1.6‑Million‑Year‑Old Fossils Show Early Humans Repeated a Successful Meat‑Gathering Strategy
At a fossil site in northern Kenya, some bones continue to appear the same: limbs missing in the same places, surfaces marked with the same cuts, and long bones cracked in almost identical patterns.
The remains, dating back about 1.6 million years, come from the Koobi Fora Formation and show that early humans didn’t just eat what they found. They kept returning to the same approach of accessing the carcasses early, selecting the meat-rich limbs and breaking the bones to extract the marrow.
Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesThe study draws on more than 1,100 animal fossils from one of the earliest, well-preserved sites from this period and shows that this trend appears at sites spanning hundreds of thousands of years, indicating a stable but flexible foraging strategy that might have helped early on. Homo adapt to changing environments.
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The First Humans to Eat Meat: What Fossil Bones Reveal About Hunting and Scavenging
Cut marks on a Koobi Fora fossil bone.
(Image credit: Sharon Kuo)
The fossils come from a site known as FwJj 80, which is part of the Koobi Fora Formation. This layer predates the region’s better-known deposits and, until recently, had been studied much less, leaving an earlier period of human behavior less well understood.
Most of the remains come from antelopes and other ungulate mammals, indicating that early humans repeatedly accessed similar prey.
Cut marks appear in places associated with large muscle groups, particularly along the shafts of the limbs, where most of the meat would have been concentrated. The broken bones show signs of deliberate blows used to access the marrow.
What stands out is the lack of competition. Carnivore tooth marks are rare, suggesting that these carcasses were not heavily scavenged by other predators before the arrival of humans.
Researchers can’t say for sure whether early humans hunted these animals or displaced other predators. But the evidence indicates that they consistently got to the food early enough to control how it was used.
Before studies like this, early foraging in humans was often described as something constantly evolving, changing as conditions changed. What this data suggests is that it is more stable. Once established, this way of obtaining and processing meat appears to have endured rather than being repeatedly reinvented.
How early humans chose what meat to take and where to find it
The site also shows how early humans moved through their environment. Rather than transporting whole animals, they appear to have focused on specific parts to bring back, a choice that reflects more than convenience and demonstrates an awareness of effort, distance and reward.
The surrounding landscape likely influenced these decisions, as the site is near what would have been a river bank, where animals congregated and carcasses were easier to find. In a context like this, the same conditions would have repeated over time, thus allowing the same types of choices to be made.
Did early humans share food?
If early humans got to the carcasses early and made full use of them, they probably ended up with more food than one person could eat at a time. The study notes that this type of surplus may have created opportunities for food sharing, often linked to cooperation.
When access to food becomes more predictable, behaviors can begin to change. Instead of reacting to whatever was available, early humans could have relied on similar opportunities appearing in similar places, repeatedly using the same strategies.
This kind of consistency doesn’t just shape the diet. It may also have influenced how groups moved and interacted, although these patterns are difficult to trace directly in the fossil record.
Learn more: Charcoal found at 800,000-year-old campsite suggests early humans were attracted to abundant supply of driftwood
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