Teeth and Nutrition History of our Ancestors

Have you ever wondered what were our ancestors eating? Well, eating was quite a difficult task for our human ancestors at times.

According to professor and chairman of anthropology Peter Ungar from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, our human ancestors did spend a much greater amount of time on eating, mainly because they had to deal with raw food which was of quite low quality, and very hard to chew on.

Peter Ungar’s work is based on the diet of the ancient human ancestors, and his laboratory reveals an entire world made up of ancient dental casts, and one can find there everything from casts of dinosaurs and up to those of the modern man.

His work on understanding the ancient diets blends in beautifully biology, engineering, dentistry and anthropology.

His lab is filled with casts coming from chimpanzees, gorillas, antelope, reptiles, and modern humans as well. Ungar is being supported by the NSF (National Science Foundation) and by using modern technology he is able to check the teeth surface of both ancient species and living one, and compare the results.

He is going to work with a team of highly skilled engineers and surface metrologists, and will develop proper technology for 3D animation of the teeth, for in depth study. His work will try to bring clear evidence regarding what these ancient species truly ate, not just what they could eat.

Interestingly enough, the human ancestor called Paranthropus bosei had some immense and thick teeth which is normally making one believe that they could eat just about anything, but discoveries show something different.

After examining the wear pattern of their teeth, the professor found that there are only some light scratches on the teeth, and no indicator of heavy pitting of the teeth, as it should normally show if they were eating very hard objects.

In order to make it easier to understand for us, professor Ungar tells about the eating habits of the gorilla. These animals have very sharp and cresty teeth, so they can eat very well tough vegetation, like extremely hard roots for instance.

However, if one goes to the zoo and offers the gorilla a leaf and a soft fruit, they will always prefer the soft fruit. This is so because they like the fruit best, but whenever they must they can adapt to eating tough vegetation as well, when fruits are not an option.

Ungar and his colleagues have traveled around the world, even in the most remote places in order to find evidence and make more in depth studies. Modern technology helps him in his research, because now he is able to observe even the smallest scratch on a tooth, which is 1,000 times thinner than a human hair.

Understanding the evolution of the human diet is a very important field for researchers from all branches, and thanks to the continuously evolving technology such researches will get easier and easier to perform.