Comments on: Middle Pleistocene Bird Consumption at Level XI of Bolomor Cave (Valencia, Spain)

By: Mousterian Spears, Modern Projectiles and Shanidar III « Anthropology.net

Mousterian Spears, Modern Projectiles and Shanidar III « Anthropology.net — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 01:22:30 +0000

[...] from those sites we have the evidence in the remains of small mammals such as rabbits at 350 kya, birds, possibly ducks or geese, dating to 150 kya,and fish such as carp at 780 [...]

By: onyx

onyx — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:50:51 +0000

fascinating just today i read on german wikipedia that neanderthaler were not able to hunt small prey, lol. mm, i have a few anthropological observations, firstly humans do eat raw meat,(especially liver and possibly heart, and brains) secondly in traditional groups women hunt for smallgame (wich could explain some of the different treatment of different sizes of prey). the question rises wether the smaller bones have been disregarded now, then, or perhaps filtered out by other animals then. it’s hard to judge, it is my impression in some caves a large portion of the waste got removed, perhaps in all, and i would be interested in the intensity of that proces. relating the hunting bird theory to untreated bones is rather moot, such bones would give clear indication of avian predation. alot of humans throw the bones of a meal into the fire, and so suggest at least some (perhaps all) archaic firepits, it would mean the sample has a bias for looking cooked, but also probably another cause of limited conservation of smaller (like avian or fish) bones.

By: terryt

terryt — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:59:07 +0000

You don’t actually have to shoot birds with a projectile. Catching ducks in nets when they’ve moulted their flight feathers has a long history. The New Zealand Maori did it, Europeans did it and I even have an idea that the Australian Aborigines did it. Can’t find my source for that at short notice but it’s probably Josephine Flood’s 1988 book “Archeology of the Dreamtime”.

I’ve just been reminded of the extinct passenger pigeon of North America. The question I asked myself was, ‘How come there were so many?’ The indigenous Americans cannot have hunted them. Which is strange. The Maori of NZ hunted pigeons. They snared them in water troughs placed in the pigeons’ favourite fruiting trees. But when the Maori first arrived pigeons were possibly as common in NZ as the passenger pigeon was in Northeast North America. Did the indigenous North Americans not think of snaring the passenger pigeon?

By: Peter Paul

Peter Paul — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:34:14 +0000

Don’t some of the ducks and geese molt completely just ahead of departure for autumn migration? In effect, they drop all their flight feathers at the same time, unable to take off or fly. It’s only a narrow window, but prehistoric hunters were surely attuned to this and would have a 1-2 week period where individual adult birds were easier prey.