From Hunted to Hunter: Neanderthals Preyed on Cave Lions, Study Finds

Stone Age-cartoon lovers will recall that Fred Flintstone polished off racks of brontosaurus ribs and that Wilma Flintstone swanned round in a Siberian mastodon fur coat. Because it seems, the Neanderthals of, say, 46,000 B.C. might have had related eating habits and tastes in daywear. A tutorial paper revealed on Thursday within the journal Scientific Stories proposes that our long-extinct ancestors not solely have been the primary people to kill and butcher massive predators, however that additionally they used the hides for cultural functions and even perhaps wearing them.

Researchers analyzed lower marks and puncture wounds on the stays of two Eurasian cave lions unearthed 34 years aside in present-day Germany. One set of bones, an nearly intact skeleton discovered close to Siegsdorf on the foot of the Bavarian Alps in 1985, is estimated to be about 48,000 years outdated; the opposite assemblage, two toe bones and one tiny paw bone that had been embedded in a pelt that later disintegrated, was found in 2019 deep inside Einhornhöhle, or Unicorn Cave, within the Harz Mountains and dates to roughly 190,000 years in the past. Each lions lived throughout an period when Neanderthals have been the one people that occupied Europe; the primary Homo sapiens didn’t arrive on the continent till roughly 42,000 years in the past.

The brand new research addresses a foundational query in zooarchaeology: Had been early hominids the hunters or the hunted? “The Siegsdorf findings present the earliest concrete proof of people looking down the formidable lion, the last word hunter of the animal kingdom,” stated Gabriele Russo, a doctoral candidate in zooarchaeology on the College of Tübingen and the primary writer of the paper. “This discovery helps to reshape our understanding of different human species’ capabilities and challenges preconceived notions about Neanderthals.”

As lately because the Nineties, Neanderthals have been judged by students to be rock-brained scavengers too helpless to hunt on their very own. Based mostly partly on the absence of higher limb bones dug up at Neanderthal campsites, the consensus was that they eked by on the much less meaty leftovers of different carnivores. However a reappraisal of the proof confirmed that the bones that have been supposedly lacking had been shattered by the group to get on the marrow.

Neanderthals at the moment are thought to have been extra refined and multitalented than imagined. Proof is mounting that they used a fancy language and even, contemplating the ritual interment of their useless, some type of spirituality. They made sticky pitch to safe their spear factors by heating birch bark; stalked bison, wild cattle and straight-tusked elephants, and ambushed hibernating cave bears because the animals woke from their annual slumber.

Till now, no research had demonstrated that Neanderthals deliberately hunted massive beasts of prey, a lot much less cave lions, apex predators that ranged broadly throughout northern Eurasia and Alaska from 370,000 B.C. to 10,000 B.C. “We have now very early oblique proof of looking of non-predators, though there may be some debate about what constitutes looking and when,” stated Annemieke Milks, an archaeologist on the College of Studying who collaborated on the paper. “We see proof that people have been looking for a lot of a whole lot of hundreds of years earlier than this, however it’s fairly a special kind of problem to hunt harmful animals.”

High cats

The cave lion, which was as a lot as 20 p.c bigger than lions of right now, gained its title not as a result of it lingered in caves however as a result of many intact skeletons have been discovered within the dens of largely herbivorous cave bears, on which the lions presumably feasted.

The stays of the Siegsdorf cave lion repose in a glass case on the city’s Pure Historical past and Mammoth Museum. Within the fall of 2021, Mr. Russo examined the skeleton bone by bone. The presence of lower marks throughout two ribs, some vertebrae and the left femur had led archaeologists to imagine that Neanderthals butchered the massive cat after it died. Mr. Russo seen a deep, beforehand undocumented gash on the underside of a rib; the gash resembled projectile influence marks that wooden-tipped Neanderthal spears had left on historic deer vertebrae. The wound channel was angled, which led him to suspect {that a} spear had entered the left facet of the lion’s stomach and handed by way of important organs earlier than putting the rib.

The harm was a looking lesion, he thought.

Based mostly on this discovering, Mr. Russo persuaded the museum director to mortgage out the lion’s stays to the State Service for Cultural Heritage Decrease Saxony in Hannover for nearer inspection. Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist and head of analysis on the heritage workplace, had been a supervisor on Mr. Russo’s grasp’s thesis.

Dr. Terberger enlisted Dr. Milks, a specialist in early looking weapons. Utilizing a mix of digital 3-D microscopy and micro-CT scanning, Dr. Milks and Mr. Russo created a ballistic reconstruction. Forensics revealed that the spear had been thrust slightly than thrown, and that the rib wound was seemingly a deadly blow struck whereas the lion was mendacity on the bottom.

The specimen was an aged male, and, given fashionable lion conduct, presumably a solitary rogue that had been solid out of its delight. “An outdated lone lion might have posed a menace to the Neanderthals or competed for his or her prey,” Mr. Russo stated. “Maybe the Neanderthals noticed a chance for a neater kill or considered the lion as a method to show themselves and determined to hunt it.”

Mr. Russo sketched out two hunt eventualities. In a single, the lion was gored by javelins, which softened him up for the kill. “As soon as the predator was exhausted on the bottom, a remaining stab was delivered to make sure its loss of life,” Mr. Russo stated.

The second narrative concerned Neanderthals waylaying and impaling the creature in its sleep. “Whatever the looking methodology, the lion was subsequently butchered with care, eviscerated and left on the website with out breaking the bones,” Mr. Russo stated.

The researchers additionally studied cave lion bones that turned up in Einhornhöhle, the Unicorn Collapse central Germany, which in antiquity appears to have served as a hide-out for Neanderthals and, at different instances, an array of animal species. The title Unicorn Cave was bestowed by medieval treasure hunters, who claimed that fossilized cave bear bones buried at midnight passages belonged to unicorns. The treasure hunters floor the bones into powder, which was offered as medication.

The lower marks on the lion bones have been in step with these generated when an animal is skinned, the brand new research concluded. The claws and modified bones have been preserved within the lacking pelt and have been discovered by Mr. Russo about 100 ft from the doorway to the cave. He and Dr. Terberger speculated that the conceal was a “cultural object” worn for rituals, stored as a looking trophy or used to teach younger Neanderthals about their perilous feline neighbors.

“Ecologically talking, these lions have been the equals of Neanderthals, if no more imposing hunters,” Mr. Russo stated. “To own, contact and show a part of such a unprecedented animal will need to have been a privilege. It is a feeling that I’m certain we share with Neanderthals.”

João Zilhão, a paleoanthropologist on the College of Lisbon who was not concerned within the research, praised the findings for including to the physique of proof that Neanderthals have been very like us. He described the paper as “one other nail within the coffin” of the scholarly conceit that people didn’t change into anatomically, behaviorally and cognitively “fashionable” till fairly lately.

“Name them what you need,” Dr. Zilhão stated. “Archaics, Homo erectus, Residence heidelbergensis, Neanderthals, no matter — people have been human for a whole lot of hundreds of years. A very powerful distinction between the latest and the distant Paleolithic is that, the extra distant from us, the tougher it’s for us to see it.”

On this, he argued, archaeologists of the Paleolithic have loads in frequent with up to date astronomers who’re making an attempt to map out the galaxy. “Therein lies the importance of snippets of knowledge corresponding to this cave lion report,” Dr. Zilhão stated. “They reveal that one thing not all that totally different from what we are able to see with our eyes does exist on the market, even when we are able to solely handle to get glimpses of it every so often.”