Re: Exploitation d¹un grand cé tacé au Paléolithique ancien (Re: "carnivore tooth marks"

Gerrit Hanenburg wrote:

Marc Verhaegen <m_verhaegen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It's well known by everybody except some obsolete kudu runners that Lower
Paleolithic Homo populations butchered stranded whales, so why wouldn't they
have butchered bovids drowned during the trek? (1/10 of trekking bovids die)

Manuel Gutierrez, Claude Guerin, Maria Lena & Maria Piedade da Jesus 2001
"Exploitation d¹un grand cétacé au Paléolithique ancien: le site de Dungo V
à Baia Farta (Benguela, Angola)"
Comptes Rendus CRAS 332:357-362:
The almost complete skeleton of a large whale Balaenoptera was found closely
associated with 57 Lower Paleolithic artefacts near Baia Farta 3 km from the
present shoreline ... oldest evidence of the exploitation of a stranded
whale by Palaeol.people ...

How many times in a life time do you encounter a stranded whale?

Exceedingly rare.

As opposed to millions of carcasses on land. Whales live at sea and that' where they
die:

http://www.mbari.org/news/news_releases/2002/dec20_whalefall.html
In the deep bottom waters of Monterey Canyon, many food webs are sustained by a
slow drizzle of organic particles and detritus known as marine snow. But every
now and then this rain of debris includes a really big food ?particle? in the form
of a dead whale.
...
...Craig Smith, a University of Hawaii professor who has studied whale falls for
nearly twenty years.

Based on repeated observations of whale falls off of Southern California, Smith has
seen a consistent pattern in the development of biological communities around whale
falls. When a large whale dies, its body often sinks directly to the sea bottom,
especially if the animal is undernourished.
...


They're always rare enough to attract media attention. As such they're
only an opportunistic resource, whereas the evidence for systematic
hunting and butchering of terrestrial vertebrates is much stronger.
The design aspect of the paleolithic throwing spears at Schöningen is
far from opportunistic.
.

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