Nutrition and Health in Human Evolution-Past to Present

Abstract

Anyone who wants to understand the biological nature of humans and their special characteristics must look far back into evolutionary history. Today's way of life is drastically different from that of our ancestors. For almost 99% of human history, gathering and hunting have been the basis of nutrition. It was not until about 12,000 years ago that humans began domesticating plants and animals. Bioarchaeologically and biochemically, this can be traced back to our earliest roots. Modern living conditions and the quality of human life are better today than ever before. However, neither physically nor psychosocially have we made this adjustment and we are paying a high health price for it. The studies presented allow us to reconstruct food supply, lifestyles, and dietary habits: from the earliest primates, through hunter-gatherers of the Paleolithic, farming communities since the beginning of the Anthropocene, to the Industrial Age and the present. The comprehensive data pool allows extraction of all findings of medical relevance. Our recent lifestyle and diet are essentially determined by our culture rather than by our millions of years of ancestry. Culture is permanently in a dominant position compared to natural evolution. Thereby culture does not form a contrast to nature but represents its result. There is no doubt that we are biologically adapted to culture, but it is questionable how much culture humans can cope with.

Keywords: behavior; cultural evolution; diet; environment; evolution; health; hunter-gatherer; industrial revolution; microbiome; neolithization; nutrition; primates.

Figure 1

Terrestrial and aquatic food-web model for terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems with overlap ranges of carbon and nitrogen isotope values of different producers and consumers. According to the ecological niche model, food webs in different ecosystems are controlled by natural laws and work on the principle that each food level (e.g., plants, herbivores, omnivores, carnivores in the terrestrial ecosystem) occupies a particular niche in the overall food chain as exemplarily illustrated here (see also Appendix A). The trophic-level effect in the model is reflected by the accumulation of nitrogen in the food chain when individuals consume plants or animal products. The δ15N in human bone collagen is accumulated by an average of about three per mill compared to the fauna consumed. However, the complete nutritional spectrum of individuals and populations is based exclusively on a combination of the δ13C and δ15N values (mod. after Schoeninger & De Niro [28]).

Figure 2

Stable isotope values of bone collagen samples from humans (n = 482) and animals (n = 109) from 26 Neolithic sites of different cultural groups in central Germany as well as one Mesolithic sample from Bottendorf, Thuringia (MES); Early Neolithic = light green, Middle Neolithic = dark green, Younger Neolithic = light red, Late Neolithic = dark red, Final Neolithic = blue, Early Bronze Age = orange. Each graph point represents one individual, either human or animal. The central finding is an increase in animal protein consumption (d15N) over time (mod. after Münster et al. [100]).