糖心视频

What did early humans like to eat? The answer, according to a team of archaeologists in Argentina, is extinct megafauna, such as giant sloths and giant armadillos. In a study in the journal Science Advances, researchers demonstrate that these enormous animals were a staple food source for people in southern South America around 13,000 to 11,600 years ago. Their findings may also rewrite our understanding of how these massive creatures became extinct.

For years, the prevailing theory about the extinction of the last great Ice Age megafauna in South America was that it was primarily due to climate change. Humans were previously believed to have played a minor role in their demise, as they hunted smaller prey, such as guanacos (a relative of the camel) and cervids (deer). However, the abundance of bones of extinct megafauna in sites studied by the team suggests that they were probably the most important food source for these hunter-gatherers.

The archaeologists counted the animal bones at 20 sites in modern-day Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. These were places that had been reliably dated to before 11,600 years ago, when these giants were still roaming around. They compared the remains of megafauna (mammals weighing over 44 kilograms) with those of smaller animals to see which were more abundant. They also closely examined the bones for cut marks and other signs that would indicate humans had butchered them.

Hunting for the biggest meals

At 15 of the 20 sites, extinct megafauna made up more than 80% of the bones. It also turns out that these creatures provided the most energy-rich meals, according to a prey ranking model the team used. This suggests that early human hunters weren't just eating whatever they found but were specifically targeting these extinct giants because they offered the biggest returns for the effort they put into hunting.

The evidence that these animals were a staple rather than a side dish means humans may well have played a significant role in their eventual extinction. "Our results undermine one of the most widely cited objections to the hypothesis that humans are the principal cause of megafaunal extinctions and put human foragers again at the heart of the debate," commented the researchers in their paper.

After the megafauna died out, early humans switched to a diet that included a wider range of animals, say the team. The fact that their diet only broadened after the big animals vanished strongly hints that human hunting pressure was a more significant factor in their disappearance than previously thought.

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