Neanderthals Hunted Elephants And Enjoyed Every Piece Of Meat

More than 100,000 years ago, Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) who lived in central Germany hunted the largest land animals of the Ice Age: the straight-tusked elephants, which could weigh up to 13 tons — twice as much as today’s African elephants.

The conclusion comes from a new study that has mapped in detail the near-industrial operation carried out by Neanderthals to harvest every piece of meat from pachyderms in the most systematic way possible. The data indicate a considerable capacity for organization, planning and cooperation on the part of this species of archaic human beings, contradicting the image of intellectually limited creatures often associated with them.

The “elephant butcher shop” was first identified thanks to archaeological salvage work decades ago, as the area where the fossils originated, designated as Neumark-Nord 1, ended up being given over to coal mining. Animal bones and artifacts manufactured by Neanderthals were present at the site, which corresponded to a lake and its banks 125,000 years ago.

At the time, the world was experiencing what experts call the interglacial period, a phase of the Pleistocene —the so-called Ice Age— in which Europe’s climatic conditions were quite mild. the kind of elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus spread to various regions of the continent during these phases.

In addition to the shape of the tusks, different from that seen in modern elephants, the animals were characterized by great sexual dimorphism —females weighed about half of males— and also by their height, which reached four meters at shoulder level.

In the new research, recently published in the journal Science Advances, the team led by Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser of the Museum of Human Behavioral Evolution in Neuwied, Germany, analyzed in detail both the characteristics of the straight-tusked elephants found at the site and the marks left on their bones by Neanderthal tools.

It is common that, in the case of archaeological sites where human beings of modern anatomy are not found, researchers attribute the presence of such large animals to “carnage” activities on the part of primitive humans. That is, they would have taken advantage of the natural death of animals or stolen the carcass of predators such as lions, bears, etc.

The work of the German team, however, showed that this is unlikely. Of the 57 elephants found around the ancient lake, almost all appear to have reached adulthood, over 25 years old, while calves and “old” animals barely appear. Also, many were males.

This is a distribution of ages and sex that goes against what is expected in the case of non-human predators, which tend to give preference to the most vulnerable members of a prey group, such as young and old and sick animals. Considering the behavior of today’s elephants, scientists consider that the most likely thing is that Neanderthals privileged the hunting of solitary adult males, who could be surrounded and killed with spears and, in addition, brought the greatest return in terms of the amount of meat.

And indeed, the marks of stone implements on the animals reveal that Neanderthals went to great lengths to get the most protein and fat from elephants. The slaughtered pachyderms were sliced ​​literally from head to toe, with incisions made to gain access to the brain, tongue, rib meat and the “pads” characteristic of elephant feet. These structures yield up to 2 kg of fat, which is highly valued by hunter-gatherer groups.

Each elephant would be able to provide 2,500 “daily packs” of meals, each containing 4,000 calories, the scientists estimate. This indicates that Neanderthal groups must have had techniques for preserving all that meat, and also that they may have gathered with other groups to share the feast periodically, forging long-distance social bonds, for example.