Meat Eating by Hominins 500,000 to 80,000 Years Ago | Early European History And Religion

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MEAT EATING AND PREHISTORIC HUMANS

cave bear bones

Ann Gibbons wrote in National Geographic: “Meat has played a starring role in the evolution of the human diet. Raymond Dart, who in 1924 discovered the first fossil of a human ancestor in Africa, popularized the image of our early ancestors hunting meat to survive on the African savanna. Writing in the 1950s, he described those humans as “carnivorous creatures, that seized living quarries by violence, battered them to death … slaking their ravenous thirst with the hot blood of victims and greedily devouring livid writhing flesh.” [Source: Ann Gibbons, National Geographic, September 2014 /*/]

“Eating meat is thought by some scientists to have been crucial to the evolution of our ancestors’ larger brains about two million years ago. By starting to eat calorie-dense meat and marrow instead of the low-quality plant diet of apes, our direct ancestor, Homo erectus, took in enough extra energy at each meal to help fuel a bigger brain. Digesting a higher quality diet and less bulky plant fiber would have allowed these humans to have much smaller guts. The energy freed up as a result of smaller guts could be used by the greedy brain, according to Leslie Aiello, who first proposed the idea with paleoanthropologist Peter Wheeler. The brain requires 20 percent of a human’s energy when resting; by comparison, an ape’s brain requires only 8 percent. This means that from the time of H. erectus, the human body has depended on a diet of energy-dense food—especially meat.” /*/

According to the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology: “Animal fat was highly valued by hunters and gatherers that had a diet rich in meat and low in carbohydrates. When there was little meat, other resources such as bone marrow became a source of lipids. The practice was not very common due to the difficulty of extracting the marrow from the bones. Furthermore "exploiting the fat is something that has not been reported until now" the researcher says. Other food sources, such as brains, had the same nutritional benefits.” [Source: Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, April 24, 2012]

Websites and Resources on Hominins and Human Origins: Smithsonian Human Origins Program humanorigins.si.edu ; Institute of Human Origins iho.asu.edu ; Becoming Human University of Arizona site becominghuman.org ; Hall of Human Origins American Museum of Natural History amnh.org/exhibitions ; The Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com ; Britannica Human Evolution britannica.com ; Human Evolution handprint.com ; University of California Museum of Anthropology ucmp.berkeley.edu; John Hawks' Anthropology Weblog johnhawks.net/ ; New Scientist: Human Evolution newscientist.com/article-topic/human-evolution

Scavenging Hominins May Have Competed with Giant Hyena for Carcasses

A modeling study published in September 2023 in the journal Scientific Reports found that groups of hominins living roughly 1.2 million to 800,000 years ago in southern Europe may have been able to compete with giant hyenas — which went extinct about 500,000 years ago and weigh around 110 kilograms (245) pounds — for carcasses of animals abandoned by larger predators like saber-toothed cats. Scavenged remains may have been an important source of meat and fat for hominins, especially in winter when plant resources were scarce. [Source: Laura Baisas, Popular Science, April 9, 2024]

Laura Baisas wrote in Popular Science: Earlier research has theorized that the number of carcasses abandoned by saber-toothed cats may have been enough to sustain some of southern Europe’s early hominin populations. However, it’s been unclear if competition from giant hyenas (Pachycrocuta brevirostris) would have limited hominin access to this food source. “There is a hot scientific debate about the role of scavenging as a relevant food procurement strategy for early humans,” paleontologist and study co-author Jesús Rodríguez from the National Research Center On Human Evolution (CENIEH) in Burgos, Spain said. “Most of the debate is based on the interpretation of the scarce and fragmentary evidence provided by the archaeological record. Without denying that the archaeological evidence should be considered the strongest argument to solve the question, our intention was to provide elements to the debate from a different perspective.”

For this study, Rodríguez and co-author Ana Mateos looked at the Iberian Peninsula in the late-early Pleistocene era. They ran computer simulations to model competition for carrion — the flesh of dead animals — between hominins and giant hyenas in what is now Spain and Portugal. They simulated whether saber-toothed cats and the European jaguar could have left enough carrion behind to support both hyena and hominin populations—and how this may have been affected by the size of scavenging groups of hominins.

