When Did Early Humans Begin to Hunt?

HOUSTON, TEXAS—According to a statement released by Rice University, a new study of 1.5-million-year-old fossilized animal remains conducted by Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo and his colleagues suggests that saber-toothed cats devoured all of their prey, and sometimes even consumed some of the bones. Such rich protein sources are thought to have been vital to early human brain development, he explained, and it had been previously suggested that early humans may have fed on meat from the abandoned kills of large predators. Early humans, Domínguez-Rodrigo commented, would have had to rely on different approaches to procure their protein, and may have already been successful hunters. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Scientific Reports. To read about 300,000-year-old spears that were among the earliest known hunting tools, go to "Weapons of the Ancient World: Hunting Equipment."