(ORDO NEWS) — Hundreds of tools about 2.9 million years old were found next to the remains of Paranthropus and Behemoths – and the latter, it seems, were butchered with these tools.
This is very intriguing, because today hippos are one of the most dangerous species for people in Africa and the world.
The traditional picture of the evolution of human ancestors is something like this.
Approximately 4.2 million years ago, australopithecines arose – upright with not very massive skeletons and, presumably, fed on a mixed, vegetable and meat diet.
They had massive relatives – paranthropes (also known as “massive australopithecines”). Judging by the isotopes in their really large teeth, they fed mainly on savannah plants.
On this basis, it was assumed that they were far from tool activity and generally remained a less advanced species.
Until the 21st century, many researchers believed that Australopithecus did not make stone tools.
The first manufacturer of these was often called Homo habilis.- the first representative of the genus Homo (people), who lived about two million years ago.
The tools of the Olduvai culture were associated with it – massive and not particularly elegantly made, but already with well-established forms, allowing us to speak of a stable archaeological culture.
It is also worth noting here that, as it turned out in the last decades, sometimes wild monkeys can also use stones as tools, and some are even able to give them significant modifications of shape.
However, this behavior cannot be called stable, as well as the forms of improvised tools resulting from this.
As a result, the set “archaeological culture – genus Homo” was considered by many to be a serious step towards distinguishing human ancestors from other animal species.
This painting began to have problems after tools were found with a tentative date of 2.6 million years. There are no indisputable finds of Homo habilis of such antiquity.
It turned out that tools of the Olduvai culture could also be made by Australopithecus.
Moreover, the researchers found (in one place, that is, as a product of systematic activity) a number of tools with traces of modification and antiquity of 3.3 million years.
First, the age of the three hundred stone tools analyzed by the authors is from 2.6 to 3.0 million years.
Most likely, at least some of them are at least 2.9 million years old. At the same time, they are clearly Olduvai – there are all the main forms of this culture.
However, there are no traces of Homo bones in the area. There are two teeth of paranthropes and traces of hippopotamus bones – with something like traces of their butchering for meat with stone tools.
Nearby there are remains of large bulls, but there are no unambiguous traces of butchering on them.
It turns out that the inventors of the Olduvai culture could have been paranthropes – massive, seemingly primitive Australopithecus, who mainly had a plant-based diet.
But how to combine this with the presence of nearby remains of large butchered animals?
The authors of the work believe that, despite the “herbivorous” features of the dental apparatus of paranthropes, in the case of using stone tools for cutting animal meat, they could also eat it.
At the same time, it is not so easy to exclude other versions.
For example, that the remains of Paranthropus ended up here in the same way as the bones of Behemoths – after their death, in order to be eaten by those who created these oldest known tools of the Olduvai type.
A serious impression is made by the presence of hippopotamus bones. In nature, these large animals are found mainly in groups.
Due to their great strength and complex nature, they often successfully attack people and even in our time kill them much more often than lions.
Picking up the body of a hippopotamus after its natural death is difficult due to their group lifestyle.
A hippopotamus can be killed on the hunt without firearms, but this is an outstanding result, which speaks of the most serious hunting skills for any predatory species.
If the ancestors of people 2.9 million years ago really knew how to do something similar, then anthropologists missed something in the analysis of that period.
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