Earliest Porotic Hyperostosis on a 1.5-Million-Year-Old Hominin, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

Meat-eating was an important factor affecting early hominin brain expansion, social organization and geographic movement. Stone tool butchery marks on ungulate fossils in several African archaeological assemblages demonstrate a significant level of carnivory by Pleistocene hominins, but the discover...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Domínguez Rodrigo, Manuel, Pickering, T.R., Díez Martín, Fernando, Mabulla, Audax, Musiba, C., Trancho Gayo, Gonzalo, Baquedano, Enrique, Bunn, Henry T., Barboni, D., Uribelarrea Del Val, David, Santonja, Manuel, Ashley, G.M., Martínez-Ávila, María del Sol, Barba, Rebeca, Agness, Gidna, Yravedra Sainz De Los Terreros, José, Arriaza, María del Carmen
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2012
País:España
Institución:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/43368
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/43368
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:599.892.3
Paleontología
2416 Paleontología
Descripción
Sumario:Meat-eating was an important factor affecting early hominin brain expansion, social organization and geographic movement. Stone tool butchery marks on ungulate fossils in several African archaeological assemblages demonstrate a significant level of carnivory by Pleistocene hominins, but the discovery at Olduvai Gorge of a child's pathological cranial fragments indicates that some hominins probably experienced scarcity of animal foods during various stages of their life histories. The child's parietal fragments, excavated from 1.5-million-year-old sediments, show porotic hyperostosis, a pathology associated with anemia. Nutritional deficiencies, including anemia, are most common at weaning, when children lose passive immunity received through their mothers' milk. Our results suggest, alternatively, that (1) the developmentally disruptive potential of weaning reached far beyond sedentary Holocene food-producing societies and into the early Pleistocene, or that (2) a hominin mother's meat-deficient diet negatively altered the nutritional content of her breast milk to the extent that her nursing child ultimately died from malnourishment. Either way, this discovery highlights that by at least 1.5 million years ago early human physiology was already adapted to a diet that included the regular consumption of meat.

Similares en LA Referencia