Fossil evidence for early hominids as scavengers

Were early humans skilled hunters, or did they often arrive after another animal had made the kill?

That is the distinction the research will investigate. The opening presents Darwin's familiar picture of confident, clever hunter-gatherers, then asks us to reconsider how that picture became established.

The fossil discoveries came largely in reverse order. Remains of relatively recent ancestors were found first, and progressively earlier hominids were found later. The first-discovered Neanderthals resembled modern humans. Anthropologists then carried assumptions about modern lifestyles back to more distant ancestors.

But looking alike doesn't establish living alike. We should want evidence about how those earlier hominids actually obtained food.

The first paragraph also warns us to keep modern hunter-gatherers separate from prehistoric ones. The fire, clothing, shelter, weapons, language, and complex strategies listed here belong to the modern societies being used for comparison. We can't simply project that entire package backward. The environments differ too: modern hunter-gatherers face fewer large animal predators. A comparison that ignores those differences can make ancient life look easier and more familiar than it was.

Paragraph 2 introduces a way to examine the evidence more closely: taphonomy, the study of how skeletal remains become fossils. It asks what happened to the remains, not merely what species they belonged to.

Who deposited a pile of bones—a predator, a human hunter, or floodwaters? What left a mark on an animal bone—a tooth or a tool? Those questions help connect physical remains to past behavior.

The researchers study animal fossils, hominid fossils, and tools nearly two million years old. They compare microscopic grooves on fossil bones with marks on modern bones. That lets them distinguish stone-tool cuts from carnivore toothmarks and abrasion caused by sediment.

Now we get two findings. The tool marks don't occur systematically at the joints, and carnivore toothmarks often lie underneath the tool cuts.

The second finding gives us a useful prediction. If a tool cut lies over a toothmark, the toothmark came first. That suggests the carnivore got to the animal before the hominid used a tool on its remains. Perhaps the hominids were scavenging rather than making the original kill.

The next paragraph confirms that this is the researchers' interpretation. They hypothesize that early hominids took meat left from carnivore kills. The evidence isn't presented as a demonstration that they were unintelligent. It supports a different account of how they obtained meat. They still used tools.

Wear on the hominids' own teeth provides another piece of the picture: they ate mainly fruit and only occasional meat. Notice the change in evidence. Marks on prey bones help identify who handled the carcass and in what order; wear on hominid teeth helps researchers infer diet.

The physical traits described next make the scavenging account plausible. Tree-climbing agility could help hominids escape predators and obtain a good vantage point. Walking upright could help them scan the ground for carcasses and carry useful tools. These are advantages for the proposed way of getting food, not evidence that they overpowered large predators.

We end with a less confident image: hominids spending time in trees, foraging, and scavenging alone or in small groups. It contrasts with the older picture of humans mastering their world through hunting.

Our main point should include the reason for the change, not merely say that the older picture was mistaken. New ways of examining fossil evidence support the alternative. The account presents a research-based revision; it doesn't establish that every early hominid behaved identically or that the entire field has already accepted a replacement theory.