A new one in study They present us with an ancient, distant relative who, according to signs, was cut and then eaten, writing Scientific alert. The researchers examined a 1.45-million-year-old tibia covered in cuts found in Kenya.
Brianna Bobiner, an employee of the Smithsonian Institution, and his colleagues performed 3D examinations of visible injuries on the remains and experiments using bones. Based on the results, cuts were made with stone tools as the meat was skinned.
There are known species in the human evolutionary tree that eat each other, and cannibalism is not without precedent. But the new discovery shows that this behavior is much older than expected.
Based on analysis of casts made from the tibia, 9 of the 11 wounds found were clearly intentional cuts made with a stone tool, while the other two appeared to have been bitten by lions. It is not known which of the wounds occurred first, but in any case the cuts point in the same direction and are located at the junction of the calf bone.
It appears that the user of the device has extracted the meat. According to Bobinar, the cuts were not made for ritual purposes, the meat was definitely eaten.
The bone was first described in the 1970s, and then it Australopithecus poiesiBound, but later Homo erectusto do Today, experts believe that the find cannot be clearly identified, nor can it be determined which species ate the meat.
The researchers did not rule out the possibility of finding the remains of an even older, processed hominin in time. The present study demonstrates that it is useful to look at existing findings.