Butchery marks on Malagasy megafauna bones (c. 10,500 years)
Marcas de corte en huesos de megafauna malgache (c. 10 500 años)
- Date
- c. 8500 BCE (propuesto) · confidence low
- Place
- Christmas River, Atsimo-Andrefana, Madagascar
- Credited to
- The first hunter-gatherers of Madagascar (hypothesis)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Elephant bird and giant lemur bones with butchery notches, c. 10,500 cal BP, suggest a human presence in Madagascar millennia before the accepted settlement.
Hansford and colleagues (Science Advances, 2018). It is a minority hypothesis: others dispute it (the marks could be natural) and the tool record is unclear. The accepted view is settlement c. 2000 years ago or somewhat earlier. Very approximate coordinates.
What it led to
- rethinking the human role in the island's megafaunal extinction
- a push to search for pre-Austronesian sites in Madagascar