Large carnivore attacks on hominins during the Pleistocene: a forensic approach with a Neanderthal example
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Large carnivore attacks on hominins during the Pleistocene: a forensic approach with a Neanderthal example Edgard Camarós 1,2 & Marián Cueto 3 & Carlos Lorenzo 1,2 & Valentín Villaverde 4 & Florent Rivals 1,2,5
Received: 7 November 2014 / Accepted: 6 May 2015 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015
Abstract Interaction between hominins and carnivores has been common and constant through human evolution and generated mutual pressures similar to those present in worldwide modern human-carnivore conflicts. This current interaction is sometimes violent and can be reflected in permanent skeletal pathologies and other bone modifications. In the present paper, we carry out a survey of 124 forensic cases of dangerous human-carnivore encounters. The objective is to infer direct hominin-carnivore confrontation during the Pleistocene, which is important to understand behavioral changes during human evolution. In addition, the case of Neanderthals is analyzed in order to find evidence of past attacks using forensic observations. The results obtained pose that Neanderthals could potentially have been involved in dangerous encounters during the Pleistocene, validating our
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s12520-015-0248-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Edgard Camarós [email protected] 1
IPHES, Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social, C/Marcel.lí Domingo s/n, Campus Sescelades URV (Edifici W), 43007 Tarragona, Spain
2
Àrea de Prehistòria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Avda. de Catalunya, 35, 43002 Tarragona, Spain
3
Departament de Prehistòria, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Campus UAB, Edifici B, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
4
Departament de Prehistòria i Arqueologia, Universitat de València, Avda. Blasco Ibáñez, 28, 46010 València, Spain
5
ICREA (Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats), Barcelona, Spain
methodology to approach past attacks from a forensic perspective. Keywords Carnivores . Interaction . Confrontation . Forensic medicine . Neanderthals
Introduction Predation is assumed to be a fundamental influence in the evolution of primate behavior (Cheney and Wrangham 1987). Consequently, deterrence of predation has been described as an element with a high sociobiological impact on the origin of the human condition (Fay et al. 1995). Brain (1981) once asked BWho killed the Australopithecines?^ as he recognized that the interaction between hominins and carnivores had enormous potential for the study of human behavioral changes; he pointed out that humans could effectively handle these interactions simply by increased intelligence and development of technology (Brain 1981). Research on direct confrontation between hominins and large carnivores is clearly important (Hart and Sussman 2011), and yet this subject has not been extensively explored, largely due to the difficulty of approaching the topic using only archaeology and/or paleoanthropology. Nevertheless, danger
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