Humans Were Actually Apex Predators For 2 Million Years, New Study Finds

Paleolithic cuisine was anything but lean and green, according to a recent study on the diets of our Pleistocene ancestors. For a good 2 million years, Homo sapiens and their ancestors ditched the salad and dined heavily on meat, putting them at the top of the food chain.

It's not quite the balanced diet of berries, grains, and steak we might picture when we think of 'paleo' food. But according to anthropologists from Israel's Tel Aviv University and the University of Minho in Portugal, modern hunter gatherers have given us the wrong impression of what we once ate.

"This comparison is futile, however, because 2 million years ago hunter-gatherer societies could hunt and consume elephants and other large animals – while today's hunter gatherers do not have access to such bounty," says Miki Ben‐Dor from Israel's Tel Aviv University.

A look through hundreds of previous studies on everything from modern human anatomy and physiology to measures of the isotopes inside ancient human bones and teeth suggests we were primarily apex predators until roughly 12,000 years ago. Read the free article.