Wu Yan, Tao Dawei, Wu Xiujie, Liu Wu, Cai Yanjun
Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
CAS Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Beijing, China.
Front Plant Sci. 2022 Aug 31;13:989308. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.989308. eCollection 2022.
Reconstructing diet can offer an improved understanding toward the origin and evolution of modern humans. However, the diet of early modern humans in East Asia is poorly understood. Starch analysis of dental calculus is harmless to precious fossil hominins and provides the most direct evidence of plant food sources in early modern human dietary records. In this paper, we examined the starch grains in dental calculus from Fuyan Cave hominins in Daoxian (South China), which were the earliest modern humans in East Asia. Our results reveal the earliest direct evidence of a hominin diet made of acorns, roots, tubers, grass seeds, and other yet-unidentified plants in marine isotope stage 5 between 120 and 80 ka. Our study also provides the earliest evidence that acorns may have played an important role in subsistence strategies. There may have been a long-lasting tradition of using these plants during the Late Pleistocene in China. Plant foods would have been a plentiful source of carbohydrates that greatly increased energy availability to human tissues with high glucose demands. Our study provides the earliest direct consumption of carbohydrates-rich plant resources from modern humans in China for the first time. In addition, it also helps elucidate the evolutionary advantages of early modern humans in the late Middle and early Upper Pleistocene.
重建饮食结构有助于更深入地了解现代人类的起源与进化。然而，东亚早期现代人类的饮食情况却鲜为人知。对牙结石进行淀粉分析不会对珍贵的古人类化石造成损害，并且能为早期现代人类饮食记录中的植物食物来源提供最直接的证据。在本文中，我们研究了道县（中国南方）福岩洞古人类牙结石中的淀粉粒，这些古人类是东亚最早的现代人类。我们的研究结果揭示了在距今12万至8万年的海洋同位素阶段5，古人类以橡子、块根、块茎、草籽及其他尚未确定的植物为食的最早直接证据。我们的研究还提供了最早的证据，表明橡子可能在生存策略中发挥了重要作用。在中国晚更新世时期，使用这些植物可能有着悠久的传统。植物性食物是丰富的碳水化合物来源，能极大地增加对葡萄糖需求较高的人体组织的能量供应。我们的研究首次提供了中国现代人类最早直接食用富含碳水化合物植物资源的证据。此外，它还有助于阐明中更新世晚期和上更新世早期早期现代人类的进化优势。
