Ancient humans were super-predators, which is a fact that is well-known. But it still has much more to it, and the new research has unleashed it. The research talks that humans had mastered this art of hunting and tearing flesh nearly 2 million years ago. Their ability can be gauged that these mega hunters could hunt down animals twice the size of animals that we see today. Miki Ben-Dor and Ran Barkai are the researchers at Israel’s Tel Aviv University who are dedicatedly involved in the project.
Ancient humans were super-predators and ate anything edible:
While many researchers today, try to re-establish the same diet as ancient humans ate 2 million years ago, but other researchers call it a worthless exercise. It is because ancient humans were super-predators and had entirely different digestive systems. Their digestive systems also matched up entirely with the ecosystems that existed back then. Ecosystems then had mammoth and wild animals in abundance and hunters had developed mechanisms to kill and rip them apart. Thus, ancient humans could eat and digest anything edible. But, as we speak today, the digestive systems of humans have changed in direct proportion with the present-day ecosystems. And hence the comparison does not seem very wise to a lot of researchers.
Fossils of super-predators.
Though these researchers claim that the remains and fossils of such human super-predators are scanty, but they still provide some meaningful information. It is also interesting to investigate the fact that in what ratio did these super-predators ate plants and animals. Another important point of investigation is to know about the starting point as to when did these super-predators start actual hunting and not feasting on the leftover meat from other animals. Even the close relatives of ancient human predators ate a mix of veg and nonveg diets, for example, Chimpanzees.
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Quotes from researchers:
Ben-Dor adds on ancient humans were super-predators. She says “So far, attempts to reconstruct the diet of Stone Age humans were mostly based on comparisons to 20th-century hunter-gatherer societies”. Further says “This comparison is futile, however, because 2 million years ago, hunter-gatherer societies could hunt and consume elephants and other large animals — while today’s hunter-gatherers do not have access to such bounty. The entire ecosystem has changed, and conditions cannot be compared”, reports LiveScience.
