Lake natron human deaths1/14/2024 ![]() ![]() He discovered the lake as a serene place but noticed that all of the creatures surrounding the water were petrified: they had turned to stone. However, it did not come onto the international scene until photographer, Nick Brandt, recorded it for his book on the disappearing wildlife of East Africa. Lake Natron has been recognized as a site wetland of international significance. Another identifier for it is that it is situated in the Gregory Rift which is itself part of the Eastern arm of the East African Rift caused by tectonic plate movement. It is found more specifically, in the Ngorongoro District of the Arusha Region in Tanzania. This contrast suggests that some Early Stone Age assemblages (e.g., the Olduvai Gorge Bed II sites, the Peninj ST Site Complex, and Swartkrans Member 3) are probably more useful than others (e.g., FLK Zinj) for assessing the maximal carcass-acquiring abilities of early hominids in such assemblagesas those in the former set, sole hominid-contribution is more confidently discerned and isolated for analysis than in assemblages such as FLK Zinj.Lake Natron is an alkaline saltwater lake found in Tanzania. Comparisons suggest that the hominid- and carnivore-derived components from sites in Olduvai Gorge Bed II (Tanzania), the ST Site Complex at Peninj (Tanzania), and Swartkrans Member 3 formed largely independent of each other, while data from the FLK 22 Zinjanthropus (FLK Zinj) site (Olduvai Gorge Bed I) indicate significant interdependence in assemblage formation. We argue that this procedure, which elucidates the degree of hominid-carnivore independence in assemblage formation, will allow researchers to extract for focused analyses high integrity components (hominid and carnivore) from presumably low integrity sites. This study compares the percentage of limb bone specimens that preserve evidence of both hominid- and carnivore-imparted bone damage from actualistic control samples and several Plio-Pleistocene archaeofaunas, including new data from Swartkrans Member 3 (South Africa). Because stone tool cutmarks, hammerstone percussion marks, and carnivore tooth marks are usually only imparted on bone during nutrient extraction from a carcass, these bone surface modifications are particularly amenable to the types of analyses that might meet this goal. Although it seems clear that hominids were utilizing stone tools to carry out subsistence activities unrelated to carcass butchery, more excavation and techniques such as phytolith analysis should be employed to explore alternative explanations.ĭetermining the extent to which hominid- and carnivore-derived components of fossil bone palimpsests formed independently of each other can provide valuable information to paleoanthropologists interested in reconstructing the foraging adaptations of hominids. These findings also beg the question of what activities were being carried out by hominids with the stone tools discarded at these sites. Comparisons with other Olduvai sites indicate a more conspicuous hyena taphonomic signal during Bed II times than Bed I times, which appears to mirror the changing configuration of the large carnivore guild. Nevertheless, no hominid modifications were documented in this assemblage. Site SHK is severely biased by selective retention and therefore little can be said of its formational history. Site MNK Main and HWK East Levels 3–5 appear to be death arenas where carcasses accumulated via natural deaths and/or serial predation. The small and poorly preserved assemblages from FC West and TK are difficult to link unambiguously to either hominids or carnivores. Our data contradict previous interpretations of MNK Main as a hominid accumulation but uphold the contention that BK represents a primarily hominid accumulation reflecting early access to carcasses. In addition to these assemblages, we provide data on HWK East Levels 3–5, FC West, TK, and SHK. We expand upon a previous taphonomic study that provided systematic data for HWK East Levels 1–2, MNK Main, and BK. A reexamination of all of Leakey’s Bed I sites has shown that hominids played little or no role in the formation of all but one of those faunal assemblages, a finding that prompted the reanalysis of the Bed II sites presented here. The faunal assemblages excavated by Mary Leakey in Bed II of Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, have, like the more well-known Bed I assemblages, traditionally been interpreted as the result of hominid butchering activities in the lake margin and riverine settings of the paleo-Olduvai Basin. ![]()
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