Early hominid hunting and scavenging: the role of meat as an energy source

Perspectives have shifted recently from the traditional view that early hominids were hunters to one which now sees them as opportunistic scavengers. However, both views share the common underlying nutritional assumption that meat inevitably provides a “high quality” food that will be incorporated into human diet more or less to the extent that animals are avaible and accessible. This paper argues that meat may actually have been a relatively marginal source of sustenance for early hominids, because physiological limits to total protein intake (plant and animal), scarcity of fat in most African ungulates, comparatively high levels of protein in many plant foods, and the inability of early hominids to extract lipids from the cancellous tissue of bones, acted together to maintain their total meat intakes at modest levels, particularly during seasonal or inter-annual periods of resource stress.