Bengaluru: Early humans in the late Middle Pleistocene era—between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago—used stone tools to “exploit” enormous elephants belonging to a now extinct genus, new research on fossils discovered in 2000 near Pampore, Kashmir Valley suggests. Three elephant bone flakes have been identified at the site, indicating human interactions with ancient elephants there.
The identity of the fossils, cause of the elephants’ death and likelihood of human intervention remained unknown until now.
The research—conducted by a team of scientists led by Advait Jukar, vertebrate palaeontology curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History—has been published in the form of two papers. One of them was published 11 October in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, and the second appeared 15 October in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.
According to the first study, identification of bone flakes suggests that early humans struck elephant bones to extract marrow, which is rich in fat.
The second study says that the fossils, which are rare, belong to an extinct elephant genus called Palaeoloxodon, members of which were massive, weighing more than twice as much as today’s African elephants. These are only the second set of Palaeoloxodon bones to ever be discovered, and the most complete by far.
In the aforementioned time period, at least three ancient elephants died near a river close to modern-day Pampore. Over the next hundreds of thousands of years, their remains were buried in sediment and preserved with 87 stone tools made by the ancestors of modern humans.
Thousands of years later, in March 2019, the researchers re-examined the elephant remains to establish their taxon, cause of death and evidence of human intervention, and also studied the stone tools. They found that most of the remains, which included a skull and tusks, were of a Palaeoloxodon adult.
This adult elephant might have died due to severe sinusitis, pathology of the skull indicated.
The other remains belonged to at least two other elephants from the same genus, the authors noted in the second paper.
While elephant bone breakage and flaking patterns suggest “exploitation” of the giant mammals by humans to build tools, the absence of butchery-associated cut marks on the bones indicates that there is no evidence of hunting or butchery of elephants by ancient humans, according to the study.
But the researchers found evidence of cut marks on a long bone shaft fragment belonging to a different animal. It was part of a second group of bones discovered in a layer of sand and clay between 0.5 and 1.5 metres above the sediments containing the elephant skull.
“It is hard to find evidence of cut marks or other kinds of modifications on elephant bones. This is because there is just so much meat on them that hominins don’t seem to end up really carving it off the bone,” Jukar told ThePrint.
“They do go into the long bones for the fatty marrow though. Marrow is rich in fat, which is very calorie-dense and great for humans. The bone flakes that we found were reminiscent of what forms when bones are broken to obtain the marrow,” the lead researcher added.
The bones included a Kashmiri stag mandible and six bone fragments which likely belonged to a medium-sized mammal.
The cut marks on the bone shaft were likely related to butchery activities, especially meat filleting, the authors said.
The cut marks and percussion damage on deer or other medium-sized mammal bones are indicative of butchery at the site, but during a later phase of human occupation, the study says.
The paper also says that Pampore is the only Middle Pleistocene site in the Indian subcontinent where elephant remains have been found in association with an in-situ lithic assemblage, or, in simple terms, stone tools.
The fact that an assemblage of 87 stone tools appeared to have been brought to the site by ancient humans and elephant remains were found in association with them suggests an intention of butchery, the authors explained.
“There are three parts of this story which are really interesting in and of themselves. First, the giant elephant from Kashmir which was a different species from that found in central India. Second, the 87 stone tools made by a yet unknown ancient human relative. Third, the evidence of butchery on some of the bones of animals including medium-sized mammals,” Jukar said.
“When you put all these three things together, you get the story of India’s earliest butchery site,” he explained.
He added that tool evidence across ages has shown elephant butchery sites to be near lakes, streams, marshes and floodplain environments, where elephants either naturally died or were hunted.
Ancient hominin from India & early tools
Hominins—members of a taxonomic tribe called Hominini—include modern humans (Homo sapiens) and our extinct ancestors and cousin human species, a number of which are known to us today, including Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis).
The only fossil from the Indian subcontinent to have been characterised as hominin is called the Narmada Human. It may belong to a transitional species between modern humans and Neanderthals, or Homo heidelbergensis, a late-stage Homo erectus.
All but one of the 87 individual tools discovered at the Pampore site were made with non-local basaltic material. The authors speculated that basaltic rocks were brought to the site from a location a few hundred metres away.
The assemblage of stone tools lacked handaxes or structures similar to those.
Many of those tools were pointed and included “cores” or pieces of stone from which flakes and blades had been removed.
The first weapons ever used were simply “stones” and then, over time, humans began to fashion cores by sharpening stone tools and making them pointed.
Subsequent prehistoric tools that used pointed, sharp stones are described as Levallois technology, and have been identified in several sites such as Attirampakkam and Bhimbetka in India.
The characteristics of the tools found in the Kashmir site appeared to be midway between those of cores and pointed tools, which eventually evolved into what is called the Levallois technology. It falls under a type of pointed weaponry development called Mode 3 technology.
This was a new method of stone tool production developed about 2,50,000 years ago, and as part of which cores were first prepared to a desired shape and size before flakes were struck to refine them into a variety of elongated tools.
The tools found at the Pampore site were extremely well-preserved, indicating that they were buried not long after being made.
“These tools are typically associated with Homo heidelbergensis, Neanderthals and early ancestors of humans, but that is based on associations from Africa, Europe and other parts of Asia,” Jukar explained. “We simply can’t say who made these tools in Kashmir.”
Based on the styles of the fashioned cores and evidence of flaking and striking of elephant bones to carve them into refined tools and tap into marrow, the researchers concluded that the weapons dated back to between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago.
Palaeoloxodon’s mystery fit
Palaeoloxodon, members of which are characterised by a large forehead, originated in Africa a million years before they migrated to Asia. They started dispersing to Asia even before acquiring their other typical characteristic—a bulge around the nostrils, which structurally helps hold up their large skull and trunk.
The Palaeoloxodon species found at the Pampore site is a well-preserved fossil, the physiology of which fits sometime in the period between dispersal to Asia and the development of the nostril bulge, according to the research.
“What is curious about the Palaeoloxodon specimen in Kashmir is that its skull lacks this large bony structure,” Jukar said.
The research head explained that the skull structure of the African straight-tusked elephant species Palaeoloxodon recki—which lived in Africa between 3.5 and one million years ago—is similar to that of Eurasian elephant species, which are more evolved compared to the former.
But the Kashmir specimen lacks this skull structure, he said.
“So, in a way, the skull found in Kashmir represents an intermediate evolutionary stage between the ancestral African species and the more derived Eurasian species. It shows us the pattern of evolution in this group of elephants as they left Africa and dispersed into Eurasia,” Jukar explained.
In some cases, fully developed characteristics may be lacking in young and subadult individuals, but teeth evidence has shown that the skull belonged to a fully grown elephant, perhaps a middle-aged one.
The skull’s characteristics are quite similar to those of Palaeoloxodon turkmenicus, a Palaeoloxodon species from central Asia which lacked the nostril bulge. Therefore, researchers believe that the Pampore specimen may belong to the aforementioned species, whose characteristics are intermediate to those of ancient elephants across Africa and Eurasia.
What stands out even more is the fact that Pampore is the first and only known site with evidence of close human-elephant interactions, according to Jukar.
Even for a Palaeoloxodon species previously identified in India—Palaeoloxodon namadicus—which lived until about 15,000 years ago, researchers have found no evidence of interactions with humans so far, and such evidence is likely “undiscovered”, the curator believes.
“I think we are lacking more evidence because people in the past were hesitant to collect shattered or broken bones, and mostly collected pristine fossils. But it is in ‘garbage’ that we can find evidence of human behaviour. I think there is still a lot more to discover in India. It is just a matter of time!”
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
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