Shaped stone balls were used for bone marrow extraction at Lower Paleolithic Qesem Cave, Israel

PLoS One. 2020 Apr 9;15(4):e0230972. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230972. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

The presence of shaped stone balls at early Paleolithic sites has attracted scholarly attention since the pioneering work of the Leakeys in Olduvai, Tanzania. Despite the persistent presence of these items in the archaeological record over a period of two million years, their function is still debated. We present new results from Middle Pleistocene Qesem Cave on the use of these implements as percussion tools. Use-wear and abundant bone and fat residues found on ten shaped stone balls indicate crushing of fresh bones by thrusting percussion and provide direct evidence for the use of these items to access bone marrow of animal prey at this site. Two experiments conducted to investigate and verify functional aspects proved Qesem Cave shaped stone balls are efficient for bone processing and provide a comfortable grip and useful active areas for repeated use. Notably, the patina observed on the analyzed items precedes their use at the cave, indicating that they were collected by Qesem inhabitants, most probably from older Lower Paleolithic Acheulian sites. Thus, our results refer only to the final phases of the life of the items, and we cannot attest to their original function. As bone marrow played a central role in human nutrition in the Lower Paleolithic, and our experimental results show that the morphology and characteristics of shaped stone ball replicas are well-suited for the extraction of bone marrow, we suggest that these features might have been the reason for their collection and use at Qesem Cave. These results shed light on the function of shaped stone balls and are consistent with the significance of animal fat in the caloric intake of Middle Pleistocene humans as shown by the archeozoological evidence at Qesem Cave and possibly beyond.

Publication types

  • Historical Article
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Archaeology
  • Bone Marrow*
  • Bone and Bones
  • Caves
  • Diet, Paleolithic / history*
  • Dietary Fats / history
  • Fossils
  • History, Ancient
  • Humans
  • Israel

Substances

  • Dietary Fats

Grants and funding

We acknowledge funding received for this project through the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant Project HIDDEN FOODS, G.A. no. 639286 to EC). CL is grateful to MAECI (Italian Ministry for the Foreign Affairs) for its funding support to this project. EA is grateful to the Azrieli Foundation for the award of an Azrieli Fellowship. This study was funded by the grant UT 41/4-1 “Cultural and biological transformations in the Late Middle Pleistocene (420- 200 ka ago) at Qesem Cave, Israel: In search for a post-Homo erectus lineage in the Levantine corridor” (A. Gopher, R. Barkai, Th. Uthmeier) of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). The Qesem Cave excavation project was previously supported by the Israel Science Foundation, the CARE Archaeological Foundation, the Leakey Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Dan David Foundation, and the German Research Foundation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.