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Link to original content: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19666542
Cooperative hunting and meat sharing 400-200 kya at Qesem Cave, Israel - PubMed Skip to main page content
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. 2009 Aug 11;106(32):13207-12.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.0900564106. Epub 2009 Jul 28.

Cooperative hunting and meat sharing 400-200 kya at Qesem Cave, Israel

Mary C Stiner  1 , Ran Barkai, Avi Gopher
Affiliations

Cooperative hunting and meat sharing 400-200 kya at Qesem Cave, Israel

Mary C Stiner et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Zooarchaeological research at Qesem Cave, Israel demonstrates that large-game hunting was a regular practice by the late Lower Paleolithic period. The 400- to 200,000-year-old fallow deer assemblages from this cave provide early examples of prime-age-focused ungulate hunting, a human predator-prey relationship that has persisted into recent times. The meat diet at Qesem centered on large game and was supplemented with tortoises. These hominins hunted cooperatively, and consumption of the highest quality parts of large prey was delayed until the food could be moved to the cave and processed with the aid of blade cutting tools and fire. Delayed consumption of high-quality body parts implies that the meat was shared with other members of the group. The types of cut marks on upper limb bones indicate simple flesh removal activities only. The Qesem cut marks are both more abundant and more randomly oriented than those observed in Middle and Upper Paleolithic cases in the Levant, suggesting that more (skilled and unskilled) individuals were directly involved in cutting meat from the bones at Qesem Cave. Among recent humans, butchering of large animals normally involves a chain of focused tasks performed by one or just a few persons, and butchering guides many of the formalities of meat distribution and sharing that follow. The results from Qesem Cave raise new hypotheses about possible differences in the mechanics of meat sharing between the late Lower Paleolithic and Middle Paleolithic.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Locations of selected Paleolithic cave sites in the Mediterranean hills of the Levant.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Frequencies of medium ungulate bone fragments with burning damage, cone fractures, and cut marks by element or element group and stratigraphic unit in Qesem Cave. Data are based on subsamples of the faunal assemblages examined intensively for all types of surface damage: circle, units I–II NISP = 404; square, unit III NISP = 414; +, units IV–V NISP = 710.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Modeled (A) and observed (B) artiodactyl ungulate mortality patterns generated by large predators. (B) Means for recent spotted hyena (square 1), wolf (square 2), Cape hunting dog (square 3), tiger (square 4), African lion (square 5), Holocene and recent human hunters (square 6), Mediterranean Epipaleolithic and Upper Paleolithic hunters (square 7), and Mediterranean Middle Paleolithic hunters (square 8). *, Average for the Acheulo-Yabrudian fallow deer assemblages from Qesem Cave, Israel.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Standardized skeletal element frequencies (observed/expected) by anatomical region for fallow deer by stratigraphic unit in Qesem Cave.
Fig. 5.
Fig. 5.
Clustered cut marks on ungulate limb shaft fragments from (A) late Lower Paleolithic Qesem Cave and (B) Middle Paleolithic layers of Üçağızlı Cave II.
Fig. 6.
Fig. 6.
Cut-mark angle differences (MDAA, means and sd) for limb shaft samples from the Acheulo-Yabrudian (late Lower Paleolithic; LP) of Qesem Cave in comparison to a Middle Paleolithic (MP) sample from Üçağızlı Cave II and an early Upper Paleolithic (UP) sample from Üçağızlı Cave I. Each point represents 1 bone specimen with multiple cut marks on its surface; specimen means are arranged in order of increasing value. Horizontal line represents the mean value for all specimens from all periods.
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