Atapuerca: 60 bison per hunt, success or problem?
At Atapuerca, Spain, hunters took 60 bison at once using natural traps, but hyenas and vultures soon followed. Efficiency came at a price.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
The Atapuerca trap: 60 bison at a time, but with a whiff of trouble
Imagine killing 60 bison in one go. At Atapuerca, they did it. Forget spears and throwing darts: the strategy was to set up camp at a natural watering hole and bottleneck where herds passed year after year. They cornered the animals against a trap they could not escape from, and they fell by the dozens. The energy efficiency was dozens of times higher than hunting animals one by one. But not everything was idyllic.
The problem came afterwards. A tribe of twenty people cannot process forty bison. The leftover meat attracted every scavenger in the area: vultures, hyenas, bears. Turning the camp into a predator magnet did not seem like the best way to live in peace.
Smoking was not the magic solution
Some suggest they smoked the meat and stored it in caves. But smoke disperses the smell of meat and attracts wolves and bears even more. Hardly desirable neighbours. So efficiency had a cost: the group's safety. Perhaps that is why no large permanent settlements are seen at these sites. The trap worked, but living there was another story.
Bottom line: killing 60 bison at once sounds like a protein paradise, but in practice, you shared the menu with the entire food chain. Irony of prehistory.
Related discussions in the forum
Imagine killing 60 bison in one go. At Atapuerca, they did it. Forget spears and throwing darts: the strategy was to set up camp at a natural watering hole and bottleneck where herds passed year after year. They cornered the animals against a trap they could not escape from, and they fell by the dozens. The energy efficiency was dozens of times higher than hunting animals one by one. But not everything was idyllic.
The problem came afterwards. A tribe of twenty people cannot process forty bison. The leftover meat attracted every scavenger in the area: vultures, hyenas, bears. Turning the camp into a predator magnet did not seem like the best way to live in peace.
Smoking was not the magic solution
Some suggest they smoked the meat and stored it in caves. But smoke disperses the smell of meat and attracts wolves and bears even more. Hardly desirable neighbours. So efficiency had a cost: the group's safety. Perhaps that is why no large permanent settlements are seen at these sites. The trap worked, but living there was another story.
Bottom line: killing 60 bison at once sounds like a protein paradise, but in practice, you shared the menu with the entire food chain. Irony of prehistory.
Related discussions in the forum
- Altruism in the Palaeolithic · 26 replies
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (21 replies).
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