250,000 years ago, the desert had not yet reached northern Jordan and the wetlands occupied vast expanses beyond today’s Azraq oasis. However, the environment became extraordinarily arid in a short time, and the populations of ancient hominins – bipedal hominids that walked upright – that populated the area were forced to subsist in a very complex habitat.
A recent study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science has revealed that, despite everything, they developed very advanced survival strategies and a capacity for adaptation similar to those that thousands of years later would show the first modern humans who left Africa. To determine this, a team of researchers from different institutions, coordinated by experts from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria, in Canada, has thoroughly analyzed 7,000 of the 10,000 stone tools recovered in the region during three years of excavations. These include different types of scrapers, projectiles, and hand axes.
In 17 of these pieces they found protein residues, coming from the consumption of different animals. “We have known for a long time that our ancestors already used tools 2.5 million years ago. In fact, this suggests that their behavior resembled that of carnivores. But now, for the first time, we have evidence that shows us which animals in particular they trapped to survive “, indicates the paleoanthropologist April Nowell, from the aforementioned Canadian institution, which has led the investigation. ” The hominins that inhabited this area took advantage of very different types of prey, from rhinos to waterfowl , at a particularly difficult time,” Nowell points out. “They developed very advanced tactics to fully exploit resources, protect them and avoid predators; then, they are much more complex than could be expected, “he says.
Nowell and his collaborators believe that this finding will also allow us to better understand how the first contacts were made by modern humans and archaic populations scattered throughout Europe and Asia.
Image: April Nowell / University of Victoria
