The effects of carnivore diversity on scavenging opportunities and hominin range expansion during Out of Africa I

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Numerous extrinsic hypotheses explaining Out of Africa I, like faunal turnover and hominins following fauna, have been rejected based on paleoecological models. Others have explored the importance of the hominin intrusion into the carnivore guild. Here, I build on this hypothesis by proposing a complementary hypothesis; the scavenging corridor hypothesis (SCH). In East Africa, carnivore richness peaked around 3 Ma and declined gradually until shortly after 2 Ma. This timeline coincides with the development of early lithic technologies and initial evidence of the butchery of large mammals; thus implying that increased hominin carnivory impacted endemic carnivore diversity through the transition from passive to confrontational scavenging. The SCH posits that the relatively stable carnivore diversity and richness in Eurasia permitted hominin range expansion into Eurasian habitats after 2 Ma due to scavenging opportunities along continuously overlapping carnivore ranges. This study tests the SCH by examining carnivore diversity at African and Eurasian sites covering intervals before, during, and after initial Out of Africa I dispersals. This study builds on previous hypotheses about the role of carnivore guilds in hominin dispersals while tying in theoretical models on modes of early hominin carnivory and actualistic research on scavenging opportunities resulting from carnivore guild composition.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39918.0