2023-09-14 15:45:37
A new study reveals that the extinction of large prey, on which human nutrition had been based, forced prehistoric humans to develop improved weapons to hunt small, more elusive prey, thus driving evolutionary adaptations in humans.
The study was carried out by Miki Ben-Dor and Ran Barkai, both from Tel Aviv University in Israel.
This study was designed to verify a hypothesis that the researchers proposed in a previous study published in 2021. The hypothesis explains the cultural and physiological evolution of prehistoric humans (including increased cognitive abilities) as an adaptive response to the need to hunt. increasingly smaller, faster and more elusive prey. Until now, a unified hypothesis of this type was lacking in the scientific literature, with the prevailing hypothesis that changes in hunting weapons were a reflection of a cognitive improvement, while the cause of such cognitive improvement was unknown.
In the new study, Ben-Dor and Barkai analyzed objects and remains from nine prehistoric sites (in South Africa, East Africa, Spain and France) inhabited during the transition from the Late Stone Age to the Middle Stone Age (Paleolithic), ago. about 300,000 years ago, when it is estimated that Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans first emerged.
In archaeological sites of this type, the study authors mainly saw animal bones and stone tools used to hunt and process prey. The bones reflect the relative quantities of the different species hunted by humans, such as elephants, fallow deer, etc.
Prehistoric hunting of an elephant carried out by humans armed with spears. (Drawing: Tel Aviv University. CC BY)
The researchers found a correlation between the appearance of stone-tipped spears, manufactured using a more sophisticated technique than all previous ones, and the progressive decrease in the size of prey. This sophisticated technique requires that the person be able to imagine in advance many details of the outcome of each step of the process, which requires a sufficiently high intelligence. The researchers found that in all cases and in all places, stone points prepared using this sophisticated technique appeared simultaneously with a relative decrease in the number of bones from large prey.
Humans began making stone tools about 3 million years ago, and began hunting about 2 million years ago, with hunting weapons constantly evolving throughout prehistory.
Homo Erectus, ancestor of all later types of humans, used a wooden spear, probably stabbing large prey from close range. Anatomically modern Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals, who appeared about 300,000 years ago, improved their spears by adding stone points, which they manufactured with the aforementioned highly sophisticated technique.
About 50,000 years ago, anatomically modern Homo Sapiens regularly used more complex hunting instruments, such as the bow and arrow.
At the end of the Upper Paleolithic, about 25,000 years ago, new auxiliary means for hunting emerged, such as the use of domesticated dogs, traps and hooks.
The study is titled “The Evolution of Paleolithic Hunting Weapons: A Response to Declining Prey Size.” And it has been published in the academic journal Quaternary. (Source: NCYT from Amazings)
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