Eating out was a very social matter for early humans

A half-a-million-year-old internationally significant archaeological site in Sussex, England, offers unprecedented insights into the life of a poorly understood extinct human species, according to new UCL research. The findings of a meticulous study led by UCL Institute of Archaeology are detailed in a ground-breaking new book ' The Horse Butchery Site ', published by UCL Archaeology South-East's 'Spoilheap Publications'. The study pieces together the activities and movements of a group of early humans as they made tools, including the oldest bone tools documented in Europe, and extensively butchered a large horse 480,000 years ago. Project lead, Dr Matthew Pope (UCL Institute of Archaeology), said: "This was an exceptionally rare opportunity to examine a site pretty much as it had been left behind by an extinct population, after they had gathered to totally process the carcass of a dead horse on the edge of a coastal marshland. "Incredibly, we've been able to get as close as we can to witnessing the minute-by-minute movement and behaviours of a single apparently tight-knit group of early humans: a community of people, young and old, working together in a co-operative and highly social way." The Horse Butchery Site is one of many excavated in quarries near Boxgrove, Sussex, an internationally significant area - in the guardianship of English Heritage - that is home to Britain's oldest human remains. The site was one of many excavated at Boxgrove in the 1980s and 90s by the UCL Institute of Archaeology under the direction of Mark Roberts.