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Ancient humans feasted on a giant elephant in India over 300,000 years ago
A breakthrough fossil discovery in northern India is changing what we know about some of the largest mammals to ever walk the Earth.
As well as filling in gaps in the evolution of the straight-tusked elephants, the remains reveal what early humans did to eat the giant animals.
An ancient elephant graveyard is finally giving up its secrets.
Remains of straight-tusked elephants known as Palaeoloxodon were first uncovered near the town of Pampore, in the Kashmir Valley, when a giant skull was dug out of an old quarry in 2000. Further fossils followed, as well as a cache of stone tools used by ancient humans.
More than 20 years after the site’s initial discovery, an international team of researchers from India, Finland, the UK and the USA have now pieced together its past for the first time. They suggest it represents the earliest evidence of butchery in the whole of India.
Their findings, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology and Quaternary Science Reviews, reveal humans feasting on elephants between 300-400,000 years ago. Skeletal fragments found at the site suggest that our ancient relatives were smashing the bones using heavy rocks to get to the nutritious marrow and grease found inside.
Dr Simon Parfitt, a human evolution researcher at the Natural History Museum, says it offers new insights into the region’s past.
“Ancient human fossils are exceedingly rare in India. To date, only a single human fossil has been discovered that might roughly coincide in age with the Pampore elephants,” he explains. “While the Pampore site doesn’t add to this count directly, it does show how these distant relatives of ours were behaving.”
“Discoveries like these have brought the region to the attention of archaeologists, who are now looking more closely for new butchery sites. With a bit of luck, I suspect there will be further finds in the coming years.”
Studying the skull, on display at the University of Jammu, revealed that the elephant would have been very sick at the time it died. © Simon Parfitt
The final days of an ancient elephant
When a brownish-white stump was first found sticking out of a quarry face in Pampore, its finders had no idea what their discovery would reveal. At first thought to be a piece of fossilised wood, further excavation revealed it was the end of a tusk from a straight-tusked elephant. Eventually, a full skull was extracted from the cliff and taken to the University of Jammu for display.
Breaks in the skull provided a rare opportunity for the researchers to look inside it. Their examination of the fossil suggests the elephant would have been very ill at the time of its death at least 300,000 years ago.
“When we peered into the damaged section, we could see that something was odd about the inside of the skull,” Simon says. “Elephant skulls are full of air spaces to make the head lighter, but the bone along the sinus cavities had grown in an abnormal, spongy structure.”
“We believe this indicates the individual was suffering from sinusitis, possibly due to an infection spreading from another part of the body or from a severe respiratory disease. Either way, it may have contributed to its death.”
As the animal staggered towards the Jhelum River, it’s possible that it sank into the soft mud and was too weak to escape. However, the presence of stone tools and broken elephant bones nearby suggests that humans might have had something to do with it.
While the current evidence only shows that ancient humans were eating elephant meat and fat at the Pampore site, it’s possible that they could have hunted the elephant. But that’s very difficult to prove.
“To show it was hunting, we would need convincing evidence that humans were responsible for the death of the animal,” Simon explains. “One of the few examples is in Lehringen, Germany, where a 125,000-year-old spear is still embedded with an elephant’s ribcage. Nonetheless, any evidence of butchery from an animal of this age is quite important.”
“Given the size of these animals, and the relatively small size of human groups, it’s unlikely they would have been able to fully butcher this elephant before it started to rot. This means they probably went for the prime cuts of meat rather than stripping the carcass, so there’s much less chance of any marks being left behind on the bone.”
As the skull itself doesn’t have any evidence of being butchered, the researchers can’t tell how the animal died. It can, however, shed light on how its species evolved.
By comparing the skull with other straight-tusked elephants, like Palaeoloxodon recki, the researchers found that Palaeoloxodon turkmenicus is a transitional form in the animals' evolution. © Steven Zhang
Where do straight-tusked elephants come from?
The skulls of straight-tusked elephants reveal a lot about them, with a distinctive crest on the roof of the skull being particularly informative. This feature is thought to have helped the animals support their massive heads and differs between species.
The crest of the skull found in Pampore is quite different from other Palaeoloxodon skulls, leading the researchers to identify it as coming from a little-known straight-tusked species. Co-author Dr Steven Zhang was involved in this aspect of the research, using specimens he had studied while he was a PhD student at the Natural History Museum.
“By comparing a range of characteristics, we believe the skull comes from a species known as Palaeoloxodon turkmenicus,” he says. “This species was previously only known from a fragmentary skull, which was very unlike those of its relatives. In fact, the Turkmen skull was thought to be an aberrant individual of the European species, Palaeoloxodon antiquus.”
“With the Pampore skull added to the mix, we can now show that Palaeoloxodon turkmenicus is a valid species, and could represent a transitional form between early Palaeoloxodon and the later, slightly larger species. Even if it’s not the the ‘missing link’ itself, it’s probably similar in appearance to those elephants.”
The researchers hope that by better understanding Palaeoloxodon, they’ll also be able to answer broader questions about elephant evolution. As Dr Advait Jukar, Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, explains, this could in turn help to reveal more about living species.
“We don’t really know where Palaeoloxodon fits within the overall evolutionary tree of elephants,” he says. “It was long thought that it was closely related to the Asian elephant, but more recent ancient DNA studies suggest that they might be closer to African elephants.”
“The key to solving this mystery is Africa. By discovering more skulls, we can get closer to answering where these magnificent animals came from.”
