Hunting by Hominins 500,000 to 100,000 Years Ago | Early European History And Religion

Home | Category: First Hominins in Europe

MEAT EATING AND PREHISTORIC HUMANS

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

First Spears — 460,000 Years Old

According to Archaeology magazine: Analysis of 210 stone tools from the site of Kathu Pan in South Africa shows that people were probably hunting with stone-tipped spears by about 460,000 years ago, roughly 200,000 years earlier than previously believed. The study, led by University of Toronto doctoral candidate Jayne Wilkins and published in the journal Science in November 2012, confirmed that the tools had broken in ways similar to other stone spear points that have been thrust or thrown into the bodies of animals. In addition, 23 of the tools appear to have been thinned at their bases to make them easier to attach to the shaft of a spear. To test their interpretation, the team made 32 replicas of the tools from Kathu Pan, hafted them to wooden dowels, and fired them into springbok carcasses using a crossbow that allowed for precise control of force. The replica spear points were damaged in ways similar to their ancient counterparts. The early date for the tools also suggests that the first stone-tipped spears were used by Homo heidelbergensis, the species of human that was the ancestor of both Neanderthals and modern humans. Kathu Pan is located in the Northern Cape region of South Africa..[Source: Zach Zorich, Archaeology magazine, March-April 2013]

One of the oldest wooden discoveries was a 400,000-year-old spear (a sharpened wooden stick without a stone point) in prehistoric sands at Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, in 1911. The discovery of spears from such an early date suggests that the technology to make spears must have been developed by species of hominin that predated both modern humans and Neanderthals and may have been their common ancestor. A strong candidate for this ancestor is Homo heidelbergensis.

Alok Jha wrote in The Guardian: The invention of stone-tipped spears was a significant point in human evolution, allowing our ancestors to kill animals more efficiently and have more regular access to meat, which they would have needed to feed ever-growing brains. "It's a more effective strategy which would have allowed early humans to have more regular access to meat and high-quality foods, which is related to increases in brain size, which we do see in the archaeological record of this time," said Wilkins. [Source: Alok Jha, The Guardian, November 15, 2012]

The technique needed to make stone-tipped spears, called hafting, would also have required humans to think and plan ahead: hafting is a multi-step manufacturing process that requires many different materials and skill to put them together in the right way. "It's telling us they're able to collect the appropriate raw materials, they're able to manufacture the right type of stone weapons, they're able to collect wooden shafts, they're able to haft the stone tools to the wooden shaft as a composite technology,"said Michael Petraglia, a professor of human evolution and prehistory at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the research. "This is telling us that we're dealing with an ancestor who is very bright."

The use of spears for hunting has been dated back to at least 600,000 years ago, from sites in Germany, but the oldest spears are nothing more than sharpened sticks. The evidence for stone-tipped spears until now has been no more than 300,000 years old, from triangular stone tips found all over Africa, Europe and western Asia. "They're associated in Europe and Asia with Neanderthals and in Africa with humans and our nearest ancestors," said Wilkins. "Sometimes at these sites, they were used for other ways as well, sometimes for cutting or butchery or as knives or in processing hides or other materials."

300,000-Year-Old Schoningen Spears

300,000 year old Schöningen spears

In a coal mine outside Schoningen, in northern Germany. archaeologists uncovered nine wooden spears, along with the remains of several dozen butchered horses. The spears have been dated to around 300,000 years ago, meaning they were likely used by early Neanderthals or Homo heidelbergensis. This counters the belief of some scholars that early humans were scavengers or at least not very sophisticated hunters. [Source:Daniel Weiss, Archaeology magazine, May-June 2020]

Daniel Weiss, Archaeology magazine, The spears, which measure around seven feet long, were produced by experienced weapon makers who planned their hunts in advance, says archaeologist Nicholas Conard of the University of Tubingen, who oversees excavations at Schoningen. All but one spear was made from spruce trees that had grown slowly in cold conditions, producing especially hard wood. The shafts were designed to be thicker, and therefore heavier, near the front, lending them greater stability in flight, and the tips were carved slightly off-center, to avoid the soft pith at the tree trunks’ cores. “They knew exactly what they were doing,” says Conard. The Schoningen spears were likely thrown by hand, making them most effective at close range. Much later in hominin development, modern humans devised spear-throwers called atlatls that allowed them to fling projectiles at greater velocity and hunt game from farther away.

