The profile of adipose tissue through hominin evolution cannot be reconstructed with surety because of the paucity of direct fossil evidence relating to soft tissue. Nevertheless, a variety of approaches are available for proposing likely scenarios, and traits common to all contemporary humans can be broadly assumed to have evolved along with, or prior to, the speciation of Homo sapiens and hence may have had relevance at least to the biology of Homo erectus. The approximate dates of widely recognised members of the hominin family tree are shown in Table 8.1, based on Lewin and Foley (2004). Owing to the lack of available evidence on body size for some of these species, along with a confusion as to how various fossils should be allocated to the proposed species, this chapter will concern itself with a smaller variety of hominis – extant chimpanzees, four Australopithecus species (A. afarensis, A. africanus, A. boisei and A. robustus), and three Homo species (H. habilis, H. erectus and H. sapiens).

The close associations between adipose tissue and various functions described in Chapter 6 favour the hypothesis that hominin energy stores coevolved alongside other hominin features. Differences in adipose tissue biology between contemporary humans and extant apes similarly imply that many traits emerged only since the time of the shared common ancestor and therefore can be attributed either to australopithecine or Homo evolution.