Homo erectus was first master chef: study

Homo erectus was probably the first ancestor of modern humans to have mastered the art of cooking, according to a new US study.

The ability to cook and process food allowed Homo erectus, the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens to make huge evolutionary leaps that differentiated them from chimpanzees and other primates, said researchers at Harvard University.

Based on an analysis of DNA, molar size and body mass among non-human primates, modern humans, and 14 extinct hominids, the findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, support previous studies that suggested Homo erectus, which evolved around 1.9 million years ago, may have known how to cook.

Preparing food with tools and fire meant more calories could be consumed and less time needed to be spent foraging and eating. Molar sizes shrunk while body mass increased.

Among primates, animals with larger body sizes grew bigger molars and spent more time eating - great apes of similar size to humans spend about 48 per cent of the day consuming calories.

"Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis spent 6.1 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively, of their active day feeding," said the Harvard study, adding that modern humans spend 4.7 per cent of their days eating.

"Human feeding time and molar size are truly exceptional compared with other primates, and their oddity began around the start of the Pleistocene," said the study, referring to the epoch that began about 2.5 million years ago and ended 11,700 years ago.

Cooking may actually have originated with other species that also lived in Africa and came just before homo erectus, including Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis, the study said.

In any case, the tools and behaviours necessary to support a cooking culture "related to feeding and now necessary for long-term survival of modern humans evolved by the time of Homo erectus and before our lineage left Africa."

Homo Erectus travelled the high seas

Early manlike creatures may have been smarter than we think. Recent archaeological finds from the Mediterranean show that human ancestors traveled the high seas.

A team of researchers that included an N.C. State University geologist found evidence that our ancestors were crossing open water at least 130,000 years ago. That's more than 100,000 years earlier than scientists had previously thought.

Their evidence is based on stone tools from the island of Crete. Because Crete has been an island for eons, any prehistoric people who left tools behind would have had to cross open water to get there.

The tools the team found are so old that they predate the human species, said Thomas Strasser, an archaeologist from Providence College who led the team. Instead of being made by our species, Homo sapiens, the tools were made by our ancestors, Homo erectus.

The tools are very different from any others found on Crete, Strasser said. They're most similar to early Stone Age tools from Africa that are about 700,000 years old, he said.

Initially the team didn't have any way to date the tools.

That's where NCSU geologist Karl Wegmann came in.

At the time, Wegmann didn't know much about archaeology, but he did know quite a bit about Crete's geology. He had been figuring out the ages of Crete's rock formations to study earthquakes.

A few of the stone tools the team had discovered were embedded in those same rock formations. Those rocks were formed from ancient beach sands, Wegmann said.

Today, the rocks and the tools embedded in them are hundreds of feet above the shore.

The same process that drives the region's strong earthquakes - colliding continents - is pushing Crete upward out of the sea at a rate of less than 1/20 of an inch every year.

The island's slow rise has preserved beaches from many eras as terraces along the coast.

The lower terraces are the easiest to date. Scientists can measure the age of seashells embedded in the rock using radioactive carbon dating.

This method estimates the age of those terraces at about 45,000 and 50,000 years old.

"We know that (the tools) are tens of meters above the terrace we dated at 50,000 years old, so we know right off the bat that they have to be at least that old," Wegmann said.

But 50,000 years ago is carbon dating's limit. Anything older has to be dated using another method.

Dating by terraces

Crete's rise from the sea gives a fairly simple way of doing that. Once they know the age of lower terraces, geologists can calculate the age of higher terraces just by measuring the difference in the beaches' elevation.

If geologists know how much farther the older terrace traveled upward from the newer, and they know how fast it was going, they can figure out how long it took to get there.

Or, in other words, its age, in this case a record-smashing 130,000 years old.

"The thing to me that really makes this unique and exciting is ... these other sister species maybe weren't entirely stupid like we portray them," Wegmann said. "They were capable of really complex things."

Author: Helen Chappell | Source: The Charlotte Observer [August 16, 2011]
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Why is there only one human species?

Not so very long ago, we shared this planet with several other species of human, all of them clever, resourceful and excellent hunters, so why did only Homo sapiens survive?

Huge debates rage about human origins, but the broad consensus among scientists is that all the different species of human that have ever existed were descended from ape-like creatures that walked upright in Africa more than six million years ago.

Read on...