1/18/2024 0 Comments Ancestral chimpanzee dietWhen more neutral, it allows most microbes through to the intestines alive. When very acidic, the stomach prevents most microbes ingested in food (apart from the most acid-tolerant) from arriving intact in the intestines. Like a bouncer at the door to the intestines’ microbial party, the stomach (acting as a filter) can be more or less restrictive. The other role is as a kind of ecological filter, allowing some species into the intestines but not others. This role has received disproportionate research attention (and is the focus, for example, in medical texts). One of those roles is in the degradation of protein (and, in some cases, chitin). The stomach plays two key roles in mammals. We consider four features of hominin bodies and lifestyles that have changed in the time since that LCA in ways that might both influence the microbiome and influence the effects of the microbiome on human social behavior. Here we leverage the second of these sources to explore the complex interplay between human societies and behavior, microbiomes, and evolution. ![]() Reconstructing the microbiomes of ancient hominins will ultimately rely on two main sources of data: (i) ancient microbial DNA from humans and non-human primates ( Compton et al., 2013 Weyrich et al., 2017), and (ii) comparisons of modern genes, phenotypes and microbiota among humans, great apes, and other non-human primates, mammals and birds. We use the word “hominids” to describe the broader lineage that includes the common ancestor of all great apes along with hominins. We use the word “hominins” to include all of the species after the split from the LCA, fossil species more closely related to human ancestors than chimpanzees or bonobos, and our own species, Homo sapiens. We focus especially on the last six million years or so, starting from when we last shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes) and bonobos ( Pan paniscus), our last common ancestor (LCA), and before the industrial revolution (at which point many changes in human lifestyle appear to have begun to precipitate rapid changes in microbiomes). As a starting point, we consider how large-scale physical, social, and behavioral changes that occurred during human evolution have (or might have) affected our interactions with microbes. We conclude by briefly considering the possibility that hominin social behavior was influenced by prosocial microbes whose fitness was favored by social interactions among individual hominins.Īs part of an article collection on the drivers of sociality we were asked to consider the influence of hominin microbiomes on the evolution of hominin social behavior. In doing so, we highlight the potential influence of microbiomes in hominin evolution while also offering a series of hypotheses and questions with regard to evolution of human stomach acidity, the factors structuring gut microbiomes, the functional consequences of changes in armpit ecology, and whether Homo erectus was engaged in fermentation. We focus on microbiomes associated with social evolution, namely those hosted or influenced by stomachs, intestines, armpits, and food fermentation. Here we use a comparative approach to understand how microbiomes of hominins have, or might have, changed since the last common ancestor (LCA) of chimpanzees and humans, roughly six million years ago. What is less clear is how primate microbiomes might in turn influence their social behavior, either in general or with particular reference to hominins. The social structure of primates has recently been shown to influence the composition of their microbiomes. ![]() 6Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV, United States.5Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.4Department of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, United States.3Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States.2Centre for Evolutionary Hologenomics, The GLOBE Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.1Department of Applied Ecology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, United States.
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