The paleoecology of the giant deer (Megaloceros giganteus), including its dietary preferences, is poorly known, mainly because reconstructions based on morphological characteristics have produced contradictory results. In this study, we propose to reconstruct the diet of the giant deer from five archaeological sites located in Southern Germany and the Harz Mountains using microwear and mesowear analyses. We also include the results of a review of tooth wear data published during the past decade for ten localities in Europe. The objective is to provide a large- scale vision of the diet of the giant deer and to analyse the spatial and temporal diversity of its dietary habits. According to our results, the dietary traits of the giant deer were found to range from leaf browsing to grass-dominated mixed feeding, depending on the vegetation available regionally and seasonally. The combination of the two proxies, mesowear and microwear, al- lowed us to characterize the dietary flexibility of the giant deer. Finally, we discuss the causes of its extirpation and conclude that its extinction was not likely driven by a narrow dietary niche.
In the Paleolithic, geometric signs are abundant. They appear in rock art as well as on mobile objects like artworks, tools, or personal ornaments. These signs are often interpreted as a reflection of symbolic thought and associated with the origin of cognitively modern behavior. SignBase is a project collecting the wealth of geometric signs on mobile objects in the European Upper Paleolithic, African Middle Stone Age (MSA), as well as selected sites from the Near East and South East Asia. Currently, more than 500 objects of the Aurignacian techno-complex (ca. 43,000 to 30,000 years BP) are registered in SignBase. They are linked to information about geographic and archaeological provenience, the type of object and material, size and preservation, and respective literature references. We identify around 30 different sign types found on these objects across Europe in the Aurignacian and illustrate how SignBase can be used to analyze geographical clusters. Ultimately, we aim to enable quantitative analyses of abstract graphical expression before the emergence of writing.
The Early Upper Palaeolithic of Europe is well-known for its remarkable symbolic expressions which demonstrate the capacity of early modern humans for abstract thinking, storytelling and communication by symbols and adornment. By contrast, the capacity for advanced technology and modern cultural behaviour in (late) Neanderthals is commonly perceived as limited despite recently accumulating evidence to the contrary. Here we report the discovery of a decorated bone item from recent excavations at Einhornhöhle in the Harz Mountains (northern Germany) that is engraved with a geometric motif composed of stacked-offset chevrons. The find is directly dated to ~51,000 years before present and the age is confirmed by further radiocarbon dates. These early dates assigns the decorated bone to late Neanderthals. Experimental studies suggest that the bone was pretreated before carving. The small excavation area produced cut-marked bones while diagnostic Middle Palaeolithic stone artefacts are present within a few meters distance inside the cave. For the first time, we successfully directly dated a decorated item of Middle Palaeolithic origin and our findings show that expressions of symbolic behaviour were part of Neanderthals’ behavioural repertoire before the early modern humans arrived in Central Europe. While located at the northern boundary of the Pleistocene human habitat, northern Central Europe has produced exceptional finds such as wooden weapons, bone tools, adhesives and now evidence for Neanderthal symbolic behaviour, suggesting that challenging environments may have prompted exceptional skills and cognitive abilities in Pleistocene pre-modern humans.
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