They found that when hominins scavenged in groups of five or more, these groups could have been large enough to chase away giant hyenas. The hominin populations also exceeded giant hyena populations by the end of these simulations. However, when the hominins scavenged in very small groups, they could only survive to the end of the simulation when the predator density was high, which resulted in more carcasses to scavenge.

According to their simulations, the potential optimum group size for scavenging hominins was just over 10 individuals. This size was large enough to chase away saber-toothed cats and jaguars. However, groups of more than 13 individuals would have likely required more carcasses to sustain their energy expenditure. The authors caution that their simulations couldn’t specify this exact “just right” group size, since the numbers of hominins needed to chase away hyenas, saber-toothed cats, and jaguars were pre-determined and arbitrarily assigned.

Meat Eating in Israel 400,000-250,000 Years Ago

University of Arizona anthropologist Mary C. Stiner discovered that humans living at Qesem Cave in central Israel between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago were successful at big-game hunting as were later stone-age hunters at the site. “The Lower Paleolithic (earlier) hunters were skilled hunters of large game animals, as were Upper Paleolithic (later) humans at this site,” she said. “This might not seem like a big deal to the uninitiated, but there’s a lot of speculation as to whether people of the late Lower Paleolithic were able to hunt at all, or whether they were reduced to just scavenging. Evidence from Qesem Cave says that just like later Paleolithic humans, the earlier Paleolithic humans focused on harvesting large game. They were really at the top of the food chain.” [Source: Lori Stiles, University of Arizona Communications, uanews.org, August 12, 2009]

According to the University of Arizona: “The Qesem Cave people hunted cooperatively, then carried the highest quality body parts of their prey to the cave, where they cut the meat with stone blade cutting tools and cooked it with fire. “Qesem” means “surprise.” The cave was discovered in hilly limestone terrain about seven miles east of Tel-Aviv not quite nine years ago, during road construction.

“Meat is one of the highest quality foods that humans may eat, and it is among the most difficult resources to harvest from the environment. Archaeologists know that the roots of carnivory stretch deep into the past. But the details of carnivory and meat sharing have been sketchy. And they are important details, because they reflect the evolutionary development in human economic and social behaviors. Stiner and her colleagues reported on the research in their article, “Cooperative hunting and meat sharing 400-200 kya at Qesem Cave, Israel” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Meat Eaten by Paleolithic Humans in Israel and Jordon

In 2016, Archaeology magazine reported: Stone tools dating back to around 250,000 a million years have yielded the oldest known protein food residues ever observed and are providing insight into the diet of ancient hominins who would have been living in an increasingly arid and marginal environment. On the menu were rhinoceros, wild cattle, horses, and ducks. This surprising diversity — and the range of hunting techniques it would have required — suggests, according to the researchers, an adaptability that would have served Middle Pleistocene hominins well as they dispersed across Eurasia’s highly variable landscapes. [Source: Samir S. Patel, Archaeology magazine, November-December 2016]

Qesem Cave in central Israel has yielded what hominins ate from 420,000 to 200,000 years ago. According to the New York Times” Inside, ancient humans once butchered fresh kills with stone blades and barbecued meat on campfires. One of the researchers who worked couldn’t resist trying some marrow that these archaic modern humans consumed. “It is like a bland sausage, without salt, and a little stale,” said Jordi Rosell, an archaeologist at Rovira i Virgili University in Spain. “I can say that its taste was not bad, perhaps a little more rancid in the last weeks, but not bad.”

There is some evidence that early modern humans in Israel ground flour, which increased the “nutritional power” of basic meals common to nomadic populations. In study published in October 2010 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard University said early Israelis made flour at least 15,000 years and maybe earlier. Bar-Yosef said he hopes archaeologists will now pay more attention to residues embedded in grinding slabs.“It will help us to create a balanced view of Paleolithic diets of prehistoric humans,” he said. “This may have an impact on suggestions made by nutritionists concerning a meat rich diet as a way for prolonging healthy life.”

