American paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner is an expert in studying the diets of extinct hominids. One day he was looking for signs of animal bites on a fossil tibia dating back to 1.45 million years ago when he noticed something strange. The bone, found in Kenya in the 1970s and preserved in the Kenya National Museum, had several straight, parallel marks on one end that could not have come from an animal’s teeth. Today, Pobiner and other colleagues argue that this may be the oldest known case of human cannibalism.
When Pobiner found the sections, he made a mold with the kind of paste dentists use to reproduce their patients’ dentures and sent it to Michael Pante of Colorado State University. It gave him no idea what the markings might be. Pante examined them and compared them to nearly 900 bone tubes made in meat and quartering experiments. The researchers conclude that those marks were made by a hominid wielding a sharp stone tool, likely to slice and eat the flesh, according to a study Monday in Scientific Reports.
“Both modern humans and our ancestors practiced cannibalism, and this finding tells us how old the practice is,” Pobiner, a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution in the United States, told the newspaper.
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The fossil analyzed could not be assigned to a specific species with absolute certainty. It may have been Homo habilis, a hominid who could make tools; an antec, the first hominid with a body very similar to ours, that left Africa and colonized Eurasia two million years ago. The remains could also come from a parathropist, a more primitive hominin notable for its powerful jaws.
It is also impossible to know whether the cannibalism occurred between two members of the same species and is therefore cannibalism, or whether it was committed by different hominids, meaning it was hunting or scavenging. Despite these uncertainties, scientists consider it highly likely that cannibalism is involved; the oldest of which there is evidence. In the study, the experts argue that it is very unlikely that the markings were made after the find, for example when handling it in the museum, since the indentations would be a different colour.
The oldest case to date of conspecific-eating hominids involves ten individuals, most of them children and juveniles, who were murdered, dismembered, gutted and eaten by conspecifics about 900,000 years ago in the Sierra de Atapuerca, in Burgos. In this case, the evidence for cannibalism is much clearer, explains Palmira Saladié of the Catalan Institute of Human Palaeoecology. “The bones show a lot of cut marks and fractures in the long bones that consume the marrow and skull and get to the brain,” he explains. The researchers of this website believe that these infanticides are the result of war between opposing groups that contested the game and resources of the rich Sierra of Burgos. The weakest individuals were attacked, killed and eaten, but not out of hunger, as animal bones were found at the site alongside human fossils. For paleoanthropologists, this is the difference between “dietary” cannibalism due to starvation and “ritual or martial” cannibalism, Saladié explains. “These behaviors are similar to those currently observed between hostile chimpanzee groups,” he adds. US researchers believe that in the case of Kenya, cannibalism was for food only.
More contemporary and more diverse cannibalism has occurred throughout human evolution. For example, there is cannibalism out of appreciation, when members of a clan devour the remains of a loved one to keep them from rotting, and as a gesture of respect. There is also the opposite side, when the enemy is devoured to inflict utter humiliation: turning him into feces. Numerous traces of a common ritual before and after the Neolithic Revolution about 8,000 years ago, using the human skull as a cup, have been found at Atapuerca.
To the paleoanthropologist, the Kenyan finds are likely genuine and represent a case of cannibalism, although more remains would be needed to prove this. “It always struck us as odd that there was no evidence of cannibalism among the hominids of Africa, when there is so much later evidence, from the Homo antecessor of Atapuerca to the Homo sapiens that passed through the Neanderthals,” he points out. “It’s hard to prove that it’s single-bone cannibalism, but it’s highly likely,” adds Saladié.
The Kenyan bone has some secondary marks that make its story more interesting: it has bites from a cat. “The bite marks suggest that a lion had access first, consuming the bulk of the muscle, and that hominids subsequently ate the small pieces of meat left at the end of the tibia, but did not break it to consume the marrow; It’s fascinating,” points out Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo, a researcher in Atapuerca.
The fossil poses another mystery. The bone was found in 1970 by famed paleoanthropologist Mary Leaky at the Koobi Fora site. Three years later, his American colleague Anna Behrensmeyer analyzed the bone. “How Behrensmeyer interpreted these characters when he analyzed the rest in 1973 fascinates me, since he is one of the foremost minds in taphonomy. [la parte de la paleontología que estudia los procesos de fosilización] worldwide,” says Rodríguez-Hidalgo. “Although he described all the changes we see in the photos, he did not identify these small transverse marks, which are now thought to be intentional cuts to eat the flesh,” explains the paleoanthropologist.
The Kenyan case joins two more recent human remains found in Africa that show inconclusive traces of cannibalism: the skulls of Bodo (Ethiopia) and Sterkfontein (South Africa). But there is no conclusive evidence for Hernández in either case. “This case is not indisputable, but I think that eventually more remains will come to light as cannibalism appears to be inherent in human evolution and the oldest occurrences are eventually in Africa.” Currently, Atapuerca remains the oldest firm evidence of cannibalism in of human history,” he concludes.
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