RT Journal Article
T1 Earliest Porotic Hyperostosis on a 1.5-Million-Year-Old Hominin, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania
A1 Domínguez Rodrigo, Manuel
A1 Pickering, T.R.
A1 Díez Martín, Fernando
A1 Mabulla, Audax
A1 Musiba, C.
A1 Trancho Gayo, Gonzalo
A1 Baquedano, Enrique
A1 Bunn, Henry T.
A1 Barboni, D.
A1 Uribelarrea Del Val, David
A1 Santonja, Manuel
A1 Ashley, G.M.
A1 Martínez-Ávila, María del Sol
A1 Barba, Rebeca
A1 Agness, Gidna
A1 Yravedra Sainz De Los Terreros, José
A1 Arriaza, María del Carmen
AB 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.
PB Public Library Science
SN 1932-6203
YR 2012
FD 2012-10
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/43368
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/43368
LA eng
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 18 abr 2025