Turtles Consumed in Israeli Cave 400,000 Years Ago

Excavations by Tel Aviv University (TAU) at Qesem Cave indicate tortoises were consumed by hominins in Israel 400,000 years ago. American Friends of Tel Aviv University reported: “According to a new discovery at Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv, the site of many major findings from the late Lower Paleolithic period, they are not alone in their penchant for tortoise. Tel Aviv University researchers, in collaboration with scholars from Spain and Germany, have uncovered evidence of turtle specimens at the 400,000-year-old site, indicating that early man enjoyed eating turtles in addition to large game and vegetal material. The research provides direct evidence of the relatively broad diet of early Paleolithic people — and of the “modern” tools and skills employed to prepare it. [Source: eurekalert.org, American Friends of Tel Aviv University, February 1, 2016]

The study was led by Dr. Ruth Blasco of the Centro Nacional de Investigacion Sobre la Evolucion Humana (CENIEH), Spain, and TAU’s Institute of Archaeology, together with Prof. Ran Barkai and Prof. Avi Gopher of TAU’s Department of Archaeology “Until now, it was believed that Paleolithic humans hunted and ate mostly large game and vegetal material,” said Prof. Barkai. “Our discovery adds a really rich human dimension — a culinary and therefore cultural depth to what we already know about these people.”

“The research team discovered tortoise specimens strewn all over the cave at different levels, indicating that they were consumed over the entire course of the early human 200,000-year inhabitation. Once exhumed, the bones revealed striking marks that reflected the methods the early humans used to process and eat the turtles. “We know by the dental evidence we discovered earlier that the Qesem inhabitants ate vegetal food,” said Prof. Barkai. “Now we can say they also ate tortoises, which were collected, butchered and roasted, even though they don’t provide as many calories as fallow deer, for example.”

According to the study, Qesem inhabitants hunted mainly medium and large game such as wild horses, fallow deer and cattle. This diet provided large quantities of fat and meat, which supplied the calories necessary for human survival. Until recently, it was believed that only the later Homo sapiens enjoyed a broad diet of vegetables and large and small animals. But evidence found at the cave of the exploitation of small animals over time, this discovery included, suggests otherwise. “In some cases in history, we know that slow-moving animals like tortoises were used as a ‘preserved’ or ‘canned’ food,” said Dr. Blasco. “Maybe the inhabitants of Qesem were simply maximizing their local resources. In any case, this discovery adds an important new dimension to the knowhow, capabilities and perhaps taste preferences of these people.”

According to Prof. Gopher, the new evidence also raises possibilities concerning the division of labor at Qesem Cave. “Which part of the group found and collected the tortoises?” Prof. Gopher said. “Maybe members who were not otherwise involved in hunting large game, who could manage the low effort required to collect these reptiles — perhaps the elderly or children.” “According to the marks, most of the turtles were roasted in the shell,” Prof. Barkai added. “In other cases, their shells were broken and then butchered using flint tools. The humans clearly used fire to roast the turtles. Of course they were focused on larger game, but they also used supplementary sources of food — tortoises — which were in the vicinity.”

Meat Eaters in Israel 400,000-250,000 Years Ago Weren’t Big on Sharing

Stiner deduced that the humans living at Qesem Cave in central Israel between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago shared meat differently than humans who lived in the cave later. According to the University of Arizona: “Stiner analyzed the pattern of cut marks on bones of deer, aurochs, horse and other big game left at Qesem Cave by the hunters. Her novel approach was to analyze the cut marks to understand meat-sharing behaviors between the earlier and later cooperative hunting societies. “And the patterns revealed a striking difference in meat-sharing behaviors: The earlier hunters were less efficient, less organized and less specialized when it came to carving flesh from their prey. This is somewhat expected, since the tools they made took considerable skill and locomotor precision to produce,” Stiner said. [Source: Lori Stiles, University of Arizona Communications, uanews.org, August 12, 2009]

“Random cut marks, and higher numbers of cut marks, made by the earlier hunters show they attached little social ritual or formal rules to sharing meat, Stiner said. Many hands, including unskilled hands, cut meat off the bone during feeding. By contrast, by later times, by the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, “It’s quite clear that meat distribution flowed through the hands of certain butchers,” Stiner said. “The tool marks made on bones by the more recent hunters are very regular, very efficient and show much less variation in the postures of the individuals cutting meat from any one bone. Only certain hunters or other fairly skilled individuals cut meat that was to be shared among the group.”

