Researchers might have found the earliest evidence that ancient humans butchered and ate each other’s flesh
Credit: S. Entressangle/E. Daynes/Science Photo Library
“The most logical conclusion is, like the other animals, this hominin was butchered to be eaten,” says study co-author Briana Pobiner, a palaeoanthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. The discovery was “shocking, honestly, and very surprising, but very exciting”, she adds.
She took impressions of the features and compared them against a database of nearly 900 marks made on modern bones using a variety of methods, prepared by her colleagues. The researchers concluded that 2 of the 11 marks were from lion bites, but that the other 9 were made by stone tools — suggesting that one individual might have been butchering another.
Previous analyses at other archaeological sites found that flesh could have been removed from the bones for ritualistic or funerary reasons in ancient hominin societies. But these behaviours have not yet been observed in hominins found in Kenya around the early Pleistocene period. Furthermore, the marks are located where the leg’s popliteus muscle begins, near the calf. To make this gouge, the cutter must have first removed the larger gastrocnemius muscle — likely a good source of meat.
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