An illustration of an animal. Credit: Dana Ackerfeld
The Tel Aviv University study tracks the development of early humans' hunting practices over the last 1.5 million years. According to the researchers, early humans preferred to hunt the largest animals available in their surroundings, which provided the greatest quantities of food in return for a unit of effort.
According to the researchers, early humans over hunted large animals to extinction and then went on to improve their hunting technologies to meet the new challenge. The agricultural revolution began in the Levant at precisely that time, as the researchers claim, because humans began to domesticate plants and animals when animals larger than deer became extinct.
The study was conducted by a group of people. The paper was published in a journal.
The data on animal bones discovered at dozens of prehistoric sites in and around Israel is presented in the study. Findings show that the size of game hunted by humans has declined from giant elephants 1 million years ago to the present day. The findings show an illuminating picture of the interaction between humans and animals over the last 1.5 million years.
Weighted mean body mass was transformed by the linear regression of log10 as a function of time. Tel Aviv University.
Prof. Barkai notes that there are two major issues addressed by prehistorians worldwide: what caused the mass extinction of large animals over the past hundreds of thousands of years and whether or not climate changes are related. What were the driving forces behind the evolution of humankind?
Prof. Barkai says that the team proposed an original hypothesis that links the two questions, that large animals went extinct due to overhunting by humans, and that the change in diet and the need to hunt smaller animals may have propelled the changes. In this study we tested our hypotheses by looking at the data from the Southern Levant, where several human species have been found over 1.5 million years ago.
Jacob Dembitzer said that the Southern Levant was considered an "archaeological laboratory" due to the large amount of prehistoric findings over a relatively small area. Evidence for the presence of humans began with Homo erectus who arrived 1.5 million years ago, and continued through the neandertals who lived here from an unknown time until they disappeared about 45,000 years ago.
Excavations are taking place at Qesem Cave. Tel Aviv University.
The researchers collected all the data they could from the literature on animal bones found in Israel. The excavations from 1932 to today provide a unique sequence of findings from different types of humans. The study covered a total of 133 layers from 58 prehistoric sites, in which thousands of bones belonging to 83 animal species had been identified. The researchers calculated the weighted mean size of the animals based on the remains.
Prof. Meiri says that their study tracked changes at a much higher resolution over a longer period of time. We found a decline in the size of animals hunted by humans over 1.5 million years. Elephants that weighed up to 13 tons and provided humans with 90 percent of their food were the ones who left a third of the bones behind. The mean weight of all animals hunted by humans was 3 tons, and elephant bones were found at nearly all sites up to 500,000 years ago.
Early ancestors of the Neandertals and Homo sapiens hunted mostly deer, along with some larger animals, such as wild cattle and horses. In sites that were inhabited by modern humans from about 50,000 to 10,000 years ago, 70% of the bones are from gazelles. Most of the remains found at these later sites were from fallow deer, hares and turtles.
There are deer bones with marks. Tel Aviv University.
The next question was, "What caused the disappearance of the large animals?" says Jacob Dembitzer. The extinction of large species is attributed to climate change. We collected environmental and climate data for the entire period, covering more than a dozen cycles of interglacial andglacial periods. The data included temperatures and levels of oxygen 18 and carbon 13 from the local Soreq Cave. Climate and climate change had little impact on animal extinction, according to a range of statistical analyses.
Dr. Ben-Dor says that their findings allow them to propose a fascinating hypothesis about the development of humankind, that humans always preferred to hunt the largest animals available in their environment, until these became very rare or extinct. To obtain the same amount of food, every human species in the Southern Levant had to hunt smaller animals than their predecessors, and therefore had to develop more advanced and effective technologies. Modern humans developed the bow and arrow to kill fast- running gazelles from a distance, even though spears were sufficient for Homo erectus to kill elephants at close range.
Prof. Barkai has an elephant bone. Tel Aviv University.
Prof. Barkai believes that the model is relevant to human cultures everywhere. The decline in the size of game is the driving force behind the constant improvement in human technology. It is possible that 10,000 years ago in the Southern Levant, animals became too small or rare to provide humans with enough food, and this could be related to the advent of agriculture. The extinction of large animals was caused by humans, who destroyed their own livelihood through overhunting. Humans have always ravaged their environment, but were usually clever enough to find solutions for the problems they had created, from the bow and arrow to the agricultural revolution. The environment always paid a heavy price.
Jacob Dembitzer and his colleagues wrote about Levantine overkill, which is 1.5 million years of hunting down the body size distribution. There is an article in the journal titled "Quascirev.2021.107316."
The journal contains information about the Quaternary Science Reviews.
Early humans hunted the largest animals to extinction for 1.5 million years.
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