Download - Intro to entomophagy and human evolution
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Entomophagy and Evolution: Eating Insects Past, Present,
and Future
Julie LesnikWayne State University
Detroit, MI
entomoanthro.org
entomophagy anthropology
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Jongema, 2012
2,040 recorded edible insects in the world
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Why are
bugs not
common
cuisine in the
US and Europe
?entomoanthro.org
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©Little Herds
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©Little Herds
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©Little Herds
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©Little Herds
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Food and Agriculture Organization recommendations
• Further documentation of nutritional values
• Investigate environmental sustainability
• Clarify socio-economic benefits
• Develop legal framework for production and trade
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The need for anthropology• Food is a major topic in anthropology
• Anthropologists look to understand why people choose to eat, or not eat, certain foods
• These reasons are vast
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Biological Anthropology
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“Last common ancestor” A great ape, likely ate insects similar to the great apes today
(Social insects – ants, termites, honey)
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Genus Australopithecus
Upright walking apes. Likely also the same as extant apes, and we have some archaeological evidence that suggests
this as well
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Homo erectus
Origins of foraging/division of labor as we understand it today.Insects likely important to them as they are to foragers today.
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NeanderthalsOccupying Europe during the last Ice Age.
Biodiversity is low, insects likely not part of their diets.
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“Modern Humans”Intensive agriculture works against entomophagy.
Rely on “fruits of labor” even to nutritional detriment.
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Brain size Brain Size
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Diet Quality and Brain Size
Fish and Lockwood, 2003
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Dietary Quality and Human Evolution
• We know brain size expands over the course of human evolution
• We know that there is a positive relationship between dietary quality and brain size
• Humans must have increased dietary quality over the course of their evolution
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Early hominids
• Ape-like early ancestors and australopithecines
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Species Caste Preferred By Crude Protein
(%)
Crude Fat(%)
Fe (mg/100g)
M. muelleri** Soldiers Chimps 72 5 10
C. heghi** Workers Gorillas 15 13 2962
M. falciger* Alates Humans 21 22 _
* Phelps et al 1975**Debalauwe and Janssens, 2008
Termite Preferences and Nutrition
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Frugivorous chimpanzees receive plenty of
micronutrients, but protein requirements are more difficult
to meet
Folivorous gorillas receive plenty of protein from leaves,
but micronutrient requirements are more
difficult to meetPhotos: Abigail Lubliner & Rob Kroenert
Great ape termite preferences reflect their diets
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• Au. robustus has the largest brain size for the genus Australopithecus
• Increase in diet quality
• Eating more insects or insects with greater nutritional value - fatty reproductive termites, for instance - would aid in this brain size shift
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Australopithecus robustus
SwartkransAbout 1.7 mya
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3 cm
Photos: Backwell & d’Errico, 2001
Pattern and width of the striations on
the Swartkrans bone tools match
that of tools used to experimentally
excavate termite mounds
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Genus Homo
• Homo erectus is when we start seeing brain and body size as well as behavior that are clearly “human”
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Ethnographic examples• In attempting to reconstruct the
evolutionary significance of insects as food, populations living at the subsistence level are of most interest
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The San
• When foraging, women may stop and eat termites all day (Nonaka, 1996)
Photo:PhotographersDirect
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• Women average 15 minutes a day in search of various insect larvae
• They will take them whenever encountered (Hawkes et al., 1982)
Photo:F1 Online Photos
The Aché
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The Arrernte
• Women, accompanied by their children, carry digging sticks and go out in search of small fauna, including social insects that are available year-round (Bodenheimer, 1951)
Photo:Spencer and Gillan, 1899
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Sexual division of labor
• Women’s protein requirements increase by 50% when pregnant and lactating
• Insects may provide a reliable source of this nutrient they can obtain even when accompanied by small children
• This pattern of behavior could be expected for our early ancestors as well
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Jongema, 2012
SanAché Arrernte
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Jongema, 2012
SanAché Arrernte
Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Capricorn
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Clinal variation: Change in frequency over geographic space
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Clinal variation: Change in frequency over geographic space
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Jongema, 2012
Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Capricorn
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Tropic of Cancer in China• Passes through the Yunnan
province
Beijing• Most of the
insect eating in China occurs here
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Homo erectusFirst hominid to leave Africa
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2.5 million years ago: Plio-Pleistocene border
• Time of great climatic variability, trending colder
• Many species of mammals went extinct at this time
• The origins of our genus, Homo, coincides with the time– Intelligence and adaptability
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Homo erectus• Homo erectus appears around 1.8 mya in
Africa and quickly disperses, likely following the coast line and keeping in temperate zones
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Neanderthals• Successfully lived
in the coldest climates from ~200k to 38k ya
• Utilized caves, fire, and likely clothing
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Pleistocene• 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago
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Meat-based diets in modern foragers
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Biodiversity
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Latitudinal Diversity Gradient• Widely recognized phenomenon in
ecology that there tends to be an increase in species richness moving towards the tropics
• No single explanation. Possible combination of increased energy availability and environmental stability
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Latitudinal Diversity Gradient• Gradient displayed for terrestrial mammals.• Insects?
• From: Mannion et al. (2014), based on work by Clinton Jenkins.
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Termite Diversity• Worldwide there are over 280 genera
• There are 85 genera in the Afrotropics alone (~1/3)
• 11 of these are known to be used as food
• In areas with less diversity, there are less food options
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Europe and North America?
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Europe under ice until 18,000 ya
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Europe• In glaciated Europe, hunting would have been
primary subsistence
• Not long after the end of the Pleistocene, cattle domestication occurs (about 10kya)
• With animal resources well-represented in the diet, and insects being less plentiful at northern latitudes, entomophagy is not likely
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Peopling of the Americas• The first people here had to survive
crossing Beringia
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Peopling of the Americas• The earliest people to arrive to the New
World likely did not eat insects
• As people migrated further and settled in and around tropic zones, insect eating may have been essential
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Agriculture
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Agriculture• Agriculture allows for population sizes
to increase, especially in areas that cannot support many people– Islands– High altitude– Arid regions
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Entomophagy lost• It is well reported that with the origins of
agriculture, nutritional health decreases
• It appears that when energy is put towards agricultural intensification, less energy is put towards foraging, which reduces dietary variability
• Where insect foraging is the easiest – the tropics – we see entomophagy persisting
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Global patterns of entomophagy
• I believe that the lack of entomophagy in the northern latitudes is related to long term occupation in these climates where biodiversity is significantly less than in the tropics
• Forest resources are not as available and efforts go to more intensive cultivation
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Applications• The anthropological perspective
• Shift away from the idea of “taboo” and think of it more as circumstance of geography and history.
• Raw fish was not “taboo” in NA/EU, it was just not something we did..
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May 26-28, 2016
eatinginsectsdetroit.org
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entomoanthro.org