Quintessential human traits such as large brains first appear in Homo erectus nearly 2 million years ago. This evolutionary transition towards human-like traits is often linked to a major dietary shift involving greater meat consumption. A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, calls into question the primacy of meat eating in early human evolution. While the archaeological evidence for meat eating increases dramatically after the appearance of Homo erectus, the study authors argue that this increase can largely be explained by greater research attention on this time period, effectively skewing the evidence in favor of the "meat made us human" hypothesis.
