The earliest evidence of human hunting Found

Archaeologists have discovered what could be the oldest evidence of ancient human ancestors that hunt and gather meat.
The animal bones and thousands of stone tools used by ancient hominids suggest that primitive human ancestors were slaughtering and stealing animals at least 2 million years ago. The findings, published on April 25 in the journal PLOS ONE, support the idea that the consumption of ancient meat could have generated large changes in Homo species at that time.
"Almost at that moment, 2 million years ago, we see great changes in the human fossil record of increased brain size, increased body size and hominins leaving Africa for Eurasia," said study co-author Joseph Ferraro, Baylor archaeologist. University in Waco, Texas. Meat meals may have provided the energy for those transformations, he said.
Earlier, the earliest evidence of eating meat, found at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, dates back to 1.8 million years ago. But that fossil record does not suggest clear evidence of hunting and meat collection until more than a million years later, Ferraro said.
Ancient hunters
Exactly what caused great changes in human ancestors about 1.9 million years ago has been a mystery. Some studies suggest that a shift to a meaty diet allowed for changes, while others suggest that it was not only meat, but meat that made us human.
More than a decade ago, researchers unearthed a treasure trove of thousands of stone tools piled on animal bones in silt and sandy sediment off the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya. The artifacts on the site, known as Kanjera, were around 2 million years old and provided some of the earliest evidence of human species living in grasslands, rather than forests.
Among the findings were dozens of gazelles the size of a goat. Most of the bones were found at the site, suggesting that their bodies were taken entirely to the site.
In addition, "we found cut marks on his bones where raw stone tools were used to skin the animal and to extract its meat and organs," Ferraro told LiveScience.
The combination of evidence suggests that the animals must have been hunted, not looted. (In modern Africa, scavengers do not eat such animals because their main predators, such as lions and hyenas, will consume them completely, leaving nothing behind).
The site also contained the cracked skulls of larger antelopes, similar in size to the wildebeest.
The researchers concluded that these skulls were probably sacked by the ancient hominids. Even today, the Serengeti is filled with heads the size of a wildebeest, Ferraro said.
"Scavengers like hyenas will consume all the rest of the body, but they will leave their heads behind because they can not open them to extract the brain," said Ferraro.
The team hypothesized that ancient human ancestors found discarded heads in their landscape, and then opened their skulls to access fatty, nutritious, energy-rich brains. That could have fueled the bodily changes seen later in modern human ancestors, such as Homo erectus.