A 1.45 million-year-old fossilized bone with 9 mysterious markings has revealed many fascinating and chilling details about “the Upright Man.”
According to CNN, a researcher from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in the United States unexpectedly noticed something unusual on a fossilized tibia in the collection of the National Museum of Nairobi (Kenya).
Initially, Dr. Pobiner aimed to search for bite marks from extinct species that may have preyed on ancient relatives of Homo sapiens, ranging from early hominins to species that closely resemble modern humans.
11 marks on the fossilized bone, of which 9 have been confirmed to be caused by a tool-using hand – (Photo: CNN).
However, what appeared on the fossilized bone were actually cut marks. “It seems that the flesh from this leg was consumed as a nutritional supplement rather than for a ritual,” Dr. Pobiner stated.
This suggests that some ancient creature of the Homo genus consumed its own kind.
Of course, this was not Homo sapiens—a species just over 300,000 years old—nor was it the “other ancestral species” like Neanderthals or Denisovans, which had interbred with Homo sapiens tens of thousands of years ago.
Co-author Michael Pante, a paleontologist from Colorado State University, created a 3D model of the bone on a computer to carefully compare the shape of the cut marks with a database of 898 other bone marks, ranging from bite marks to footprints recorded in ancient remains.
The results confirmed that the cut marks could only have been made by a tool-using hand.
This aligns with the findings of a 1990 study on this bone, which indicated that it belonged to Homo erectus, rather than Australopithecus as previously speculated.
Homo erectus, also known as the Upright Man, was the first species known to use stone tools based on direct evidence, although some recent studies question whether other species might have used tools even earlier.
Homo erectus also represents a “turning point,” exhibiting physical characteristics and lifestyles that are more similar to modern humans than to earlier hominins.
This evidence marks the earliest confirmed instance of cannibalism among a species belonging to the broader Homo genus. Previously, there was an uncertain, older piece of evidence regarding a cheekbone from an unidentified hominin fossil in South Africa, approximately 2 million years old, which bore a controversial cut mark.
