At a fossil site in northern Koobi Fora, researchers kept finding animal bones dating back 1.6 million years that had the limbs removed at the exact same points, with leg bones cracked open in the same ways. Clearly, these ancient humans weren’t so primitive that they were randomly chopping up animals and devouring whatever meat they saw. They had a system, one that they used to dissect animals into discrete bits, not unlike a modern meat butcher. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences analyzed more than 1,100 fossils from the FwJj 80 site and found that early members of the genus Homo had established a repeatable and reliable approach to prepping their food. First, they targeted specific prey, mostly antelope and other animals with hooves. They then focused their butchery on the limbs with the most meat, before finally breaking the bones to extract the marrow.…