Stiner stresses that her new findings need to be more broadly replicated before the implications of her research can be widely accepted. “It’s interesting that these earlier people were skilled predators and very social, but that their social rules are more basic, less derived than those of the Middle Paleolithic. What might surprise most archaeologists is that I’m seeing a big difference between Lower and Middle Paleolithic social behaviors, not between Middle and Upper Paleolithic social behaviors. Neanderthals lived in the Middle Paleolithic, and they were a lot more like us in their more formal redistributions of meat than were the earlier hominins.”

Evidence of a Stone-Age Meat Locker in Israel

Not every meal consumed Qesem Cave was consumed immediately after a hunt. Ran Barkai, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel, and his colleagues have found that the cave’s earliest inhabitants may have also stored animal bones filled with marrow that they consumed for up to nine weeks after the kill. “It was believed that early hominins were consuming everything they could put their hands on immediately, without storing or preserving or keeping things for later,” said Barkai, author of a study published in Science Advances in October 2019. [Source: Nicholas St. Fleur, New York Times, October 9, 2019]

Nicholas St. Fleur, New York Times, The finding may be the earliest example of prehistoric humans saving food for later consumption, and may also offer insight into the abilities of ancient humans to plan for their future needs. Dr. Barkai’s team examined cut marks on nearly 82,000 animal fragments from Qesem Cave, most belonging to fallow deer. The researchers noticed unusual, heavy chop marks on the ends of some leg bones known as the metapodials. The chop marks “make no sense in terms of stripping off the bone, because at this part of the bone there is no meat and very little fat,” Dr. Barkai said. Usually, stripping the hide from a fresh bone requires minimal force, he said. But the heavy chops indicated that the processing used more force than should have been necessary. “We had a hypothesis that these unusual chop marks at the end of the meatless bones had to do with the removal of dry skin,” he said. But why were they doing that?

The team concluded that the ancient hominins, who shared features with Homo sapiens and Neanderthals but were probably neither, were removing dry skin on the bones to get to the marrow. That presented another question: If they were after marrow, why not just remove it from the bone when it was fresh? The researchers hypothesized that the chop marks were an indication that the early humans stored the bones so they could eat the marrow later.

To test their idea, the team collected freshly killed deer leg bones and then stored them for several weeks in conditions similar to those inside the cave. After every week, they would break open a bone and analyze the marrow to see how nutritious it still was. Every time, a researcher would remove the dried skin using a flint flake and then hammer open the bone with a quartzite tool, similar to what the ancient people would have had used. The researcher wasn’t given instructions on how to open the bone.

The team found that the researcher’s chop marks on the older leg bones with dried skin were similar to what they saw in Qesem Cave. “It was a surprise when we realized that the same marks were generated experimentally,” said Ruth Blasco, a zooarchaeologist at the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Spain and lead author on the study. “The Qesem hominids have demonstrated very modern behavior in their livelihood strategies.” Their chemical test showed that after nine weeks, the fat in the bone marrow degraded only a little and was still nutritious.

Jessica Thompson, an archaeologist at Yale University, said the paper was a creative approach to reconstructing a past behavior that is notoriously difficult to identify in the archaeological record. “Their experimental work does a lot to convince me that some of the bones were not very fresh when they were processed, although it is still not clear how common this behavior was,” Dr. Thompson said. Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, praised the study and said that if this removal of dry skin did leave a unique butchery mark, “it’s now up to us zooarchaeologists to look for these traces in older fossil assemblages to see if we can document a greater antiquity of this food storage behavior.”

