Neanderthals were skillful hunters
Neanderthals did not disappear because modern humans were better hunters and thus out-competed them for resources, say US and Israeli anthropologists.
On the contrary, they were top predators who knew how to hunt the biggest and fastest of the animals.
Neanderthals went extinct about 30,000 years ago, after having inhabited Europe and parts of Asia for roughly 200,000 years.
The reason for their demise has been long debated and frequently attributed to modern humans' greater intelligence and consequently greater hunting skills.
But evidence from animal remains hunted by Neanderthals clearly indicates these hominids were as good as any early modern humans at hunting, report Daniel Adler, an assistant professor and palaeoanthropologist at the University of Connecticut, and colleagues in the February issue of the journal Current Anthropology.
The researchers examined abundant faunal remains, in particular thousands of bones belonging to a mountain goat species called the Caucasian tur that still exists today.
The trove was excavated at Ortvale Klde, a rock shelter in the southern Caucasus in the Republic of Georgia dated to between 60,000 and 20,000 years ago.
Evidence of killing
There was no doubt that the animals were hunted and killed. Indeed, the bones featured cut marks from human butchering and fragmentations typical of marrow consumption, showing that meat processing behaviours were not significantly different between Neanderthals and modern humans.
"Given the abundance of animals, one might think that Neanderthals would kill as many animals as possible, regardless of age, and therefore nutritional returns," says Adler.
But analysis of tooth wear revealed that two-thirds of the animals were animals of prime age, the strongest, fastest, most nutritious and most difficult to capture members of the herd.
"Neanderthals, like the modern humans that followed them, were quite savvy, choosing instead to maximise their dietary intake per energy expended by hunting prime age adults.
"Given the species involved and the rough terrain, this would require sophisticated hunting tactics, [and] knowledge of animal behaviour, in particular migration routes and flight behaviour, and group cooperation," Adler says.
Neanderthals timed their hunts for late autumn to early spring, during the Caucasian tur's seasonal migration to lower elevations, where the site of Ortvale Klde is located.
"They maintained an intimate relationship with their environment and were capable of understanding exactly where and when particular resources could be found in abundance," Adler says.
Archaeologist John Shea, an associate professor at Stony Brook University says:
"The study is excellent, precisely what is needed: a comparison of how Neanderthals and modern humans used the same landscape close enough in time so that any differences discovered reflect behavioural differences and not environmental ones."
Still a mystery
Shea believes that multiple factors, varying from region to region, may have played a role in the disappearance of Neanderthals.
"The simple answer to the question of why Neanderthals became extinct is 'nobody knows'. But studies like this one certainly move us a lot closer to being able to make more clearly testable hypotheses," he says.
"Now the hypothesis that Neanderthals became extinct because they were ineffective hunters is in deep trouble."