Archaeologists from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie and Leiden University say they have found cut marks on the bones of two beaver species from the 400,000-year-old hominin open air site of Bilzingsleben in central Germany. Their results demonstrate a greater diversity of prey choice by Middle Pleistocene hominins than commonly acknowledged, and a much deeper history of broad-spectrum subsistence than commonly assumed, already visible in prey choices 400,000 years ago.
“A solid understanding of early hominin diets, key for tracking human behavioral and cognitive evolution, is hampered by the fact that the archaeological record is strongly biased towards the remains of large ungulates, while it is well-established that a reliance on game meat alone would not have provided a sufficient subsistence base given human dietary needs,” said study’s first author Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser and her colleagues.
“Despite various biases, recentl studies documented a greater diversity in hominin food choices, including regular exploitation of a variety of small animals, plant and aquatic foods, not only for the early modern human lineage in Africa, but also for Neanderthals, be it mainly from the southern parts of their range.”
“Most of that evidence dates respectively to the Middle Stone Age of Africa and to the later Middle Paleolithic in Europe, from about 125,000 years ago onwards,” they noted.
“Far less is still known about the subsistence base of the Middle Pleistocene predecessors of both lineages, with that record still strongly suggestive of a narrow, large- and medium-sized ungulates focused subsistence base.”
In their research, the authors examined a large faunal assemblage from the 400,000-year-old hominin site of Bilzingsleben in Thuringia, central Germany.
They used magnifying glasses and digital microscopes to analyze 2,496 remains (1,963 teeth and 533 cranial and postcranial bones and bone…
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