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Computer vision supports primary access to meat by early Homo 1.84 million years ago

Human carnivory is atypical among primates. Unlike chimpanzees and bonobos, who are known to hunt smaller monkeys and eat them immediately, human foragers often cooperate to kill large animals and transport them to a safe location to be shared. While it is known that meat became an important part of...

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Autores principales: Cobo-Sánchez, Lucía, Pizarro-Monzo, Marcos, Cifuentes-Alcobendas, Gabriel, Jiménez García, Blanca, Abellán Beltrán, Natalia, Courtenay, Lloyd A., Mabulla, Audax, Baquedano, Enrique, Domínguez-Rodrigo, Manuel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2022
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Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9586113/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36275476
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14148
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author Cobo-Sánchez, Lucía
Pizarro-Monzo, Marcos
Cifuentes-Alcobendas, Gabriel
Jiménez García, Blanca
Abellán Beltrán, Natalia
Courtenay, Lloyd A.
Mabulla, Audax
Baquedano, Enrique
Domínguez-Rodrigo, Manuel
author_facet Cobo-Sánchez, Lucía
Pizarro-Monzo, Marcos
Cifuentes-Alcobendas, Gabriel
Jiménez García, Blanca
Abellán Beltrán, Natalia
Courtenay, Lloyd A.
Mabulla, Audax
Baquedano, Enrique
Domínguez-Rodrigo, Manuel
author_sort Cobo-Sánchez, Lucía
collection PubMed
description Human carnivory is atypical among primates. Unlike chimpanzees and bonobos, who are known to hunt smaller monkeys and eat them immediately, human foragers often cooperate to kill large animals and transport them to a safe location to be shared. While it is known that meat became an important part of the hominin diet around 2.6–2 Mya, whether intense cooperation and food sharing developed in conjunction with the regular intake of meat remains unresolved. A widespread assumption is that early hominins acquired animal protein through klepto-parasitism at felid kills. This should be testable by detecting felid-specific bone modifications and tooth marks on carcasses consumed by hominins. Here, deep learning (DL) computer vision was used to identify agency through the analysis of tooth pits and scores on bones recovered from the Early Pleistocene site of DS (Bed I, Olduvai Gorge). We present the first objective evidence of primary access to meat by hominins 1.8 Mya by showing that the most common securely detectable bone-modifying fissipeds at the site were hyenas. The absence of felid modifications in most of the carcasses analyzed indicates that hominins were the primary consumers of most animals accumulated at the site, with hyenas intervening at the post-depositional stage. This underscores the role of hominins as a prominent part of the early Pleistocene African carnivore guild. It also stresses the major (and potentially regular) role that meat played in the diet that configured the emergence of early Homo.
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spelling pubmed-95861132022-10-22 Computer vision supports primary access to meat by early Homo 1.84 million years ago Cobo-Sánchez, Lucía Pizarro-Monzo, Marcos Cifuentes-Alcobendas, Gabriel Jiménez García, Blanca Abellán Beltrán, Natalia Courtenay, Lloyd A. Mabulla, Audax Baquedano, Enrique Domínguez-Rodrigo, Manuel PeerJ Anthropology Human carnivory is atypical among primates. Unlike chimpanzees and bonobos, who are known to hunt smaller monkeys and eat them immediately, human foragers often cooperate to kill large animals and transport them to a safe location to be shared. While it is known that meat became an important part of the hominin diet around 2.6–2 Mya, whether intense cooperation and food sharing developed in conjunction with the regular intake of meat remains unresolved. A widespread assumption is that early hominins acquired animal protein through klepto-parasitism at felid kills. This should be testable by detecting felid-specific bone modifications and tooth marks on carcasses consumed by hominins. Here, deep learning (DL) computer vision was used to identify agency through the analysis of tooth pits and scores on bones recovered from the Early Pleistocene site of DS (Bed I, Olduvai Gorge). We present the first objective evidence of primary access to meat by hominins 1.8 Mya by showing that the most common securely detectable bone-modifying fissipeds at the site were hyenas. The absence of felid modifications in most of the carcasses analyzed indicates that hominins were the primary consumers of most animals accumulated at the site, with hyenas intervening at the post-depositional stage. This underscores the role of hominins as a prominent part of the early Pleistocene African carnivore guild. It also stresses the major (and potentially regular) role that meat played in the diet that configured the emergence of early Homo. PeerJ Inc. 2022-10-18 /pmc/articles/PMC9586113/ /pubmed/36275476 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14148 Text en ©2022 Cobo-Sánchez et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Anthropology
Cobo-Sánchez, Lucía
Pizarro-Monzo, Marcos
Cifuentes-Alcobendas, Gabriel
Jiménez García, Blanca
Abellán Beltrán, Natalia
Courtenay, Lloyd A.
Mabulla, Audax
Baquedano, Enrique
Domínguez-Rodrigo, Manuel
Computer vision supports primary access to meat by early Homo 1.84 million years ago
title Computer vision supports primary access to meat by early Homo 1.84 million years ago
title_full Computer vision supports primary access to meat by early Homo 1.84 million years ago
title_fullStr Computer vision supports primary access to meat by early Homo 1.84 million years ago
title_full_unstemmed Computer vision supports primary access to meat by early Homo 1.84 million years ago
title_short Computer vision supports primary access to meat by early Homo 1.84 million years ago
title_sort computer vision supports primary access to meat by early homo 1.84 million years ago
topic Anthropology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9586113/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36275476
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14148
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