Pre-Humans May Have Used Bone Tools to Gather Food

Tiny scratches on old bones provide new evidence that pre-human creatures used crude tools to satisfy a taste for termites, French and South African researchers reported in Tuesday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The bones, found years ago at Swartkrans, Sterkfontein and Drimolen in South Africa, are the oldest known bone tools, apparently modified more than a million years ago for food gathering. Now, a fresh look at the types of scratches on the bones suggests they were used to scratch and poke through termite mounds in search of edible bugs.

The extinct species Australopithicus robustus, which is presumed to have used the tools, is thought to have been a muscled, beetle-browed, plant-eating hominid who made a few tools. Termites are a valuable source of protein, fat and essential amino acids. While a rump steak yields 322 calories per 100 grams, and codfish 74, termites provide 560 calories.

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--Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II