According to the University of Tübingen: “Archeologists from the University of Tübingen have found eight extremely well-preserved spears — an astonishing 300,000 years old. The spears and other artifacts as well as animal remains found at the site demonstrate that their users were highly skilled craftsmen and hunters, well adapted to their environment — with a capacity for abstract thought and complex planning comparable to our own. It is likely that they were members of the species Homo heidelbergensis, although no human remains have yet been found at the site. [Source: Universitaet Tübingen, Science Daily September 17, 2012 |++|]

“The project is headed by Prof. Nicholas Conard and the excavations are supervised by Dr. Jordi Serangeli, both from the University of Tübingen’s Institute of Prehistory, which has been supporting the local authority’s excavation in an open-cast brown coal mine in Schöningen since 2008. They are applying skills from several disciplines at this uniquely well-preserved site find out more about how humans lived in the environment of 300,000 years ago. “The bones of large mammals — elephants, rhinoceroses, horses and lions — as well as the remains of amphibians, reptiles, shells and even beetles have been preserved in the brown coal. Pines, firs, and black alder trees are preserved complete with pine cones, as have the leaves, pollen and seeds of surrounding flora. |++|

300,000-Year-Old Javelin-Like Hunting Stick

According to a study published July 19, 2023 in the journal PLOS ONE, a 300,000-year-old, stick discovered in Schöningen, Germany in 1994 was was scraped, seasoned, and sanded, showing woodworking skills of the hominin who made them were more sophisticated and developed than scientists had previously thought. Creating lightweight weapons may have been used in group hunts of animals. The stick is currently on display at the Forschungsmuseum in Schöningen.[Source: Laura Baisas, Popular Science, July 19, 2023]

The 76-centimeter (two-and-a-half foot) -long stick was first discovered alongside other tools including throwing spears, thrusting spears, and a second throwing stick that was similarly sized. This study used advanced imaging technology — micro-CT scanning, 3D models, and 3D microscopy — to examine the stick and tools. “Our study confirms that this tool is the earliest known ‘throwing stick’, which is a weapon that was thrown rotationally, similar to a boomerang,” co-author and University of Reading palaeolithic archaeologist Annemieke Milks tells PopSci. “The slight curve of the tool, as well as how it was shaped to have more mass towards one half, rather than in the middle, would have helped it to rotate. We think that it might have been thrown at distances as far as 30 meters [98 feet].”

Laura Baisas wrote in Popular Science: The stick was most likely used to hunt medium sized game such as red and roe deer, and potentially quicker and smaller prey including birds and hare. It likely would have been thrown like a modern day javelin. While it is lightweight, the high velocities at which these weapons can be launched could have resulted in some deadly high-energy impacts.

The carefully shaped points, fine surface, and polish from handling also suggested that it was part of a personal kit that was repeatedly used, instead of a quickly made tool that was thrown away. The 3D microscopy and micro-CT scanning helped the team identify all of the building steps, including how the bark was removed, how the two points were shaped, and how the wood was worked away to force a more aerodynamic weapon. “We were really excited to see just how many steps and how detailed the woodworking is on this tool. We could also see that they sanded the surface to make it finely finished, and that some polish shows they used this tool for a really long time. This was a tool that was beautifully crafted and used for some time,” says Milks.

These early hunting weapons can also be thought of as tools that whole communities would use. Footprints belonging to both adults and children have been discovered at Schöningen, indicating that children were present at this site. At this time, hunting was key to survival, some children as young as three or four would learn to throw and use weapons and girls and women likely weren’t excluded from learning these crucial skills. “In some societies, they start hunting in groups of kids, without any adults at all, and then in their teenage years they start hunting larger animals,” says Milks. “Although we don’t know for sure who threw this weapon, smaller tools like this throwing stick may have been particularly well-suited for kids to learn with.”

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.

