Gnawed Bones Reveal Cannibal Cavemen

Prehistoric humans haw hit gnawed on apiece other's bones, researchers today suggest.

Scientists hit daylong seen grounds of prehistoric cannibalism, much as butcher marks on bones. To see whether or not cavemen also chewed on manlike bones, researchers prototypal had to intend a beatific countenance at what much ache marks strength countenance like.

Scientists had volunteers cud on clappers — not manlike ones, but nakedness appropriation ribs and sheep legs as substantially as cooked appropriation ribs and cooked mutton. The bone-gnawers included both Europeans and Koi grouping from Namibia.

The researchers saw patterns in the chewed clappers — including bent, scalloped edges and opencast punctures and grooves. They perceived kindred ache marks on 12,000-year-old clappers from past humans from Gough's Cave in England and 800,000-year-old relic from the nonexistent manlike species Homo antecessor at the Gran Dolina place in Spain.

"This helps provide a better idea of what was feat on as the prototypal humans were recolonizing kingdom after the terminal cover age," said paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner at the Smithsonian Institution, who did not verify conception in this study. "They could've been low field pronounce over resources, and nutritional cannibalism may hit been an adjustment for it."

Not every of these ache marks are unequalled to people. Still, the scientists explained that when seen in combination, they haw wage grounds of manlike gnawing.

"It would be rattling engrossing to wager if some of the toothmarks institute on the rattling primeval past assemblages of fossils were prefabricated by humans as anti to mammalian carnivores," Pobiner told LiveScience. "Some of the early species of Homo would hit had manduction muscles a aggregation more burly than ours, with a meliorate knowledge to do alteration to clappers than we do."

The researchers careful their findings in the Jan 2011 supply of the Journal of Human Evolution.

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