Evrim Yazgin
Cosmos science journalist
Elephant fossils from 300,000–400,000 years ago bear the marks of the earliest signs of ancient humans butchering animals in the Indian subcontinent.
The fossils were discovered near the Kashmir town Pampore (also known as Pampar, Panpar) in the foothills of the Himalayas in 2000. The identity of the elephant species and the interaction with ancient humans are detailed in two papers published in the Quaternary Science Reviewsand the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The researchers found elephant bone flakes which suggests the early humans struck the bones to extract marrow. Evidence from other parts of the world has shown that this energy-dense, fatty tissue has been eaten by ancient humans for hundreds of thousands of years.
Previously, the oldest evidence of humans butchering animals on the subcontinent dated to 10,000 years ago.
Only one fossil hominin has ever been found on the Indian subcontinent. The Narmada human was found in 1982 in the Indian state Madhya Pradesh. The fossil is 50,000–160,000 years old.
“It might just be that people haven’t looked closely enough or are sampling in the wrong place,” says co-author Advait Jukar, a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “But up until now, there hasn’t been any direct evidence of humans feeding on large animals in India.”
It’s possible that the hominins killed the elephants, or that they simply came across its carcass.
“So, the question is, who are these hominins? What are they doing on the landscape and are they going after big game or not?” Jukar asks. “Now we know for sure, at least in the Kashmir Valley, these hominins are eating elephants.”
Jukar is lead author on the second paper. The findings in this journal article reveal evidence of humans butchering the giant elephants.
At least 3 different ancient elephant relatives have been found at the site. One of these has been verified as Palaeoloxodon turkmenicus – a species which could be an evolutionary link between earlier elephants from Africa and the giant elephant species which evolved in Asia and Europe.
P. turkmenicus grew to 4m tall at the shoulder and 9–10 tonnes – about twice the size of modern African elephants.
Only one set of P. turmenicus bones has been found previously in Turkmenistan in 1955. The Kashmir specimen is much better preserved.
“What’s always been puzzling about the Turkmen skull is that, besides the lack of a prominent crest at the skull roof, its other features are highly similar to the already well-known European species, P. antiquus,” says co-author of one of the papers Hanwen Zhang from the University of Helsinki, Finland. “This led a number of experts to suggest that the Turkmen specimen is simply an aberrant individual of the European species.”
“The problem with Palaeoloxodon is that their teeth are largely indistinguishable between species,” explains Jukar. “So, if you find an isolated tooth, you really can’t tell what species of Palaeoloxodon it belongs to. You have to look at their skulls.”
The Pampore specimen’s hyoids – bones at the back of the throat that attach to the tongue – were still intact. Hyoids are fragile but distinctive between species.
“With the Kashmir skull added to the mix, it becomes clear now that the two specimens can be theorised to represent a distinct species that we previously knew very little about, with a broad distribution from Central Asia to the northern Indian Subcontinent,” Jukar adds.
