One spring, after a protracted wintry weather, an elderly elephant lay loss of life on the financial institution of a small movement close to the coast of what’s now northern Italy. Quickly after, some scavengers arrived to dine in this massive stockpile of meals.
Over 400,000 years later, development actions at Casal Lumbroso at the outskirts of Rome have published one of the most elephant’s tusks, prompting archaeological excavations to analyze the quick atmosphere.
A newly revealed learn about, led by means of Enza Spinapolice and Francesca Alhaique, now not handiest supplies an perception into the demise of the elephant but in addition, most likely extra apparently, the lives of the scavengers that ate up it.
Those scavengers have been no hyenas. They have been a bizarre species of primate strolling on two legs – early nomadic people, dwelling in Europe at a time lengthy ahead of folks constructed properties and even lit fires, who in short halted to benefit from this surprising providence.
This discovery is a a hit instance of the way archaeological heritage control will also be built-in inside construction and development actions. Since 1992, a Ecu-wide treaty makes it obligatory for EU countries to offer protection to their archaeological heritage. However every nation can come to a decision for itself how to take action.
In my local Netherlands, the invention of an animal fossil by myself would now not essentially result in excavations. A web page like this would possibly due to this fact simply be destroyed unseen.
However within the elephant’s case, the Roman archaeological superintendence went past the decision of accountability. They organised an formidable analysis mission which published – and solved – a tantalising puzzle of early human behaviour: what precisely did those nomadic scavengers do with the frame of this animal?
Fixing a 400,000-year-old jigsaw
400 thousand years in the past, people in Europe have been few in quantity however most likely maximum not unusual alongside the Mediterranean shores. Their fossils are extraordinarily uncommon, however skulls from Sima de los Huesos (actually which means “pit of bones”) in northern Spain and Swanscombe in England display that the folks round this time have been early Neanderthals.
Happily for us, they left in the back of extra than simply their skeletons. We will be able to additionally learn about their gear, which were recovered throughout huge portions of Europe – as a ways north because the south of England.
The river through which the Casal Lumbroso elephant died transported ash from a volcanic eruption that may be exactly dated to 404,000 years in the past – so the elephant will have to have died after this. However the place of the sediments presentations the ash deposits have been from a heat length, relationship to ahead of 395,000 years in the past. From that point, chillier prerequisites began prevailing.
So, this puzzle for archaeologists used to be laid down in an overly slim (from an archaeological standpoint) time slice.
In those heat classes, Italy used to be inhabited by means of an interesting neighborhood of animals together with wolves, lions, hyenas, hippos and rhinos. However straight-tusked elephants have been the of completion. This species used to be a lot greater than an African elephant and used to be a real ecosystem engineer, opening up landscapes that might differently be densely forested, making improvements to productiveness for plenty of different species.
Elephant bones at the web page at Casal Lumbroso, close to Rome, and a comic strip in their outlines.
Mecozzi et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC BY
This actual animal used to be in its overdue 40s – outdated for an elephant. It is going to have got caught within the dust of the riverbank and died a herbal demise. We all know this came about somewhere else too – as an example, at Pogetti Vecchi in Tuscany, the place seven elephants died in a sizzling spring and have been later in part butchered. At Casal Lumbroso, we even know the season through which the elephant died: shed purple deer and fallow deer antlers recommend it used to be spring.
People roaming the panorama in small teams would naturally be interested in this mountain of meat. Whilst the bones of the elephant don’t display feature cut-marks produced by means of chopping and filleting, they do display hammer marks and have been discovered subsequent to a number of small flint gear.
We will be able to see that the folks hammered open some bones, most likely for the fats marrow inside of. However additionally they used the bones to make gear. That is unusual behaviour which has handiest been documented at a couple of different websites.
Most often, it sort of feels the early Neanderthals most popular to make their gear from flint and, we suspect, different fabrics reminiscent of wooden which are handiest hardly preserved for us to seek out. Growing bone gear is now and again noticed to be a technologically advanced behaviour, indicating modern-like mind.
I believe the rationale is more practical: we hardly to find them as a result of they’re much more likely to decay than stone gear. Their use in at Casal Lumbroso can have been a case of “needs must”.
In spite of everything, stunning regardless that the traditional Italian surroundings can have been, for folks relying on excellent stones for his or her gear, it had a critical shortcoming: flint used to be handiest to be had in very small pebbles.
Those people’ generation used to be nowhere close to as refined because the “classic” Neanderthals of later instances who distilled birch tar, gave stone gear picket handles and robotically lit fires – all of which we don’t see this a ways again in time. This staff used to be flexible sufficient to switch their technological repertoire to provide very small flint gear, but in addition to discover the usage of different fabrics like elephant bone.
They tailored to the small flint pebbles the usage of “bipolar technology” – a method already in proof on the first archaeological web page, 3.3 million-year-old Lomekwi in Kenya. It is composed of placing the stone you wish to have to flake on a bigger stone anvil, then hitting it on the best with some other stone. This splits the pebbles into two items and from right here, sharp flakes will also be produced.
The elephant bones at Casal Lumbroso.
Beniamino Mecozzi, CC BY
One of the flint software edges discovered at Casal Lumbroso have been pristine sufficient to analyse for microscopic lines in their prehistoric use. They level to make use of on a quite cushy subject material, which might imply the reducing of elephant meat – even though this might be brought about by means of different issues as smartly.
Those early Neanderthals additionally had extra advanced technical repertoires. They introduced a hand awl to the web page, made on (and from) a bigger block of limestone – now not the most productive subject material for gear as it’s somewhat cushy, however nonetheless appropriate to make this greater software sort.
Possessing handiest imperfect stones – both too small or too cushy – this staff additionally grasped the potential for the large elephant bones to model into gear. They broke up some bones and formed them by means of flaking the bone with a hammerstone, in the similar manner they labored flint.
For most likely just a few hours, the sounds of flint hitting the anvil, the cracks of breaking bone and the excited shouts of folks flushed with a wealthy supply of meals would have stuffed the air. Then those early folks would have moved on once more, most likely to discover a appropriate spot for the evening.
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