Reputedly the most complex organ in the known universe, our brain has an enormous appetite, consuming 20% of the energy we ingest – and up to 70% during early childhood. Anthropologists have hypothesized that our brain benefited from a change in diet, more meat-based, at a point in our evolution.
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Knowing whether we were able to access this food because our brain capacities had improved or whether it was the latter who benefited from a menu richer in meat is “a bit like answering the chicken and the egg questionsays biochemist Jennifer Leichliter (Max Planck Institute of Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, and University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa). Are the two related, and if so, how? In what genus or species did this occur? When did meat consumption really take off among our hominin ancestors? »
-This consumption was still minimal among South African australopithecines almost 4 million years ago, responds to a study of which she is co-author, published on January 17 in the journal Science. This work suggests that the answers to the above questions may be within reach, thanks to a new technique for analyzing the concentration of a nitrogen isotope in tooth enamel. The proportion of nitrogen 15 – having fifteen neutrons in its atomic nucleus – compared to nitrogen 14 increases in fact as we move up the food chain, that is to say according to the proportion of meat ingested.
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