Perception versus reality: Implications of elephant hunting by Neanderthals

Starkovich, Britt M.

doi:10.1126/sciadv.adg6072

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 7 publications

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“…• The authors additionally suggested a recipe of a "Neanderthal flat bread" requiring up to 10 processing steps (Graham, 2022) Recent data from a German site demonstrate that Neanderthals, 125 ka ago, were able to hunt and kill up to 13 tons heavy straight-tusked elephants (Paleoloxadon antiquus). Processing them further required an estimated 200−600 person hours and would then provide more than 2500 daily portions of 4000 calories per person, suggesting that they also had preservation technologies to store the food (Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al, 2023;Starkovich, 2023). This indicates that our early predecessors were already quite skilled in preparation and processing of foods.…”

Section: Origin and Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Processed foods: From their emergence to resilient technologies

Knorr

Sevenich

2023

Comp Rev Food Sci Food Safe

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Humans need food processing assuring food safety, quality, and functionality to sustain their life. The ongoing debates regarding food processing require rational and scientific data about food processing and processed foods. This study deals with the importance, origins, and history of processing, defining processes and discussing existing food classification systems and provides recommendations for future food process development. Descriptions and comparisons of technologies for food preservation, their resource efficiency, and beneficial aspects in relation to traditional processing are summarized. Possibilities for pretreatments or combination application and related potentials are provided. A consumer‐oriented paradigm change is presented using the potential of resilient technologies for food product improvements rather than the traditional adaptation of raw materials to existing processes. Means for food science and technology research toward dietary changes by transparent, gentle, and resource‐efficient processes for consumers food preference, acceptance, and needs are provided.

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Section: Origin and Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Processed foods: From their emergence to resilient technologies

Knorr

Sevenich

2023

Comp Rev Food Sci Food Safe

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Reframing Prehistoric Human-Proboscidean Interactions: on the Use and Implications of Ethnohistoric Records for Understanding the Productivity of Hunting Megaherbivores

Lupo

Schmitt

2023

J Archaeol Method Theory

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The role that humans played in the extinction of Pleistocene proboscideans is highly controversial. Ethnohistoric records of elephant hunting, in concert with theoretical rationales, are often used as proxy evidence to support the view that ancient humans regularly and efficiently targeted large-sized proboscideans to the point of extinction. This paper examines the socioeconomic and technological contexts of elephant hunting in contemporary and ethnohistoric records to show how these circumstances influenced the scale of harvest, productivity, and valuation of elephants. Quantitative and qualitative evidence derived from some of these records are used to analyze the efficiency of elephant capture using traditional hunting technologies (spears, poisoned projectiles, traps, and drives). This analytical framework provides a systematic method for evaluating the productivity of proboscidean predation. Results show that prior to the widespread use of firearms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the acquisition of elephants, irrespective of the traditional hunting technology used, was a dangerous, high-cost activity often associated with a high-risk of hunting failure. In the ethnographic record, elephant hunting is consistently associated with prestige-seeking among egalitarian hunter-gatherers. Although the analysis presented here is derived from hunting episodes that involved modern elephants, the physical characteristics and abilities that make these animals expensive and risky to hunt were likely manifested by most Pleistocene proboscideans. Using ethnographic data, a framework for recognizing how prestige hunting is manifested under different ecological and sociopolitical circumstances is provided and offers an alternative and compelling explanation for zooarchaeological patterning of costly prey in the past.

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