Elephants may have played surprising role in early human survival, study suggests

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2026 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG. A tourist was moved to tears when his lifelong dream of seeing wild elephants finally came true in Thailand. Guided by a tour leader, he and his partner encountered a roaming elephant family just ahead—an emotional moment that left him overwhelmed. Elephants are widely adored by many people today — but a recent study suggests early humans were butchering them for survival nearly 2 million years ago. A group of international researchers found what they describe as "the earliest direct evidence of proboscidean butchery," including a newly identified elephant butchery site, according to an article published in the spring in the journal eLife. Modern elephants are the only living proboscideans today — a group that once included woolly mammoths and mastodons. The animal bones belonged to Elephas recki, an extinct elephant species. ANCIENT HUMANS WERE HUNT