Around 3-2 million BC several species of Australopithecus lived in southern Africa. Frequently their fossils were recovered from caves, along with the bones of animals assumed to be their prey.
Often the bones bore fracture marks; among these were Australopithecine bones. Were these creatures cannibals or was one species hunting the other?
In recent years scholars have begun to investigate the modern world to obtain clues to what happened in the past. Studying how nature operates today in southern Africa, they have revised their ideas about these bones.
Most of the caves seem to have begun life as sink-holes (holes in limestone through which streams disappear underground) into which material accidentally fell. These sink-holes often supported trees, a favourite place for leopards to eat their kills. Bones dropped by leopards or scavengers such as hyenas would have accumulated in the sink-holes below, producing the collection of bones formerly believed to have been the prey of Australopithecus.
Conclusive proof of this came when with fractures on Australopithecus skulls previously thought to have been caused by weapons were found to fit exactly the teeth of leopards or hyenas. Thus the responsibility for their death was shifted away from their fellow Australopithecines and on to the dangerous predators of the time.
