Prehistoric humans ate bone marrow like canned soup 400,000 years ago.
Bone marrow constitutes a significant source of nutrition, it and the cranial vault contents were the few available highly nutritious resources available for early scavengers humans, who subsisted on remnants from larger predator kills.
The access to this fat likely contributed to the direct development of intelligence and brain growth, as saturated fats were the primary driver of brain growth.
In fact, the animal who was inadvertently hunted and found to be lacking sufficient fat was often abandoned.
Direct evidence that early Paleolithic people saved animal bones for up to nine weeks before feasting on them, based upon the translocation of selected body parts of the hunted animal carcasses to the cave structures.
The Paleolithic humans developed preservation strategies for the marrow by covering the bone with skin. The bones were used as ‘cans’ that preserved the bone marrow for a long period until it was time to take off the dry skin, shatter the bone and eat the marrow.
mmm… yummy
Bone marrow storage and delayed consumption at Middle Pleistocene Qesem Cave, Israel (420 to 200 ka). Science Advances, 2019; 5 (10)
