Earliest African evidence of carcass processing and consumption in cave at 700 ka, Casablanca, Morocco

Camille Daujeard,Mohssine El Graoui,Denis Geraads,Olivier Tombret,Vincent Delvigne,Alain Queffelec,Christophe Falguères,Jean-Paul Raynal,Qingfeng Shao,Mathieu Rué,Eslem Ben Arous,Abderrahim Mohib,David Lefèvre,Rosalia Gallotti,Jean-Jacques Hublin

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-61580-4

Abstract

To date, in Africa, evidence for animal processing and consumption in caves routinely used as living spaces is only documented in the late Middle Pleistocene of the North and South of the continent and postdates the Middle Pleistocene in East Africa. Here we report the earliest evidence in a North-African cave (Grotte des Rhinocéros at Casablanca, Morocco) of cut, percussion and human gnawing marks on faunal remains directly associated with lithic knapping activities in the same space and in a well-documented stratified context. Ages for this Acheulean site are provided by the dating of herbivorous teeth to 690–720 ka and 520–550 ka (lower and upper sets) by combined Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) and U-series techniques. Traces of butchery on gazelle, alcelaphin, and zebra bones demonstrate that hominins had primary access to herbivore carcasses. Hominins brought and consumed meat in the cave, as documented by herbivore bones bearing human tooth marks concentrated in a circumscribed area of the excavation. In Africa, this site provides the earliest evidence for in situ carcass processing and meat-eating in cave, directly associated with lithic production and demonstrates the recurrent use by early Middle Pleistocene hominins of a North African cave site 400 000 years before that by Homo sapiens at Jebel Irhoud (Morocco).

Highlights

To date, in Africa, evidence for animal processing and consumption in caves routinely used as living spaces is only documented in the late Middle Pleistocene of the North and South of the continent and postdates the Middle Pleistocene in East Africa
New combined Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) with U-series dating of seven bovid and rhinocerotid teeth from both lower and upper sets give ages of 720–690 ka and 548–522 ka respectively
The homogeneity of the external dose rate allowed the calculation of an isochron age of 696 ka in good agreement with the oldest ages

Summary

Introduction

In Africa, evidence for animal processing and consumption in caves routinely used as living spaces is only documented in the late Middle Pleistocene of the North and South of the continent and postdates the Middle Pleistocene in East Africa. We report the earliest evidence in a North-African cave (Grotte des Rhinocéros at Casablanca, Morocco) of cut, percussion and human gnawing marks on faunal remains directly associated with lithic knapping activities in the same space and in a welldocumented stratified context Ages for this Acheulean site are provided by the dating of herbivorous teeth to 690–720 ka and 520–550 ka (lower and upper sets) by combined Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) and U-series techniques. The East African sites of the late Early/early Middle Pleistocene are either devoid of fauna or, when present, fossils are not definitely associated with stone tools This is true when Acheulean technology appeared in North Africa, where most discoveries lack a stratigraphic context[35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42]. Given the lack of taphonomic data in the former site, and the bad bone preservation in the latter, little is known about butchery and carcass processing for that period[43,44,45]

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Results

Conclusion