Giant Elephants Hunted 420,000 Years Ago in England

Research by University of Southampton archaeologist Dr Francis Wenban-Smith suggests that early humans, who lived thousands of years before Neanderthals, were able to work together in groups to hunt and slaughter animals as large as the prehistoric elephant. Dr Wenban-Smith discovered a site containing remains of an extinct straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) in 2003, in an area of land at Ebbsfleet in Kent, during the construction of the High Speed 1 rail link from the Channel Tunnel to London. [Source: University of Southampton, September 19, 2013]

The University of Southampton reported: “Excavation revealed a deep sequence of deposits containing the elephant remains, along with numerous flint tools and a range of other species such as; wild aurochs, extinct forms of rhinoceros and lion, Barbary macaque, beaver, rabbit, various forms of vole and shrew, and a diverse assemblage of snails. These remains confirm that the deposits date to a warm period of climate around 420,000 years ago, the so-called Hoxnian interglacial, when the climate was probably slightly warmer than the present day.

“Since the excavation, which took place in 2004, Francis has been carrying out a detailed analysis of evidence recovered from the site, including 80 undisturbed flint artefacts found scattered around the elephant carcass and used to butcher it. The pre-historic elephant was twice the size of today’s African variety and up to four times the weight of family car.

“Dr Wenban-Smith comments: “Although there is no direct evidence of how this particular animal met its end, the discovery of flint tools close to the carcass confirm butchery for its meat, probably by a group of at least four individuals. “Early hominins of this period would have depended on nutrition from large herbivores. The key evidence for elephant hunting is that, of the few prehistoric butchered elephant carcasses that have been found across Europe, they are almost all large males in their prime, a pattern that does not suggest natural death and scavenging. Although it seems incredible that they could have killed such an animal, it must have been possible with wooden spears.. We know hominins of this period had these, and an elephant skeleton with a wooden spear through its ribs was found at the site of Lehringen in Germany in 1948. These early humans suffered local extinction in Northern Europe during the great ice age known as the Anglian glaciation 450,000 years ago, but re-established themselves as the climate grew warmer again in the following Hoxnian interglacial.

“An ability to hunt large mammals, and in particular elephants, as suggested by the Ebbsfleet find, would go some way to explaining how these people then managed to push northwards again into what is now Britain. The flint artefacts of these pioneer settlers are of a characteristic type known as Clactonian, mostly comprising simple razor-sharp flakes that would have been ideal for cutting meat, sometimes with notches on them that would have helped cut through the tougher animal hide.

“The discovery of this previously undisturbed Elephant grave site is unique in Britain — where only a handful of other elephant skeletons have been found and none of which have produced similar evidence of human exploitation. Dr Wenban-Smith explains the Ebbsfleet area would have been very different from today: “Rich fossilised remains surrounding the elephant skeleton, including pollen, snails and a wide variety of vertebrates, provide a remarkable record of the climate and environment the early humans inhabited. “Analysis of these deposits show they lived at a time of peak interglacial warmth, when the Ebbsfleet Valley was a lush, densely wooded tributary of the Thames, containing a quiet, almost stagnant swamp.” The layer of earth containing the elephant remains and flints is overlain by a higher level of sediment, rich in so-called Acheulian tool types — handaxes of various forms from later in the same interglacial. Controversy surrounds whether or not these represent a later wave of colonisation of Britain, or whether the Clactonians themselves evolved a more sophisticated tool-kit as they developed a more sustained occupation.

Hominids Ate Rabbits 400,000 Years Ago

In 2019, Bruce Bower wrote in the Sciencenews.org: Now-extinct members of the human genus, Homo, hunted rabbits and, to a lesser extent, hares in southern France and probably other Mediterranean parts of Europe by around 400,000 years ago, researchers report online March 6 in Science Advances. Hunters also bagged larger creatures such as wild goats and deer. The new finding may highlight the flexibility and innovativeness of these ancient relatives of humans. [Source: Bruce Bower, Sciencenews.org, March 16, 2019]

That dietary shift to smaller animals away from eating primarily large game emerged long before a previously recognized change in ancient humans’ eating habits, concludes a team led by paleoanthropologist Eugène Morin of Trent University in Peterborough, Canada. In the later transition, Stone Age people dramatically broadened what they ate, including a wide variety of small animals, starting around 36,000 years ago.

Morin’s group studied 21 sets of animal fossils and stone tools previously excavated at eight sites in southern France. All but one collection included large numbers of fossil leporids, the family of rabbits and hares. Cuts made by stone tools, likely during butchery, appeared on leporid remains from 17 fossil sets. At the oldest site, Terra Amata, about half of 205 identified animal bones from a 400,000-year-old sediment layer belonged to leporids. Other small-game sites studied by the researchers dated to as recently as around 60,000 years ago.

