In East Africa’s ‘Cradle of Mankind’, a major shift in human evolution occurred just under 1.8 million years ago, when our ancestors began exploiting megafauna - including hippos and giraffes - for food. Known as Olduvai Gorge , this prehistoric hominin hotspot in Tanzania has now yielded its earliest known elephant butchery site, providing new insights into how, why and when this subsistence strategy first emerged. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

“We came across this site by pure chance,” said Professor Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo of Rice University. “The rains had washed an area that we cover every year and suddenly the elephant started showing up, so we excavated it and we clearly saw that there was a functional lin

See Full Page