Evolution of Human Diet

Undergraduate

This seminar examines human nutrition and subsistence behavior from an evolutionary perspective. It begins with human nutritional literature and discussions of our biological requirements, then moves into comparison of modern human dietary ecology with those of other primates, especially our closest living relatives, the great apes. We then turn to literature that demonstrates the methods and theoretical approaches that are currently used to reconstruct past diets. As we begin to follow the evidence for changes in subsistence in the hominin lineage, case studies using these methods are integrated into discussions of how we know what we do about past nutrition. The course spends time on key issues and debates such as changes from closed-habitat to open-habitat foraging, the origins of meat-eating, the role of extractive foraging in human social systems, variation in hunter-forager subsistence systems, the origins of domestication, and the phenomenon of fad diets in industrialized nations. Prerequisite: one of ANTH 061, ANTH 267, ANTH 116, or by instructor permission. WR , SC , SO W 1:30pm-3:25pm