Hominins Ate Ducks 150,000 Years Ago

Spanish duck

The hominins that inhabited Europe 150,000 are known mainly for being big game hunters, but they also ate plants and small animals A pile of duck bones with lots of hominin teeth marks found in Spain suggests that at least in that region they were fond of fowl. Jennifer Viegas wrote in Discovery News: “The 202 bones, belonging to the Aythya genus of diving ducks, were found at Bolomor Cave near the town of Tavernes in Valencia, Spain. The ducks date to around 150,000 years ago, and were not eaten daintily. "The birds were de-fleshed using both stone tools and teeth," co-author Ruth Blasco told Discovery News, noting that some of the ducks may have even been consumed raw. "The modifications observed on small remains from Bolomor Cave are the strongest evidence for bird consumption in the European Middle Pleistocene," she added. [Source: Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News, November 25, 2009 =||=]

“Blasco, a researcher at the Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in Tarragona, Spain, and colleague Josep Fernandez Peris analyzed the duck bones under high magnification. They determined three characteristics allow the bird remains to be considered duck dinner leftovers. First, they found "cutmarks on bones of both the front and hind limb." Second, they identified the "presence of burning patterns on the extremities of the bones, areas of the skeleton with less meat." Finally, the researchers discovered "human tooth marks on limb bones."=||=

“Although both Neanderthal and modern human remains have been found at the Bolomor Cave complex, the geological level of the roasted duck finds suggests that Homo heidelbergensis is the human species that ate the duck meals. The remains of at least seven hearths additionally prove that big-brained, tool-wielding H. heidelbergensis, also known as "Heidelberg Man," was a master at creating and controlling fire. The findings, which are published in the October issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, indicate early Europeans enjoyed a much broader diet than first suspected. =||=

“Evidence supports that African hominids ate birds as early as the Plio-Pleistocene era, around 2 million years ago. Early European cavemen, on the other hand, are usually associated with spear thrusting and group hunting efforts. But they might have also been fleet footed with fast reflexes. "The acquiring of fast-running and quick-flying small prey requires a sophisticated technology and involves obtaining and processing ways different from those used for large and medium-sized animals," according to the scientists, who think Heidelberg Man might have used traps, bird calls and other techniques to obtain ducks. =||=

Gerrit Dusseldorp, a University of Leiden expert on Neanderthals and early humans, suggests dining on birds and other small prey might have been much more common in prehistoric Europe.

“In his book "A View to a Kill: Investigating Middle Paleolithic Subsistence Using an Optimal Foraging Perspective," Dusseldorp argues that scientists often focus on "spectacular larger prey categories." He also believes proving small prey consumption is inherently more difficult due to the size of bones and the way the animals were probably eaten. It's doubtful that elaborate carving methods were displayed around Bolomor Cave hearths. As Dusseldorp points out, "small animals tend to be subjected to much less processing than larger animals. Usually, they are simply eaten whole."” =||=

Seafood Consumed by Humans 164,000 Years Ago in South Africa

huge sea snails found in Blombos Cave in South Africa

In an article published in Nature in 2007, researchers found evidence of harvested and cooked seafood — along with reddish pigment from ground rocks and early tiny blade technology — at Pinnacle Point overlooking the Indian Ocean near South Africa's Mossel Bay dated to between 176,000 and 152,000 years ago. "Together as a package this looks like the archaeological record of a much later time period," study author Curtis Marean, professor of anthropology at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, told Associated Press . [Source: Seth Borenstein, Associated Press, October 17, 2007|]

Seth Borenstein of Associated Press wrote: “This means humans were eating seafood about 40,000 years earlier than previously thought. And this is the earliest record of humans eating something other than what they caught or gathered on the land, Marean said. Most of what Marean found were the remnants of brown mussels, but he also found black mussels, small saltwater clams, sea snails and even a barnacle that indicates whale blubber or skin was brought into the cave.

