Humans become serious hunters
Butchered horse, elephant and rhinoceros show cooperative hunting of animals far larger than the hunter.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 371 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 100 thousand years
- Era
- Middle Pleistocene, Quaternary
Sites across Europe and Africa — Boxgrove, Schoningen, Lehringen, Aridos — preserve the remains of large mammals killed and systematically butchered, some with wooden spears found among the bones. Bringing down an elephant or a herd of horses requires coordination, planning and probably language of some kind. Isotopic work on Neanderthals later confirms a diet heavily dependent on large herbivores, at trophic levels comparable to wolves and hyenas.