The tibia marked with cuts belongs to a mysterious human relative now living in Kenya. A team led by paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History conducted a detailed 3D analysis of cuts and experiments with bones to find out what they were made of.

Cannibalism was common in the human species

While humans, our relatives, and our ancestors have occupied a highly elevated position on the food chain for the past few million years, hominins have occasionally become food for other animals. However, there are many examples of how. the species in the human evolutionary tree ate each otherhowever, this fossil shows that this was much earlier than we thought.

Scientists looked for possible sharp teeth marks in ancient bones—perhaps in a lion or other animal. But, unexpectedly, they found what appeared to be surprisingly deliberate cuts.

• Often such signs had a ritual character, being part of the process of burying the dead.
• Also, our ancestors often carved ornaments such as combs, pendants and other ornaments from the bones of their species.
• Of course, there were also instances where it occurred between different types of humans and therefore no longer considered cannibalism.

opening details

The new study’s findings show that the markings were made with stone tools, similar to how meat is scraped to prepare to be eaten.

The information we have tells us that hominins probably ate other hominins at least 1.45 million years ago.
– says Pobiner.

Tibia showing cut marks / Photo: Jennifer Clark

Briana Pobiner of Colorado State University and paleoanthropologist Michael Pante compared the materials to a reference database of 898 marks from teeth, cuts and other injuries to determine what the marks in the bone were.

Traces marked with numbers 5 and 6 were left by the animal’s teeth. The remaining 9 are stone tools / Photo: Jennifer Clark

It is unclear which of the bones has been damaged first, the incisor or the lion. cut marks correspond to those that appear when meat is removed from the bone – for example, when preparing to eat.

All at the same angle and oriented in the same way, as if a person were cutting the stone without changing the grip of the tool and without moving. And they are all located where the calf muscle attaches to the bone. If your goal is to process a piece of meat, this is the ideal place to chop it.

Bones under high magnification / Photo: Briana Pobiner

These cut marks are very similar to those I’ve seen in animal fossils processed for consumption. The meat of this leg was most likely eaten and not ritually, but for nutrition.
– says Pobiner.

We don’t know who ate it, or even which species were eaten. Therefore, scientists cannot say with certainty whether cannibalism is present here, but such a possibility is also not excluded.