VERTEBRATE STUDIES | Interactions with Hominids

Abstract

Human–animal relationships and interactions are always changing. From the Lower Paleolithic or early Stone Age scavenger of Europe and Africa, where a range of subsistence behaviors are still under discussion, to the ‘specialized’ hunter of the late Upper Paleolithic or late Stone Age, the role of nonhuman animals in the human–animal relationship fluctuates between predator, prey, and competitor for resources, impacting the religious and symbolic realm of Upper Paleolithic cave art. Taphonomic analysis of faunal assemblages has shown that the traditional picture of ‘man-the-hunter’ is frequently an oversimplification. The traditional view posited that early human groups of the Lower Paleolithic scavenged from natural deaths and carcases of animals brought down by carnivores. However, there is increasingly good evidence by 500 ka for the hunting of a wide range of game, including megafauna, from a range of sites across Europe. As time passed, hunting increased in importance so that by the Middle Paleolithic or middle Stone Age, active intentional hunting of large- and medium-sized game was the norm. The Upper Paleolithic and late Stone Age see a still more complex picture as additional variables are added to the human–animal interaction equation: animals appear in art. Whether as information exchange or as ‘simple’ artistic expression, the importance of game species, ranging from fish to mammoth, is indisputable; perhaps, as the first domestic animal (dog) appears, we see the beginning of a socioideological environment in which human–animal interactions will change forever.