Unlike other primates, early humans - and our cousins - can't digest plant fibre. Our evolutionary predecessors were short on rich, easy meals - except one.
Docile, lumbering elephants were so perfect for Homo erectus, that they provided up to 60 per cent of their diet - until constant hunting wiped out elephants in the Middle East.
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| Staple diet: Up to 60 per cent of the meat consumed by our Homo erectus ancestors was elephant |
The disappearance of elephants helped kill off Homo erectus, and paved the way for Homo sapiens - modern humans - to take over.
Findings from the University of Tel Aviv reveal how important the huge animals were to the diet of early humans - researchers that elephants provided 60 per cent of the meat eaten by Homo erectus.
Elephants also had the perfect fat-to-protein ratio for early humans and provided a year-round source of food.
Study author Miki Ben-Dor, a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University said: 'Unlike other primates, humans' ability to extract energy from plant fibre and convert protein to energy is limited.'
'So in the absence of fire for cooking, the Homo erectus diet could only consist of a finite amount of plant and protein and would have needed to be supplemented by animal fat.'
'For this reason, elephants were the ultimate prize in hunting - slower than other sources of prey and large enough to feed groups, the giant animals had an ideal fat-to-protein ratio that remained constant regardless of the season.'
And the docile animals' size and gentle nature proved to be their downfall, with Israeli scientists explaining the appeal of elephants as 'a huge package of food that is easy to hunt' that could also feed large groups.
Scientists at Tel Aviv University studied archaeological digs to try and work out just how popular elephant meat was among Homo erectus.
Having studied various animal bones, they discovered that the elephants' remains made up a tiny fraction, just two to three per cent, of the total.
However, the team called these low numbers 'misleading' and insist that elephants actually provided 'as much as 60 per cent of animal-sourced calories.'
The disappearance of elephants from the Middle East around 400,000 years ago helped kill off Homo erectus, with the early human replaced by Homo sapiens - who were better equipped to hunt smaller, faster prey.
Results of the study, published in journal PLoS ONE, even claim the disappearance of elephants was what brought modern humans to the Middle East. They point to Africa, where modern Homo sapiens emerged 200,000 years later - around the same time that elephants disappeared from the areas where they lived.
© Daily Mail, London |
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