Telltale marks on a bone from an early human’s leg could be the earliest evidence of cannibalism
Brian Handwerk
Science Correspondent
June 26, 2023 5:00 a.m.
Craving the meatiest chunk of the lower leg, a Paleolithic butcher struck again and again with a sharp stone blade, removing flesh from bone with practiced skill. When the job was done, this unknown ancient relative of ours was rewarded with a satisfying feast—from the body of another early human.
A recent discovery in a Kenyan museum—previously unnoticed cut marks on a 1.45-million-year-old shin bone—may be the oldest evidence of ancient human relatives butchering and presumably eating each other. Nine distinctive marks, oriented in the same direction, show repetitive cuts in the place where calf muscle attaches to bone, revealing a stone tool methodology typically used to remove meat. Two bite marks show a big cat also chomped on the bone at some point.
Because only the shin bone survives, researchers can’t say just which ancient species of Homo sapiens relative was cut up and devoured. They also don’t know whether the same species or a different relative stripped and presumably ate the calf muscle. If the two were the same species, the find may represent the earliest known example of cannibalism. If not, the grizzly tableau still represents one evolutionary cousin having another for dinner—and not as a guest.
“We just know that some tool-wielding hominin came and cut meat off of that bone,” says paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, who studies the evolution of human diet. “The most plausible explanation is that they did that to eat it.”
More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/our-human-relatives-butchered-and-ate-each-other-145-million-years-ago-180982425/
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