J. Garcia Garriga1-3, K. Martinez1, 2, and J. Yravedra4 1Institut Catala de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolucio Social (IPHES), C/ Marcel·li Domingo s/n (Edifi ci W3), Campus Sescelades URV, 43007, Tarragona, Spain 2Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Area de Prehistoria, Avinguda de Catalunya 35, 43002, Tarragona, Spain 3Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Avinguda del Tibidabo 39?43, 08035, Barcelona, Spain 4Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Dpt. Prehistoria, Facultad de Geografia e Historia, 28040, Madrid, Spain
The fi rst peopling of Europe has been widely discussed for the last decades. The many fi ndings recorded in recent years have confi rmed that Europe was occupied by hominins during the Early Pleistocene for over a million years. However, several issues are still in question in the current debate about this fi rst peopling, including the continuity or discontinuity of this event. In this regard, a revision of the available zooarchaeological evidence for the Early Pleistocene in Europe is proposed in this paper, discussing the infl uence on hominin behavior of meat resource acquisition. The faunal evidence recovered from the European sites shows that hominins had access to a variety of meat resources, from small animals such as birds and reptiles to a large variety of mammals such as hippopotamuses and ungulates of varying sizes. This fossil record also suggests that hominins overcame the predation-pressure exerted by hyaenids and felids, which competed for these same natural resources. The climatic fl uctuations which characterized this period, as well as the diversity of ecosystems found in the Mediterranean area and in the whole continent, made meat consumption a key resource for the adaptive possibilities of local hominins. Thus, the persistence and expansion of hominin settlement throughout Europe during the Early Pleistocene may have depended on overcoming these constraining factors, on the basis of the social cohesion of the groups and their capacity to provide with a Mode 1 technology a regular supply of meat resources.
Keywords: Early Pleistocene; Western Europe; population continuity; hominin subsistence strategies; meat consumption.
