ArticlePloS one2011
Man the fat hunter: the demise of Homo erectus and the emergence of a new hominin lineage in the Middle Pleistocene (ca. 400 kyr) Levant.
Article in PloS one, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- Hemisphere-wide evidence of Early Paleoindian megaherbivore specialization.Science advances · 2026Article
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- The human-specific noncoding RNAFASEB bioAdvances · 2025Article
- A bioenergetic approach favors the preservation and protection of prey, not cooking, as the drivers of early fire.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- Trait-mediated speciation and human-driven extinctions in proboscideans revealed by unsupervised Bayesian neural networks.Science advances · 2024Article
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- The use of bones as tools in Late Lower Paleolithic of Central Italy.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Life-history of Palaeoloxodon antiquus reveals Middle Pleistocene glacial refugium in the Megalopolis basin, Greece.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions: Patterns, causes, ecological consequences and implications for ecosystem management in the Anthropocene.Cambridge prisms. Extinction · 2024Review
- The provisioned primate: patterns of obesity across lemurs, monkeys, apes and humans.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Models of body weight and fatness regulation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- A limited protein high-fat diet may explain the low δProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Obesity: an evolutionary context.Life metabolism · 2022Review
- Dietary Fats, Human Nutrition and the Environment: Balance and Sustainability.Frontiers in nutrition · 2022Review
- Late Acheulian Jaljulia - Early human occupations in the paleo-landscape of the central coastal plain of Israel.PloS one · 2022Article
- Human footprints provide snapshot of last interglacial ecology in the Arabian interior.Science advances · 2020Article
- The past and future human impact on mammalian diversity.Science advances · 2020Article
- Brain expansion in early hominins predicts carnivore extinctions in East Africa.Ecology letters · 2020Article
- The use of ash at Late Lower Paleolithic Qesem Cave, Israel-An integrated study of use-wear and residue analysis.PloS one · 2020Article
- Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
The worldwide association of H. erectus with elephants is well documented and so is the preference of humans for fat as a source of energy. We show that rather than a matter of preference, H. erectus in the Levant was dependent on both elephants and fat for his survival. The disappearance of elephants from the Levant some 400 kyr ago coincides with the appearance of a new and innovative local cultural complex--the Levantine Acheulo-Yabrudian and, as is evident from teeth recently found in the Acheulo-Yabrudian 400-200 kyr site of Qesem Cave, the replacement of H. erectus by a new hominin. We employ a bio-energetic model to present a hypothesis that the disappearance of the elephants, which created a need to hunt an increased number of smaller and faster animals while maintaining an adequate fat content in the diet, was the evolutionary drive behind the emergence of the lighter, more agile, and cognitively capable hominins. Qesem Cave thus provides a rare opportunity to study the mechanisms that underlie the emergence of our post-erectus ancestors, the fat hunters.
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