Study shows ancient meat-butchering clues

Scientists from Tel Aviv University and the University of Arizona said their research is providing new insights about how, where and when man's communal habits of butchering meat developed, and they're changing the way anthropologists, zoologists and archaeologists think about evolutionary development, economics and social behaviors through the millennia.

The bone and other objects unearthed at Qesem Cave in Israel suggest that during the late Lower Paleolithic period (between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago), people hunted and shared meat differently than they did in later times.

Instead of a prey's carcass being prepared by just one or two people -- which would result in clear and repetitive cutting marks -- the marks found on the bone suggest something else.

"The cut marks we are finding are both more abundant and more randomly oriented than those observed in later times, such as the Middle and Upper
Paleolithic periods," Tel Aviv University Professor Avi Gopher said. "What this could mean is that either one person from the clan butchered the group's meat in a few episodes over time, or multiple persons hacked away at it in
tandem."
Either way, the finding provides clues as to social organization and structures in those early groups of hunters and gatherers, he said.

The study by Gopher and University of Arizona Professor Mary Stiner appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Copyright 2009 by United Press International.