Archaeologists able to reconstruct 'day in the life' of prehistoric ancestors half a million years on

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The absence of the feet also suggests that the skin was removed with substantial care – presumably so that it could subsequently be used as clothing or bedding or perhaps even as windbreaks or for any tent-like structures open image in gallery Beginning to refit the flint shards in 1990. Although the horse butchery site represents a day – or even less than a day – in the life of the small community involved, it has also provided evidence as to how the day's events helped them over succeeding days and weeks. open image in gallery A small knapping scatter relating to the reshaping of a biface, preserving the imprint of an early human knee in the shards of waste flint, under excavation in 1989 After they had abandoned the butchery site, successive high tides would have rapidly covered the horse's remains with silt and sand – but not before wolves and hyenas have had an opportunity to gnaw at the remaining bones. The Boxgrove butchery site study, led by archaeologist Matthew Pope, of University College London's Institute of Archaeology, is published today in a new book ‘The Horse Butchery Site’, published by Spoilheap Publications.