Olduvai Gorge uncovers 1.8-million-year-old elephant butchery by early humans
A new study reports the earliest direct evidence that early humans butchered elephants at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, about 1.8 million years ago, with stone tools found alongside Elephas recki bones. The findings suggest a strategic, meat-rich subsistence and a shift toward larger, more complex occupation sites in the early Pleistocene.