Study Finds Homo Floresiensis Cut Marks on Stegodon Bones but No Evidence of Fire Use

A new analysis of more than 3,000 Stegodon bone fragments from Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores indicates that Homo floresiensis scavenged meat left by Komodo dragons rather than hunting large animals or using fire. @NewScientist reported that researchers fed a dead goat to a Komodo dragon at Zoo Atlanta to document the tooth marks left on bones.

After the animal finished eating, 72 bones remained and 26 of them carried 192 tooth marks.

The team then examined cut marks on Stegodon bones associated only with Homo floresiensis layers at the cave and found they occurred mainly on cranial bones and thoracic vertebrae, the less meat-rich portions. The same researchers inspected nearly 7,000 more recent giant rat bones linked to Homo sapiens at the site and checked roughly 10,000 bones total for signs of burning.

Only one Stegodon bone from the Homo floresiensis layers showed any evidence of fire exposure, and that bone was most likely heated by later disturbance.

In contrast, one-fifth of the rat bones left by modern humans displayed burn marks, with zero burned bones recorded in the earlier layers. Fossils of Homo floresiensis, first announced in 2004, show the species stood just over a meter tall and lived on Flores until around 50,000 years ago, with remains dated between 90,000 and 50,000 years old.

Earlier interpretations based on stone tools and blackened bones had suggested the hominins controlled fire and hunted the island’s largest animals.

Elizabeth Veatch of the Smithsonian Institution said the rat bones demonstrate the pattern clearly, with zero burned bones in Homo floresiensis layers and hundreds burned in modern human layers. The study concludes that Homo floresiensis did not use fire or hunt big game. The work was published in Science Advances with DOI 10.1126/sciadv.aeb7219.