THE CASE FOR CARBS T O O TH PLA Q U E F R O M A S K E LE T ON DIS C OV E RE D BY A NT HROPO LOGY P R O FESSO R S O F F E R S N E W INS IGHT ON A NC IE NT HUM A NS ’ DIET Carrie O’Brion
Bayira may be 4,500 years old, but this ancient skeleton is still providing important new insight into what ancient humans ate and how their diet shaped the way our species evolved. Bayira is the name USF Anthropology professors Kathryn Weedman Arthur and John W. Arthur gave the skeleton, which they unearthed from a cave in the highlands of southern Ethiopia in 2012. The discovery made international headlines after a DNA analysis of the skeleton’s ear bone provided researchers with the first ancient human genome completely sequenced from the African continent. Now Bayira, whose name means “first born” in the Gamo language of the people who inhabit the land where he was discovered, is playing a part in another groundbreaking study, this one focused on the diet of ancient humans and how what they ate affected the evolution of people today.
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The seven-year study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and involved the collaboration of more than 50 international scientists. Researchers reconstructed the oral microbiomes – the community of microorganisms, mostly bacteria, found within mouths – of Neanderthals, primates, and humans. Their goal was to better understand the evolutionary history of the oral microbiome because there is little known about how it developed. Their most significant finding was that one group of bacteria present in both modern humans and Neanderthals is specifically adapted to consume starch. This suggests starchy foods such as roots, tubers and seeds became important in the human diet long before the introduction of farming. Some researchers believe the transition to eating these starchy foods, which are rich in energy, may have enabled humans to grow the large brains that characterize our species.
