Diet of the earliest modern humans in East Asia
Reconstructing diet can offer an improved understanding toward the origin and evolution of modern humans. However, the diet of early modern humans in East Asia is poorly understood. Starch analysis of dental calculus is harmless to precious fossil hominins and provides the most direct evidence of pl...
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Published in | Frontiers in plant science Vol. 13; p. 989308 |
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Main Authors | , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Frontiers Media S.A
31.08.2022
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Reconstructing diet can offer an improved understanding toward the origin and evolution of modern humans. However, the diet of early modern humans in East Asia is poorly understood. Starch analysis of dental calculus is harmless to precious fossil hominins and provides the most direct evidence of plant food sources in early modern human dietary records. In this paper, we examined the starch grains in dental calculus from Fuyan Cave hominins in Daoxian (South China), which were the earliest modern humans in East Asia. Our results reveal the earliest direct evidence of a hominin diet made of acorns, roots, tubers, grass seeds, and other yet-unidentified plants in marine isotope stage 5 between 120 and 80 ka. Our study also provides the earliest evidence that acorns may have played an important role in subsistence strategies. There may have been a long-lasting tradition of using these plants during the Late Pleistocene in China. Plant foods would have been a plentiful source of carbohydrates that greatly increased energy availability to human tissues with high glucose demands. Our study provides the earliest direct consumption of carbohydrates-rich plant resources from modern humans in China for the first time. In addition, it also helps elucidate the evolutionary advantages of early modern humans in the late Middle and early Upper Pleistocene. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Reviewed by: Yaowu Hu, Fudan University, China; Amanda G. Henry, Leiden University, Netherlands This article was submitted to Plant Systematics and Evolution, a section of the journal Frontiers in Plant Science Edited by: Jianping Zhang, Key Laboratory of Cenozoic Geology and Environment, Institute of Geology and Geophysics (CAS), China |
ISSN: | 1664-462X 1664-462X |
DOI: | 10.3389/fpls.2022.989308 |