A 120,000-year-old aurochs leg bone with a healed wound shows that early humans likely hunted the same animal more than once, suggesting they planned repeated attacks rather than killing many animals...
Mechanism
Synthesis from 1 study
The animal was hit by a spear, survived, and its body started healing the broken bone. Before the bone finished healing, it got hit again — and the new bone grew over the old healing tissue. That layered bone is proof the animal lived through the first attack and was targeted a second time.
Most probable mechanism
When a bone is hit hard enough to break, the body starts repairing it by laying down new bone tissue around the damage. If the same spot gets hit again before the repair is done, the new bone keeps growing around the second injury, leaving a visible record of two separate hits. This shows the animal lived through the first attack and was targeted again later.
A projectile impact causes a fracture or periosteal disruption in the tibia, initiating an inflammatory response and recruitment of osteoprogenitor cells to the injury site.
Osteoblasts deposit woven bone around the damaged area, forming a callus that begins to stabilize the fracture and restore structural integrity over several weeks.
A second projectile impact occurs before the remodeling process is complete, causing additional periosteal damage and triggering a second wave of bone deposition that overlays and integrates with the existing callus.
The overlapping bone tissue forms a distinct histological signature of two separate traumatic events separated by a healing interval, preserving the temporal sequence of injury and survival.
Evidence from Studies
Supporting (1)
Community contributions welcome
Archaic humans in the Middle Palaeolithic Levant conducted planned and selective intercepts of aurochs, but not mass hunting
Contradicting (0)
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Gold Standard Evidence Needed
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