Eye on Science: What did ancient humans eat and why does it matter today?
Eye on Science talks to anthropologist Briana Pobiner about human origins, cannibalism and being a champion for women in science.
If you could visit any time and place in the past, where and when would you go? Would it be the Gettysburg Battlefield in 1863 when Lincoln gave his famous address? What about Chicago in 1942 when Enrico Fermi and his team turned on the first artificial nuclear reactor, forever changing the world? For Briana Pobiner, an anthropologist at the National Museum of Natural History, it would be something completely different: she’d rather travel back two and half million years ago to a sub-Saharan savannah where she could watch our ancient human ancestors sit down for lunch.
Briana is not your everyday anthropologist. Yes, she visits exotic locations to dig up and study bones, but she doesn’t study when humans started walking or when we began creating artwork or writing things down. Instead, she studies the evolution of human diets. “A fundamental aspect of any living thing is what it eats,” she told me in her office on the National Mall. “It tells us a lot about other aspects of our biology, like how we adapt to our surroundings. By studying ancient diets, we can learn how we became who we are today.” Since Briana can’t interview a Homo erectus or watch one eat like in her time traveling fantasy, her best clue into what these ancient humans ate is the butchery marks they left on animal bones.
Briana Pobiner looking for modern bones near a hyena den at Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Kenya
Briana studies bones from excavations all over the world, her favorite place being Africa. “There’s nothing like pulling a fossil out of the ground and thinking ‘No one has seen this for a million years. It is amazing that I get to hold it and touch it.’ For another project, I also get to walk around in a wildlife conservancy on foot where a lot of tourists don’t get to go, which is great,” she said. Then she joked, “as long as I don’t get trampled by elephants and rhinos!”
“The word coming out of my pursed lips starts with an S and is not sugar… that’s what happens when I am looking down at the ground for bones too intensely and walk by amazingly quiet 2-3 ton white rhinos….”
In recent years, Briana hasn’t been digging up bones herself, but instead, she’s been traveling the world to study bones already stored in museum collections for years, maybe decades. She has a keen eye for bite and stone knife marks. While some anthropologists may study the shape of a bone, Briana sees marks that no one noticed the first time around. These marks clue us into the eating behaviors of our ancient relatives.
Briana also understands that scientific research doesn’t take place in a vacuum, and that not everyone is comfortable with the underlying premise of what she studies: that today’s humans are the result of billions of years of evolution. Throughout her career, she’s has gone out of her way to reach out to communities and start dialogues to help build trust around the acceptance of our history as human beings.
Briana Pobiner in the National Museums of Kenya taking photographs of fossils from Olorgesailie, Kenya
Briana was part of the team that designed the Hall of Human Origins at the National Museum of Natural History, which opened in 2010. At the time, creationism was still a hot topic in the news, as politicians were debating whether the topic should be taught in schools alongside evolution. Briana saw the polling data and knew that a lot of Americans didn’t accept evidence of evolution, especially human evolution. She then asked herself, “how do we make this subject approachable and understandable? How do we lower defenses?” She told me that coming to a trusted research, educational, and museum complex like the Smithsonian made her think differently about how the public would respond to her life’s work.
Briana Pobiner conducting field work at Ol Pejeta site.
In fact, Briana leads all the public engagement efforts for the Human Origins Program at the Museum. “I think a lot about how to present evolution to a whole variety of folks among the general public,” she told Eye on Science. Her colleague Rick Potts, director of the Human Origins Program, assembled an advisory group called the Broader Social Impacts Committee that advises the Program about issues outside of the science. Briana told me “Every member of that committee is somebody who is dedicated to supporting positive dialogue about evolution and religion, science and societal issues, all kinds of things.”
Briana contributed to a project to create a traveling version of the Hall of Human Origins and to bring it to communities that do not normally engage in conversations about science. “We took the exhibit to public libraries over the course of two years with a partnership with the American Library Association. Four of us, including Rick and I and the two co-chairs of this committee, went to every one of the 19 libraries. We held public programs; we held community conversations.” Briana also participated in conversations with trusted community leaders. “I did a teacher workshop, and we did an event with clergy and religious leaders where we led a private tour of the exhibit and held a conversation. We asked questions like, ‘what about this resonates? What’s troubling?’ We were interested in building bridges.”
Briana Pobiner sitting in a fossil hippo footprint at Olorgesailie, Kenya
Briana is also building bridges between work and life for women in science. If someone meets Briana and sees that she spends less time digging for bones than she used to, they might assume that it’s because she started a family. But in our conversation, Briana expressed her pride in figuring out how to become a successful scientist and have a family at the same time. “There’s a photo of me on my office door, very pregnant, doing fieldwork. I try to be forthright about the challenges of being a woman scientist, but also the opportunities. It looks different for every woman I know, whether they have kids or not. Everyone must figure out how they’re going to balance field work or other research with spending time with their family.”
Neither rain, nor snow nor imminent childbirth can stay Briana Pobiner…Here, she is doing fieldwork at Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Kenya while pregnant with her son.
Briana told me she sees herself as a champion for women in science. And she’s certainly prompted some new questions, such as how to protect a pregnant woman from exotic infectious diseases while on expeditions.
“I may have been the first Smithsonian scientist who went to our travel health staff and said, ‘I’m pregnant and I’m going to a malarial country, and they went ‘what??’ I told them I did my research and I said, ‘here’s what I think about preventative medication,’ but I also wanted to get a sense from them of what to do. It worked out totally fine. All three people who I work closely with on that project are parents, too.”
Briana Pobiner photographs a modern carcass in Africa.
Whether its digging for bones, scanning collections for stone knife marks (serendipitously finding the earliest potential evidence of human cannibalism), talking to the public about evolution, advocating for women in science, playing competitive tennis (Division III in college), singing in a local women’s barbershop chorus (something she put aside for now), or caring for her 12-year-old son (“We’ve tried to cultivate his interest in the natural world…but other than that, I want him to do whatever makes him happy”), you’ll find an eager Briana Pobiner sharing her excitement for the history of life with everyone she meets. If you get a chance to meet her and talk about human diets and evolution, count yourself as lucky.
Eye on Science, our new biweekly series, will shine a light on our vast and varied body of work by bringing Smithsonian science into sharper focus. Eye on Science will tell the stories of the people behind the research, the discoveries they make and their inspiration. We will explore their passions, celebrate their contributions, and look more closely at how questions become solutions that can inform environmental policy, spur technological innovation, and promote community and collaboration across the globe.
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Posted: 20 December 2023
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