Limb bones, for instance, are scarce and represented mainly by shafts the ends were broken or gnawed off. Indeed, not only are the remains of Pachycrocuta found in the cave, but the type of damage seen on the Homo erectus bones (and other fossils) is consistent with what is observed in modern hyena dens.

In a paper published in the journal Acta Anthropologica Sinica (and later expanded in a 2004 Journal of Human Evolution paper) they argued that the cave was dominated by giant hyenas that tore hapless Homo erectus limb from limb. Perhaps there was some sort of cave roof collapse that shattered the bodies, but even this idea was not entirely satisfying.īut what about the hyenas? The idea that the cave was a hyena den populated by the immense extinct species Pachycrocuta brevirostris had seemingly been forgotten, but in 2000 Noel Boaz, Russell Ciochon, Xu Qinqi, and Liu Jinyi reopened the debate. Eventually Dart's murderous australopithecines and Weidenreich's bloodthirstry Homo erectus faded from view, but this still left the mystery of why the Zhoukoudian cave mainly contained fragments of skulls. Hunting and meat eating were important, yes, but our ancestors preyed on other animals, not on each other. (2004).Īs popular as this vision of our past was publicly, however, anthropologists had a less grisly interpretation of our past. *Ī Homo erectus skull bearing carnivoran tooth marks.

Crushing bones and cracking skulls