Prehistoric humans were able to take down giant prey with skillful techniques

According to a controversial new theory, prehistoric humans specialized in taking down giant prey more than 2 million years ago.

The extinct prehistoric mammoth was believed to be prehistoric human prey. A controversial new study found that the first humans were large predators who took down prey with skilled hunting skills. In a new research paper, the scientists argue that humans and close relatives have been adept hunters from a very early age, starting at least 2 million years ago. Miki Ben-Dor and Ran Barkai, researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel, and Raphael Sirtoli, a PhD student at Minho University in Portugal. “Until now, efforts to recreate the Stone Age human diet have been based mainly on comparison with 20th century hunter-gatherer societies,” says Ben-Dor. Of course, this comparison is lame, because 2 million years ago, hunter-gatherer societies could hunt and consume elephants and other large animals, while hunter-gatherers today. It can’t be like that. The whole ecosystem has changed, and the conditions cannot be compared. ” Scary evidence Fossil evidence from earliest human ancestors is scarce. But based on archaeological evidence, Ben-Dor said, it was clear that Homo sapiens and their close relatives ate anything that was edible. But how much of their diet consists of plants versus animals is the bottom line. Many animals that are considered omnivores actually have the diet in one way or another. Chimpanzees, for example, are technically omnivores, but meat makes up only about 6% of their diet. Dogs and wolves are predominantly carnivorous but sometimes also nibble on grain, leading to a debate over whether they should be classified as omnivores or predators. According to Ben-Dor, ancient humans Homo habilis ate meat at least 2.6 million years ago. Another primitive human species, Homo erectus, appeared to be an avid carnivore 1.8 million years ago; Their teeth and intestines shrank compared to their previous ancestors, adapted to digest meat instead of plants, and it used stone tools capable of grinding meat. Ben-Dor and Barkai argue in their paper, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, that meat is not just a reward for these humans and the early Homo sapiens. Instead, the authors believe, large animals weighing more than 1,000 kg, such as elephants, hippos and rhinos … make up the bulk of the human diet. The elephants 500,000 years ago could weigh 12 tons, compared with 4 to 6 tons today. Eat a lot of meat, human brain evolution? According to the researchers, these animals can eat fatty meat, which is very suitable to feed the energy-hungry human brain. The authors argued in another recent article that hunting large prey could be the driving force behind human brain evolution. However, the idea is controversial, and researchers disagree on how huge amounts of meat would be useful to hunter-gatherers in the days before refrigeration, as well as about ancient humans skilled in taking down prey that other predators like lions, struggled to defeat. “There are some archaeologists who say, they hunted elephants once, but it’s like a once in a lifetime hunt; that’s what grandparents often tell their children,” John said. “There are people who say that elephant meat can last a long time without preserving, but it’s part of their routine,” said Hawks, a paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. important to them. ‘” Ben-Dor and his colleagues wrote in their article that eating large, fatty animals would be a benefit to humankind at the earliest, because losing so many calories on a hunting trip – instead of repeatedly trying to stalk smaller prey. Humans exhibit this high-fat adaptation, researchers say. Archeologically speaking, it was difficult to classify humans and their relatives as carnivores before about 50,000 years ago. That’s because the only reliable biochemical way to distinguish an animal as the top predator or lower in the food chain is a method known as stable nitrogen isotope analysis, requires collagen testing for molecules that are taken orally into the body. Despite the limited evidence of humankind’s early evolution, the researchers say, much remains to be done to prove whether the human ancestor was indeed carnivores. This could include more research on the abundance of animals of different sizes during the Pleistocene, exploring genetic changes over time that could alter the digestibility of species. Different human feeds and comparison of prey size trends over time.