Earliest Evidence of Human Hunting and Scavenging Discovered

About two million years ago, our ancient ancestors roamed Africa. At this time, these early, stone tool-making humans underwent a change; they began to look a bit more like modern humans with larger bodies and larger brains. Now, scientists have discovered exactly how these people managed to support themselves and their families.

Researchers examined an ancient site called Kanjera South, Kenya (KJS). There, they found well-preserved and stratified layers of animal remains. Working on the site for more than a decade, the scientists eventually recovered thousands of animal bones and rudimentary stone tools. After examining these remains, the researchers found that these early humans probably used both hunting and scavenging strategies in order to survive.

"Considered in total, this study provides important early archaeological evidence for meat eating, hunting and scavenging behaviors--cornerstone adaptations that likely facilitated brain expansion into human evolution, movement of hominins out of Africa and into Eurasia, as well as important shifts in our social behavior, anatomy and physiology," said Joseph Ferraro, one of the researchers, in a news release.

As they examined the ancient bones found at the site, the researchers noticed numerous small antelope carcasses. Likely, they were transported whole to the site before being cut and prepared for eating--as evidenced by the numerous cut marks found on the bones. In addition to these cut marks, the scientists also found signs that the ancient humans used fist-sized rocks to break open bones in order to acquire the marrow inside.

So how do we know that our ancestors actually hunted these animals and didn't steal them from larger predators? Previous studies have shown that predators completely devour antelopes of the size found within minutes of their deaths. Because of this, the only way that the people could have gained access to these remains on the savanna would have been through active hunting.

That doesn't mean that they only hunted, though. The researchers also discovered isolated heads from larger carcasses. It's very possible that these heads were scavenged from mostly-consumed bodies that larger predators had brought down. Humans were able to break these heads open with stone tools in order to access the nutritious brains within.

"KJS hominins not only scavenged these head remains, they also transported them some distance to the archaeological site before breaking them open and consuming the brains," said Ferraro. "This is important because it provides the earliest archaeological evidence of this type of resource transport behavior in the human lineage."

The findings are published in the journal PLOS One.