Human ancestors slaughtered and ate each other's meat
A leg bone of a humanoid race and below it an enlarged image of an area bearing the marks of cutting with sharp stone tools (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History)
The results of a scientific study have increased the value of museum holdings in relation to research on species associated with humans
Scientists have identified the oldest evidence of cannibalism in close relatives of the human race that seem to have butchered and eaten each other's meat.
The study, published Monday in the journal Scientific Reports, includes an evaluation of nine cut marks on a 1.45-million-year-old left tibia bone belonging to a close relative of modern humans found in northern Kenya.
The researchers, which included scientists from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Americas, indicated that the cut marks appeared to be caused by damage caused by stone tools.
They added that this may be the oldest evidence of cannibalism in hominids known with a high degree of certainty and confidence.
“The information we currently have tells us that hominins appeared to have been eating each other for at least 1.45 million years,” said study co-author Briana Bubener. “There are a number of other similar examples associated with species that belong to the evolutionary tree. ” "Humans , indicating that members of those species consumed each other's meat for food. In turn, these fossils show that our species' close relatives ate each other to continue living much longer than we imagined."
For the first time, researchers found a fossilized leg bone in the National Museums collections at the Nairobi National Museum in Kenya while searching for clues about prehistoric predatory species that hunted and ate ancient human relatives.
Looking at the shinbone with a hand-held magnifying glass to see any bite marks from extinct beasts, Dr. Bubener instead noticed what immediately looked like evidence of slaughter.
Next, Bubiner sent templates of the cut-out marks made from the same materials dentists use to make dental impressions.
The researchers then subjected the molds to 3D-scans and compared the shape of the marks against a database of 898 individual dental, butchering and crushing marks previously created based on peer-reviewed experiments.
The scientists were able to positively identify 9 of the 11 marks as signs that clearly corresponded to the type of damage caused by stone tools, while the other two were considered as possible bite marks from a big cat. [The named species includes big cats, animals such as lions, tigers, and leopards].
While the cut marks in and of themselves don't prove that the human relative who caused them could have made a meal out of the leg, Dr. Buebner suspected it was the more likely scenario.
She points out that the cut marks are on the leg where the calf muscle is supposed to attach to the bone, a good point to cut to remove a piece of meat.
These marks were also found to be oriented in a way that indicates that a hand used a stone tool that made them without changing the grip or adjusting the angle of attack.
"Those cut marks look very similar to what I've seen in fossil animals that were prepared for consumption. It seems most likely that the meat on this leg was eaten and the eating took place for the purpose of nourishment and not for a ritual," added Dr. Buebner.
On the other hand, some scientists believe that there is no sufficient evidence to definitively conclude that it is a sign indicating the phenomenon of cannibalism, because this would require that the eater and the eater be descendants of the same species.
While the fossilized bone has been identified as coming from a species close to humans, many experts believe that there is not enough information to identify the specimen as belonging to a particular species of hominin. They also consider that the use of stone tools does not exclusively identify the taxa that may have performed the cutting process.
In a related context, some researchers have raised questions about a common hypothesis that making and using stone tools is limited to a single species, Homo [which includes humans and similar ancestors].
And by extension, the fossil evidence may be a sign of cannibalism in the prehistoric era , but it is also possible that this was limited to a case involving a human ancestor or a close species that fed on the flesh of its relatives.
The researchers added that it is difficult to infer anything about the sequence of accidents that occurred from the bite marks. They therefore consider it to be a lion that scavenged through the remains after the hominins had removed most of the flesh from the tibia, or in another scenario it could have been a large cat that killed an unlucky hominin before being chased out by opportunistic hominins and appropriated.
In conclusion, the researchers consider that the results shed light on the value of this type of museum collection.
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