Ancient Homo groups mainly hunted rabbits that probably existed in large numbers in Mediterranean areas ranging from Spain to Italy, Morin’s team suspects. Colony-dwelling rabbits were probably easier to hunt than hares, which are solitary animals. After 40,000 years ago, the investigators suspect that humans hunted hares regularly, possibly tracking the elusive creatures down with the aid of dogs by 11,500 years ago

End of Homo Erectus and Rise of Modern Humans Caused by Demise of Elephants in Middle East 400,000 Years Ago?

American Friends of Tel Aviv University reported: “ Elephants have long been known to be part of the Homo erectus diet. But the significance of this specific food source, in relation to both the survival of Homo erectus and the evolution of modern humans, has never been understood — until now. When Tel Aviv University researchers Dr. Ran Barkai, Miki Ben-Dor, and Prof. Avi Gopher of TAU's Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies examined the published data describing animal bones associated with Homo erectus at the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in Israel, they found that elephant bones made up only two to three percent the total. But these low numbers are misleading, they say. While the six-ton animal may have only been represented by a tiny percentage of bones at the site, it actually provided as much as 60 percent of animal-sourced calories. [Source: Science Daily,American Friends of Tel Aviv University, December 12, 2011]

“The elephant, a huge package of food that is easy to hunt, disappeared from the Middle East 400,000 years ago — an event that must have imposed considerable nutritional stress on Homo erectus. Working with Prof. Israel Hershkovitz of TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, the researchers connected this evidence about diet with other cultural and anatomical clues and concluded that the new hominins recently discovered at Qesem Cave in Israel — who had to be more agile and knowledgeable to satisfy their dietary needs with smaller and faster prey — took over the Middle Eastern landscape and eventually replaced Homo erectus.

“The findings, which have been reported in the journal PLoS One, suggest that the disappearance of elephants 400,000 years ago was the reason that modern humans first appeared in the Middle East. In Africa, elephants disappeared from archaeological sites and Homo sapiens emerged much later — only 200,000 years ago. Unlike other primates, humans' ability to extract energy from plant fiber and convert protein to energy is limited. So in the absence of fire for cooking, the Homo erectus diet could only consist of a finite amount of plant and protein and would have needed to be supplemented by animal fat. For this reason, elephants were the ultimate prize in hunting — slower than other sources of prey and large enough to feed groups, the giant animals had an ideal fat-to-protein ratio that remained constant regardless of the season. In short, says Ben-Dor, they were the ideal food package for Homo erectus.

When elephants began to die out, Homo erectus "needed to hunt many smaller, more evasive animals. Energy requirements increased, but with plant and protein intake limited, the source had to come from fat. He had to become calculated about hunting," Ben-Dor says, noting that this change is evident in the physical appearance of modern humans, lighter than Homo erectus and with larger brains. To confirm these findings, the researchers compared archaeological evidence from two sites in Israel: Gesher B'not Yaakov, dating back nearly 800,000 years and associated with Homo erectus; and Qesem Cave, dated 400,000 to 200,000 years ago. Gesher B'not Yaakov contains elephant bones, but at Qesem Cave, which is bereft of elephant bones, the researchers discovered signs of post-erectus hominins, with blades and sophisticated behaviors such as food sharing and the habitual use of fire.

“Modern humans evolved in Africa 200,000 years ago, says Dr. Barkai, and the ruling paradigm is that this was their first worldwide appearance. Archaeological records tell us that elephants in Africa disappeared alongside the Acheulian culture with the emergence of modern humans there. Though elephants can be found today in Africa, few species survived and no evidence of the animal can be found in archaeological sites after 200,000 years ago. The similarity to the circumstances of the Middle East 400,000 years ago is no coincidence, claim the researchers. Not only do their findings on elephants and the Homo erectus diet give a long-awaited explanation for the evolution of modern humans, but they also call what scientists know about the "birth-place" of modern humans into question. Evidence from the Qesem Cave corroborates this revolutionary timeline. Findings from the site dated from as long as 400,000 years ago, clearly indicate the presence of new and innovative human behavior and a new human type. This sets the stage for a new understanding of the human story, says Prof. Gopher.”

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 May 2024