Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
Beaver remains at a site in central Germany are changing our understanding of the diets of hominins in Lower Palaeolithic Europe, as well as the antiquity of the exploitation of beavers.
Extensive excavations between 1969 and 2002 at Bilzingsleben, an open-air hominin site dating to around 400,000 years ago, uncovered a large faunal assemblage. This included many beaver remains, most from Castor fiber (the Eurasian beaver), but also from the extinct species Trogontherium cuvieri. Recently, researchers have analysed the more than 2,000 beaver bones and teeth for cut marks and found clear evidence of human butchery. The distribution of the cut marks indicates that the beavers were probably being targeted for their pelts as well as for their rich meat and fat. Another recent study by different researchers revealed that the majority of the beaver remains from Bilzingsleben came from young adults. At this age, the fully grown but inexperienced beavers are expelled from their parents’ lodges and must fend for themselves, making them ideal targets. The predominance of young adults suggests that, rather than relying on nets and traps placed at the exits of lodges, as has been observed in ethnographic and historical beaver exploitation, Lower Palaeolithic hominins were practising repeated, specific, individual-targeted hunting.
Beavers are known to have been a valuable resource for hunter-gatherers in Eurasia and North America from the early Holocene onwards (c.11,700 years ago), but the finds from Bilzingsleben represent the first evidence of their systematic exploitation in the Pleistocene. Other faunal remains at the site reveal that a wide range of animals were being hunted, including large mammals like rhinoceros and bears. Studies in recent years have shown that from c.125,000 onwards hominins in Europe had more diverse diets than was previously believed (CWA 118), but until now there was no indication that this broad-spectrum subsistence had developed nearly as early as Bilzingsleben suggests. The research has been published in Scientific Reports (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-46956-6).
Text: Amy Brunskill / Image: Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie
