![]() The spears were made from metal poles with a wooden point at the end, as evidence from other archaeological sites shows the Neanderthals of the period were using wooden spears for their hunts. Then the group recruited three men versed in weaponry to recreate the attack. First, they set up the targets: 24 skeletons from German red deer (the species of fallow deer the Neanderthals hunted are now extinct, and this was the closest modern analogy) embedded in ballistics gel to simulate flesh. To understand the precise mechanics of how this close-range hunting would have worked, Gaudzinski-Windheuser and her colleagues decided to recreate the scene. To Spikins, that suggests tight-knit social networks and empathetic support of one another, which she and her colleagues wrote about in a February paper for World Archaeology. Spikins is particularly interested in hunting strategies, because her research focus is Neanderthal “healthcare.” No, Neanderthals weren’t opening up medical practices or offering insurance (that we know of)-but they did help one another recover from injuries that might’ve been sustained in dangerous activities like close-range hunting, as seen in bones that show recovery from wounds. They’re choosing from various hunting options open to them, and this choice demonstrates a lot of collaboration.” “Now we see it in terms of the continuity of human adaptation. “Maybe 10 years ago the story would’ve been, Neanderthals couldn’t throw, because they had a different shoulder structure, and there’s an implication of cognitive limitation-that they weren’t using thrown projectiles,” says Penny Spikins, a senior lecturer in archaeology at the University of York who wasn’t affiliated with the study. Such a view meant that researchers were always looking for what weaknesses had set Neanderthals up for failure, rather than the skills that allowed them to successfully survive for so long.Įxcavation of a 120.000 last Interglacial lake-landscape at Neumark-Nord near present day Halle in the eastern part of Germany. This is a sea-change from how anthropologists once viewed this group of hominins: as a species doomed to extinction. Moreover, they successfully exploited whatever environment they happened to live in, be it the snowy tundra of Ice Age Europe, or heavily forested lakeshores during the interglacial periods. Neanderthals have now been credited with creating symbolic art, producing geometric structures of broken stalagmites in underground caves and controlling fire to use on tools and food. This new research is only the latest in a recent string of studies that indicate Neanderthals were our genetic and perhaps cultural cousins: complex, emphathetic hominins. “Our findings must be understood as one of the best evidence known so far that provides insight into the social set up of Neanderthals.” “This has a lot of implications, as groups of hunters had to closely cooperate, to rely on each other,” said Johannes Gutenberg University archaeologist Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, one of the study’s authors, by email. That would mean that Neanderthals used sophisticated close-range hunting techniques to capture their prey-adding more weight to the argument that they were much smarter than we once gave them credit for. This week, researchers argue in a new paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution that those punctured bones are the oldest example of hunting marks in the history of homininkind. ![]() We know this because those skeletons, with bones bearing the signs the people who killed them, were recovered in 19 in a site called Neumark-Nord. But today their skills and tools proved their worth: A group of Neanderthals used their hand-crafted wooden spears to kill two male fallow deer, both in the prime of their life and heavy with valuable meat and fat. They competed for these prizes against other predators like hyenas and lions, sometimes losing their lives in the process. ![]() These hunters regularly brought down mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, deer, wild horses, aurochs (extinct bulls) and straight-tusked elephants. On an autumn day around 120,000 years ago, in the dense forests of what would come to be Germany, fierce hunters prowled the landscape.
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