“Marean figured the early people, probably women, had to trudge two to three miles to where the mussels, clams and snails were harvested and to bring them back to the cave. Then they put them over hot rocks to cook. When the food was done, the shells popped open in a process similar to modern-day mussel-steaming, but without the pot. Marean and colleagues tried out that ancient cooking technique in a kind of archaeological test kitchen. "We've prepped them the same way," Marean said in telephone interview from South Africa. "They're a little less moist (than modern steamed mussels). They definitely lose some moisture."”

“Seafood harvesting, unlike other hunter-gatherer activities, encourages people to stay put, and that leads to more social interactions, he said. Yet 110,000 years later, no such modern activity, except for seafood dining, could be found in that part of South Africa, said Alison Brooks, a George Washington University anthropology professor who was not associated with Marean's study. That shows that the dip into modern life was not built upon, said Brooks, who called Marean's work "a fantastic find."

Hominins Ate Elephants' Meat and Bone Marrow in Madrid 80,000 Years Ago

According to the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology: “Humans that populated the banks of the river Manzanares (Madrid, Spain) during the Middle Palaeolithic (between 127,000 and 40,000 years ago) fed themselves on pachyderm meat and bone marrow. This is what a Spanish study shows and has found percussion and cut marks on elephant remains in the site of Preresa (Madrid). [Source: Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, April 24, 2012, Paper: Yravedra, J.; Rubio-Jara, S.; Panera, J.; Uribelarrea, D.; Pérez-González, A. "Elephants and subsistence. Evidence of the human exploitation of extremely large mammal bones from the Middle Palaeolithic site of PRERESA (Madrid, Spain)". Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (4): 1063-1071, april 2012. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2011.12.004]

“In prehistoric times, hunting animals implied a risk and required a considerable amount of energy. Therefore, when the people of the Middle Palaeolithic (between 127,000 and 40,000 years ago) had an elephant in the larder, they did not leave a scrap. Humans that populated the Madrid region 84,000 years ago fed themselves on these prosbocideans' meat and they consumed their bone marrow, according to this new study. Until now, the scientific community doubted that consuming elephant meat was a common practice in that era due to the lack of direct evidence on the bones. It is still to be determined whether they are from the Mammuthus species of the Palaleoloxodon subspecies.

“The researchers found bones with cut marks, made for consuming the meat, and percussion for obtaining the bone marrow. "There are many sites, but few with fossil remains with marks that demonstrate humans' purpose" Jose Yravedra, researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and lead author of the study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science points out to SINC.

“This is the first time that percussion marks that showed an intentional bone fracture to get to the edible part inside have been documented. These had always been associated with tool manufacturing but in the remains found, this hypothesis was discarded. The tools found in the same area were made of flint and quartzite. The team, made up of archaeologists, zooarchaeologists and geologists from UCM, the Institute of Human Evolution in Africa (IDEA) in Madrid and the Spanish National Research Centre for Human Evolution (CENIEH) in Burgos, collected 82 bones from one elephant, linked to 754 stone tools, in an area of 255 metres squared, in the site of Preresa, on the banks of the river Manzanares.

“In the case of the cut marks on the fossil remains, these add to the "oldest evidence of exploiting elephants" in the site of Áridos, close to the river Jarama, according to another study published by Yravedra in the same journal. "There are few records about the exploitation of elephants in Siberia, North America and central Europe", the zooarchaeologist explains.

“The internal organs were what the predator ate first, be they human or any kind of carnivore. The prehistoric signs of the banquet help researchers to find out who was the first to sit down at the table, as the risk of hunting an elephant posed the question as to whether humans hunted it or were scavengers. "This is the next mystery to be solved" Yravedra replies, who reminds us that there is evidence of hunting in other smaller animals in the same site. However, due to the thickness of fibrous membranes and other elephant meat tissues, humans did not always leave marks on the bones. "And for this reason, sometimes it is difficult to determine if humans used their meat".

big fauna consumed at Blombos Cave in South Africa

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Ancient Foods ancientfoods.wordpress.com ; Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, and various books and other publications.

Last updated April 2024