Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 113, Issue 11, Pages 2874-2879Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1507055113
Keywords
biomarker; leaf wax; carbon isotope; paleoecology; human evolution
Categories
Funding
- Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [HAR2013-45246-C3-1-P]
- National Science Foundation [DGE 0947962]
- Tanzania Antiquities Department
- Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Division Of Earth Sciences [1349599] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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The availability of plants and freshwater shapes the diets and social behavior of chimpanzees, our closest living relative. However, limited evidence about the spatial relationships shared between ancestral human (hominin) remains, edible resources, refuge, and freshwater leaves the influence of local resources on our species' evolution open to debate. Exceptionally well-preserved organic geochemical fossils-biomarkers-preserved in a soil horizon resolve different plant communities at meter scales across a contiguous 25,000 m(2) archaeological land surface at Olduvai Gorge from about 2 Ma. Biomarkers reveal hominins had access to aquatic plants and protective woods in a patchwork landscape, which included a spring-fed wetland near a woodland that both were surrounded by open grassland. Numerous cut-marked animal bones are located within the wooded area, and within meters of wetland vegetation delineated by biomarkers for ferns and sedges. Taken together, plant biomarkers, clustered bone debris, and hominin remains define a clear spatial pattern that places animal butchery amid the refuge of an isolated forest patch and near freshwater with diverse edible resources.
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