Early humans in Israel really liked their steaks, new study shows
While the region offered a great diversity of fauna, Middle Paleolithic humans favored hunting the ancestor of cows, archaeological remains from the Nesher Ramla site have revealed
Rossella Tercatin is The Times of Israel's archaeology and religions reporter.
Some 100,000 years ago, an unimaginable variety of animals roamed in modern-day central Israel. Species included mountain gazelles, fallow deer, wild goats, wild boars, lions, hyenas, and even rhinoceros.
However, prehistoric humans did not take advantage of this plenty. Instead, they hunted a limited number of species, mainly aurochs, a wild bovine species believed to be the ancestors of today’s domesticated cattle, new research by Israeli and international scholars has shown. The researchers analyzed archaeological remains from Nesher Ramla, a site southeast of Tel Aviv dating back to the Middle Paleolithic period that spanned roughly 250,000 to 50,000 years ago.
“Nesher Ramla presents a natural depression filled with some eight meters [26 feet] of archaeological sediments,” doctoral student Meir Orbach from the University of Haifa told The Times of Israel. “In its lower section, evidence shows early human habitation, whereas the upper section presents no signs of permanent human settlement — only traces of animal activity and occasional human visits.”
Orbach is the main author of a paper on the dietary preferences of the area’s Middle Paleolithic humans recently published in the Quaternary Science Review journal.
Located in a quarry, Nesher Ramla came under the spotlight a few years ago when researchers from Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced they had identified the fossils of a previously unknown human species, which they called Nesher Ramla Homo, dating back to 120,000 to 140,000 years ago.
Around 100,000 years ago, the site served as a seasonal water reservoir, with animals coming from afar to drink.
The researchers worked to identify the animal species and the types of damage caused to the bones due to various traumas, along with the chemical composition of, and damage to, the herbivores’ teeth to understand their diet and movements. Above all, they tried to pin down how the animals died.
“I studied all the fauna remains, identified each piece of bone, and examined it under the microscope to verify if human tools processed it, if it presents signs of animal bites, if it was burned or left in the sun, and so on,” Orbach explained.
Most of the bones retrieved in the upper level of the site were either intact or presented signs of carnivore animals’ consumption. Only a few bones appeared to have been dismembered by humans.
The researchers also looked at the lithics (stone tools) found at the site.
“The lithics were not made at the site,” Orbach said. “All these elements help us understand its history.”
According to the researchers, animals would come to drink at the waterhole and were ambushed by predators such as hyenas and lions. Humans hunted at the waterhole only occasionally.
Orbach highlighted that this scene stands in great contrast to what was happening at the site when it was inhabited, as well as in other inhabited sites from the same period.
“In the lower layers of the remains at Nesher Ramla, we see a significant prevalence of aurochs, the ancestors of modern cows,” he said. “This is true for most Middle Paleolithic sites where early humans lived.”
Based on these findings, researchers understood that early humans generally preferred to hunt specific animals, and those were the animals that were mainly brought back to their settlements to be processed.
“On the contrary, on a site only occasionally touched by humans, we see the remains of the full variety of species living in the region,” Orbach said. “This assemblage acts as a benchmark to evaluate the other sites.”
According to Orbach, the reason behind the preference shown by early humans for aurochs and, to a lesser extent, gazelles, can be explained by the fact that these species lived in open areas (as opposed to forests) and in big herds.
“Ancient Paleolithic humans knew their environment very well,” he said. “Hunting in open areas allowed them to be aware of the circumstances and plan accordingly. In addition, pursuing animals in herds was easier than solitary species in the woods.”
“At the same time, this does not mean that humans would not occasionally hunt other animals or scavenge carcasses, especially when they were hungry or in need, and this is consistent with what we discovered at Nesher Ramla,” he added.
Orbach said that in the future, he hopes to learn more about rhinoceroses in Israel.
“We are talking about an extinct species of rhinoceros,” he said. “Remains from the Middle Paleolithic are more frequent than from other periods, and immediately after they seem to have disappeared from the region. I want to investigate what happened.”
