Around two million years ago, several australopitheks – a specific group of prehistoric humans – lived in South Africa. What did the woman do and what did the man do? The man hung out in groups in and around a cave in search of food. Young women, on the other hand, traveled around…
The woman traveled a bit in search of men in prehistoric times. Scientists have now found out through research on fossil teeth about two million years old from South Africa. An international research team reported this on June 2 in the leading scientific journal Nature .
Teeth
This is very similar to what chimpanzees and bonobos do today. The males in a group are often related to each other and don't get along very much. However, the female great apes do. That means that women come to other areas, and therefore to different soils. Although both sexes probably had a similar diet, the difference can be seen from the bottom to the enamel of the molars.
From this property, the scientists led by Sandi Copeland (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany) grateful use. They investigated the ratio between the isotopes strontium-87 ( 87 Sr) and strontium-86 ( 86 Sr) of nineteen choosing australopitheches. Eleven molars come from 1.8 million year old individuals of Paranthropus robustus , found in the Swartkrans cave; eight molars (2.2 million years) belong to Australopithecus africanus from a few kilometers away in the Sterkfontein cave.
The 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratio of the small molars (of women) deviated from that of the large molars (of men). The value of the men was very similar to the value of the present-day dolomite-rich soils in the area around the caves. So men stayed close to the cave for their food.
The value for the women differed from that of the cave area; they traveled to other areas, as evidenced by the mineralization of their molars. "The minimum distance the women traveled was about 3 km, although they probably grew up in areas at least 5-10 km away from the caves," Copeland tells Kennislink. Finally, the young women returned to the cave in search of a man. They were probably taken to other areas by their mothers after birth.
Diet
In the commentary in Nature by Margaret Schoeninger (University of California ) reveals another important conclusion, namely the diet of the 30 kg (females) and 40 kg (males) individuals of Paranthropus robustus and Australopithecus africanus .
The small habitation area (of at least the men) of about 30 km 2 shows that grass was a pretty big part of the diet. Food from trees alone was insufficient to feed the group in the savanna. To do this, they had to do battle with giant baboons and stay out of the hands of predators. Not an easy task.
Copeland sees even more applications of the new method:“We hope that this kind of strontium isotope analysis can also be applied to early hominids such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus .” And this is also an option for present and fossil animals.
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