Men already ate animal meat 1.2 million years ago

A research project led by the University of Granada has shown that the first settlers of Europe, present in Orce 1.2 million years ago, already used animal meat to feed themselves and that their diet included everything from hippos to turtles.

To reach these novel conclusions, the researchers have studied the remains and remains found in the Fuente Nueva 3 site, reported the University of Granada (south).

One of the most original elements that this work contributes is the demonstration that the settlers were capable of it before the competition, in this case the carnivores.

This data assumes that they either reached the resources before other animals or directly competed against them or scared them away to get food, which would mean.

As explained by the researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid José Yravedra, who is leading this study, it is known that humans acted actively on the animal if there are striations of flesh inflicted with cutting stone edges on a type of meat.

“The methodology is very complex but it is based on the observation of each and every one of the alterations that the bones present and on the comparison with current species that, for obvious reasons, we know better, and also with other deposits”he added.

The research has also addressed the methodology to achieve that meat, which according to the professor of the Department of Prehistory and Archeology of the University of Granada Juan Manuel Jiménez Arenas, coordinator of the Orce Project, turned them into

The Orce Project plans to implement a research program based on artificial intelligence to know the species that bit the bones of Fuente Nueva 3, in addition to seeing the relationship between the carved lithic industry and the cut marks.

Researchers from the Complutense University of Madrid, the universities of Granada, Seville and Salamanca, the IPHES-Tarragona, the University of Helsinki (Finland) and different museums have collaborated in the study.

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