [PDF]
Hockett & Haws
Evolutionnary anthropology, 2003

Modern nutritional studies have found that diverse diets are linked to lower infantmortality rates and longer life expectancies in humans. This is primarily becausehumans require more than fifty essential nutrients for growth and cell maintenanceand repair; most of these essential nutrients must come from outside food sourcesrather than being manufactured by the body itself; and a diversity of food types isrequired to consume the full suite of essential nutrients necessary for optimalhuman health. These principles and their related affects on human adaptations anddemography are the hallmarks of a theoretical paradigm defined as nutritionalecology. This essay applies concepts derived from nutritional ecology to the studyof human evolution. Principles of nutritional ecology are applied to the study of theMiddle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in order to broadly illustrate the interpretiveramifications of this approach. At any stage in human evolution, those hominidpopulations that chose to diversify their subsistence base may have had a selec-tive advantage over competitors who restricted their diet principally to one foodtype, such as terrestrial mammals.

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Carnivory, Coevolution, and the Geographic Spread of the Genus Homo [PDF]
Mary C. Stiner
Journal of archaeological research, 2002

Three zooarchaeological trends reflect important shifts in hominid adaptations over this great time span: (1) increasing predation on large, hoofed animals that culminated in prime-adult–biased hunting, a predator–prey relationship that distinguishes humans from all other large predators and is a product of coevolution with them; (2) greater diet breadth and range of foraging substrates exploited in response to increasing human population densities, as revealed by small-game use; and (3) increased efficiency in food capture, processing, and energy retention through technology, and the eventual expansion of technology into social (symbolic) realms of behavior. Niche boundary shifts, examined here in eight dimensions, tend to cluster at 500 thousand years ago (KYA), at 250 KYA, and several in rapid succession between 50 and 10 KYA.

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Dietary lean red meat and human evolution [Abstract]
Neil Mann
European Journal of Nutrition, 2000

A study of human and pre-human diet history shows that for a period of at least 2 million years the human ancestral line had been consuming increasing quantities of meat. During that time, evolutionary selection was in action, adapting our genetic make up and hence our physiological features to a diet high in lean meat. This meat was wild game meat, low in total and saturated fat and relatively rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids

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Diet and the evolution of the earliest human ancestors [PDF]
Teaford & Ungar
PNAS, 2000

This conclusion runs counter to (i) recent isotope work
suggesting that the australopithecines did in fact consume signifi-
cant amounts of meat (7) and (ii) nutritional work suggesting that
meat may have provided critical nutrients for both young and old
hominids (77–79). There would seem to be three different ways to
reconcile these perspectives. First, the present study has reviewed
only craniodental features related to diet. If the australopithecines
used other means for ingesting and processing meat (e.g., tools),
they might have been able to process meat more efficiently than the
craniodental evidence suggests (80, 81). Second, the heavy C3
signature found in A. africanus (7) may reflect the consumption of
underground storage organs of C3 plants rather than meat (82).
Third, the functional analyses of the teeth assume that all meat has
the same degree of toughness. This may not be the case. Studies of
the physical properties of food have thus far focused on plant
remains, with only brief mention of the toughness of materials like
skin (40, 46). Variations in toughness between animal tissues might
well be due to variations in the arrangement and density of collagen
matrix. Furthermore, the physical effects of decomposition might
render meat less tough and more readily processed by hominids. If
this is so, it could be further evidence in support of scavenging as
part of the early hominid way of life.

Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Nutrition: The Influence of Brain and Body Size on Diet and Metabolism [Abstract]
Leonard & Robertson
American journal of human biology, 1994

Human dietary patterns and metabolic requirements are com- pared to those of nonhuman primate species in order to gain insights into the evolution of our nutritional needs. In general, primate diet quality (i.e., caloric and nutrient density) is inversely related to body size and total resting metabolic requirements (RMR). Humans, however, consume a diet of much higher quality than is expected for our size and metabolic needs. This energy-rich diet appears to reflect an adaptation to the high metabolic cost of our large brain. Among primates, the relative proportion of resting metabolic energy used for brain metabolism is positively correlated with relative diet quality. Humans represent the positive extreme, having both a very high quality diet and a large brain that accounts for 20-2576 of resting metabolism. Evidence from the hominid fossil record implies that major changes in diet and relative brain metabolism occurred with the emergence of the genus Homo.