On the problem of correlations between ABO blood groups and some blood physiological characteristics

Abstract

It has become increasingly clear among paleoanthropologists that Early Pleistocene sites sample a diversity of behaviors and no one model is sufficient to explain every collection of archaeological debris. With this comes the realization that hominins reacted to an equally diverse set of ecological parameters, each of which determined to some extent where, when, and how they chose to concentrate, or not concentrate, their activities across ancient landscapes. Competition with, and predation risk from, large carnivores is thought to be an especially critical factor, particularly when large mammal tissues became a component of hominin diets after 2.6 million years ago. Here, the degree to which carnivore avoidance influenced patterns of hominin site use is evaluated with a sample of faunal and lithic assemblages from Beds I and II at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Multivariate measures of bone destruction, as proxies for levels of on-site competition and thus predation risk, show little systematic relationship with patterns of lithic discard and butchery. This suggests that while carnivore avoidance was probably part and parcel of hominin daily life in the Early Pleistocene Olduvai Basin, other considerations such as water, tree cover, dry land, and toolstone played more proximate roles.