For decades, anthropology textbooks told the same story: two million years ago, Homo habilis would have shaken up the hierarchy of the savannah, going from the status of game to that of super predator, armed with its first carved tools and a brain more agile than that of its hairy neighbors. But a recent study relayed by the IFL Science site has just shaken the myth: our distant cousins were clearly much more often the snack than the hunter.
It is in the Olduvai gorges, in Tanzania, that history has just been rewritten: on two fossil specimens of Homo habilisresearchers identified teeth marks. In fact, this discovery is not much of a surprise, because we already knew that the environment in which our ancestors lived at the time was full of scavengers feeding on corpses.
The novelty lies in an analysis assisted by artificial intelligence which made it possible to attribute, with more than 90% certainty, these dental marks to… a leopard. These were therefore not corpses ofHomo habilis nibbled by hyenas, but many humans devoured by a predator. Our ancestor was therefore not at the top of the food chain as was supposed, but rather prey for super predators.
The law of the jungle
Until now, it was believed that this species had passed the stage of scavenger, capable of keeping a beast at bay in order to feed on its prey. But reading this new study, Homo habilis did not necessarily have the means to defend itself against these big cats, and more likely experienced the fate of its ancestors, the Australopithecines: hunted, devoured, sometimes even skinned by sharp fangs. A whole different story then.
This downgrading has major consequences on the way we view human evolution. For the research team, we must look elsewhere for the first human “king of the food chain”. Their favorite: Homo erectuscontemporary of Homo habilis but undoubtedly better adapted to travel on dry land, more robust, and less arboreal. In other words, Homo erectus was surely better equipped to confront predators and steal their prey.
What were the relationships between hominids and carnivores like then? Fossil data reveal a savannah in which humans of the genus Homo spent a significant part of their lives playing deadly hide and seek with hyenas, lions, leopards and even crocodiles. The bones found indicate that the most vulnerable were killed without ceremony: feet torn off by crocodiles, skulls bitten by felines, in short, the law of the jungle… and the strongest.
Even the symbolic power of the first tools must be put into perspective. Having a few sharp stones did not necessarily mean dominating the animal kingdom, but simply helped to survive: the pieces of flint used by our ancestors were certainly used to harvest, to cut, perhaps to intimidate… but not always to escape large predators.
