Thursday 26 September 2019

Why Did Human Ancestors Kill A Bird One Million Years Ago?

Image courtesy of Ruth Blasco, fair use doctrine.




Joel Kontinen

In a new Science story,"in a cave in present-day Israel, a human ancestor removed the feathers from the wing of a swan—and researchers still don’t know why. A team of archaeologists examined bird bones found in Qesem Cave, a paleolithic site about 10 kilometers from Tel Aviv, Israel."

It appears that the bird was not needed for food - but just for decorative purposes. but the researchers claimed that archaic hominins made it.

However, the Israel daily Haaretz, that initially published the story, said, “New evidence found at Qesem Cave, a Paleolithic site occupied on and off from about 420,000 years to 200,000 years ago, indicates that the hominins living there were going to some effort to remove the feathers from their prey.”

So, there is a time lapse of over a half million years. But Darwinians with their millions of years cannot be that precise.

Source:

Frederick, Eva. 2019.WWy did a 1-million-year-old human ancestor collect feathers in Israel? Science (25 September).