What was the diet for homo erectus, etc. (humans) in the Quaternary period?

Question

What was the diet for homo erectus, etc. (humans) in the Quaternary period?

Answer 1

Homo erectus ate crunchy food

Jennifer Viegas

Discovery News

Tuesday, 22 November 2005





Tooth marks suggest Homo erectus ate crunchy foods, like root vegetables (Image: iStockphoto)

Homo erectus munched on crunchy, brittle and tough foods, while other early humans seemed to favour softer fare, according to a new analysis of teeth.

All the individuals showed signs of eating a variety of foods.

H. erectus lived between approximately 2 million to 400,000 years ago and is the first known primate to use significant tools and walk upright.

The researchers say H. erectus is the only species they looked at that appears to have often crunched and chewed on foods, such as tough meat and crisp root vegetables.

Researchers now think this species enjoyed a broader diet than earlier proto-humans, such as H. habilis, which lived around 2.3 to 1.6 million years ago.

Answer 2

smart people scare me....I ..must..r-r-run. Away...

Answer 3

Peternal has it right. Homo erectus in Asia was considerably more evolved by ~30,000 yrs ago & despite having a more robust tooth structure, ate basically the same things as did the Homo sapien.  Many of those classified as intermediate finds are now thought to have been Homo erectus. Erectus' diet 'appears' to have been ~80% plant matter, but we've not analyzed f***s material as we've done with neandertal & sapien.

Answer 4

They where mainly scavengers, the would find a dead animal and ot would usually have already been picked clean, but the cavemen would use rocks to break the bones and eat the bone marrow, which other animals were too dumb to do.

They also ate fruits, and hunted for meat.

Answer 5

Homo erectus lived from 1.7 million years ago, until as recently as 27,000 years ago, in Java...

They controlled fire, which in addition to warming themselves in the colder regions, such as Peking, and Georgia (southern Russia), they most likely used fire to cook with, or at least barbeque meats...

Yes, they broke animals bones, for the nutrient-rich marrow inside, and as well as scavenging free meals (dead carcasses), they also had hyoid bones as we do today, which indicates their speech was controlled, which would be necessary for coordinating the hunt of an animal of prey...

As most Hunter/Gatherers (non-farmers), their diet would have consisted of red meat, occasional shellfish, tubers, roots, leaves, nuts, berries, wild grasses, honey and bird's eggs...