An understanding of the diets of our ancestors can provide a unique perspective on our adaptations, and show how a discordance between our diets and the foods we were "designed" to eat has led to many of the health problems faced by industrial societies today. Primates satisfy their nutritional requirements with a broad range of foods. Humans have continued the trend, and we can attribute much of our evolutionary success to our abilities to procure, process and consume a wide variety of foods. While the role of diet in human origins is not yet clear, we do know a generalist strategy enabled our ancestors to survive changing, unpredictable environments when more specialized species went extinct. The range of foods we can eat has played a crucial role in the dispersal and, indeed, the survival of our lineage. Still, very recent changes in our diets may be pushing the limits of this flexibility. In sum, dietary adaptations are closely tied to human evolution, and given our physiological requirements and constraints, they will likely continue to play an important role in human biology in the eons to come.

This web site has been established in association with a Scientific Session at the 14th International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Williamsburg, Virginia, as a central repository of information and links related to the origins and evolution of human diet.

This web site is supported by NSF grant # SBER 9727175, and hosted by the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies , University of Arkansas .