Vasika
Udurawane
Writer
Julio
Lacerda
Staff Artist and Writer
More than 500,000 years ago, during the Middle Pleistocene, a incredible event ensued in Morocco. It was an interaction between a hapless hominin or an ancestral human, and a group of fierce hunters that probably finished the unlucky human off.
The remains were discovered in a cave in Southwest Casablanca known as Grotte à Hominidés, an apt name given the contents preserved within. The site itself was known to the researchers as “Thomas Quarry I” and dates back to a part of human history known as the Acheulean. During this era, our ancestors were still making use of simple stone tools, and had not yet branched out to more complex equipment.
Remains of such tools have indeed been discovered at the site, and thus confirm its age. This remarkable find was scientifically published in the journal PLOS ONE by Camille Daujeard, Denis Geraads and colleagues from the Museum National D’Histoire Naturelle in France. The best fossil from the area, a femur, is currently being housed at the Institut National des Sciences de l'Archéologie et du Patrimoine–INSAP (Madinat Al Irfane, Rabat, Morocco. This femur shows bite marks by the predators that ate the person, although there is no indication as to whether it was active predation or scavenging.
