Archaic humans living in the Levant around 120,000 years ago were highly selective hunters who carefully targeted prime-aged female wild cattle, rather than engaging in the mass hunting events that characterized later human societies. This revelation comes from a groundbreaking study that challenges our understanding of how extinct human relatives organized their communities and competed with modern humans.
The research, led by scientists from the University of Haifa and just published in Scientific Reports, analyzed an exceptional archaeological deposit at the Nesher Ramla karst depression in central Israel. This site, where archaic and modern humans likely first encountered each other, has yielded remarkable evidence about hunting practices during the Middle Paleolithic era. According to Phys.org, the findings suggest that these strategic hunting patterns might have put archaic populations at a disadvantage when living alongside more socially connected modern humans.
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Meticulous Analysis Reveals Selective Hunting Strategy
The archaeological team examined hundreds of aurochs bones- wild ancestors of modern cattle - from Unit III at Nesher Ramla, a thin stratigraphic layer dating to approximately 120,000 years ago. Through sophisticated techniques including bone fusion analysis, sexual dimorphism studies, dental microwear examination, and isotopic analysis, researchers reconstructed a detailed picture of ancient hunting behavior.
The Nesher Ramla site and its Unit III. (C) Stratigraphic section of the MP sequence (Unit III is outlined in yellow). (D) General view of the excavation, looking west. (E–F) Views of Unit III during excavation. (Yeshurun et al./ Scientific Reports)
The bone measurements revealed that 88% of the hunted aurochs were females, and nearly all were prime-aged adults rather than young or elderly animals. This stands in stark contrast to mass hunting events documented elsewhere, which typically target entire herds including juveniles and older individuals. Dental microwear patterns indicated that all animals were killed during the dry season when they fed on evergreen woody leaves, suggesting planned seasonal hunting expeditions.
Isotopic Evidence Disproves Mass Hunting Hypothesis
Perhaps the most compelling evidence against mass hunting came from stable isotope analysis of tooth enamel. The research team sampled five individual aurochs and discovered that each had distinct isotopic signatures, indicating they came from different locations and herds. One individual had spent time near the Mediterranean coast, while another roamed the chalk hills surrounding Nesher Ramla and drank water from high-altitude sources.
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Auroch bones including teeth found at the excavation. (Yeshurun et al./ Scientific Reports)
This geographic diversity definitively ruled out the possibility that all animals were killed in a single mass hunting event. Instead, the evidence points to multiple isolated hunting episodes conducted by small groups during dry season months. The researchers also discovered a remarkable aurochs tibia with an embedded flint chip surrounded by healed bone tissue, providing unique evidence of an animal that escaped one hunt only to be recaptured weeks or months later.
Implications for Understanding Ancient Human Societies
The study's findings reinforce the hypothesis that Middle Paleolithic archaic humans lived in small, dispersed, and disconnected groups with limited intergroup communication. This social structure contrasts sharply with evidence from modern humans, who developed mass hunting techniques around 50,000 years ago and maintained larger, more interconnected populations.
Mass hunting requires extensive coordination, communication, and cooperation among numerous individuals from different bands, often spanning several days. It serves as an archaeological proxy for large-scale social organization and cultural exchange. The absence of such evidence at Nesher Ramla, despite ideal preservation conditions and a concentrated bone assemblage, suggests that archaic populations may have been at a demographic disadvantage when competing with more numerous and better-connected modern human groups.
The Nesher Ramla site holds particular significance because it represents an early contact zone between archaic and modern humans. The site previously yielded fossil remains of Middle Pleistocene Homo bearing a combination of Neanderthal and archaic features, adding biological context to the behavioral evidence. While modern humans were present at contemporaneous sites like Skhul and Qafzeh caves, the hunting strategies employed by different human populations during this critical period remain a subject of ongoing research.
The researchers emphasize that while no comparable sites currently exist in the Levant to test whether modern humans engaged in mass hunting during the Middle Paleolithic, the evidence from Nesher Ramla provides valuable insights into the social organization and survival strategies of archaic populations. Further investigation of open-air fauna-bearing camps attributed to modern humans could reveal whether differential hunting strategies contributed to the eventual replacement or assimilation of archaic human populations in the region.
Top image: A man stood facing an auroch - a massive wild cattle that stood up to 7 feet tall at the shoulder. Source: Nature
By Gary Manners
References
de Carvalho, C.N., Muñiz, F., Cáceres, L.M. et al. Aurochs roamed along the SW coast of Andalusia (Spain) during Late Pleistocene. Sci Rep 12, 9911 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14137-6
Yeshurun, R. et al. 2025. Archaic humans in the Middle Palaeolithic Levant conducted planned and selective intercepts of aurochs, but not mass hunting. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-26274-9
Mondal, S., 2025. Archaic humans were strategic and picky hunters, new study suggests. Phys.org. Available at: https://phys.org/news/2025-12-archaic-humans-strategic-picky-hunters.html
