Meat, brains and human origins: The diet that made us human

Talk title: Meat, brains and human origins: The diet that made us human.

Abstract: What our ancestors ate is central to understanding how we became human. For decades, meat consumption has been thought to play a key role in fueling larger brains, driving toolmaking and fostering cooperation, which may have laid the foundations for language and culture. Yet direct evidence for early meat-eating was long missing. Today, cutting-edge isotope techniques allow us to study the geochemistry of fossil teeth from Australopithecus, Paranthropus and early Homo, placing them within their local food webs. These insights show when meat entered our evolutionary story, how flexible diets shaped survival and what this reveals about the origins of our own species.

Friday, April 10, 2026

Start Time:

• VIP Reception 5:30 p.m.
• Lecture 7 p.m.

End Time: 8 p.m.

Please note: Purchasing a VIP ticket also includes access to the lecture; no separate lecture ticket is required.

About the speaker: Tina Tina Lüdecke is the group leader of the Emmy Noether Group for Hominin Meat Consumption at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (Mainz, Germany). She is a researcher whose work centers on the reconstruction of early hominin diets, with particular emphasis on the onset and evolution of meat consumption. Using geochemical approaches, she investigates trophic relationships and the integration of early hominins into Plio-Pleistocene food webs. Her research also incorporates paleoenvironmental reconstructions to contextualize dietary strategies within changing ecological and climatic settings during human evolution. She has led and contributed to multiple international research projects, and her work integrates geochemistry, paleontology and archaeology to better understand the ecological and evolutionary contexts of human evolution.

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Parking: Standard parking fees will apply for ASU parking structures. The Walton Center for Planetary Health is located at the southwest corner of University Drive and Rural Road. The Novus garage on the northwest corner of University Drive and Rural Road has a bridge across University Drive from the third floor of the parking garage leads to the second floor of the building, where IHO's offices are located, just off the large patio.

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Host or Publisher Institute of Human Origins