Gibraltar Neanderthals and results of recent excavations in Gorham's, Vanguard and Ibex Caves

Barton, Nick; Currant, A. P.; Jalvo, Yolanda Fernández; Finlayson, J. C.; Goldberg, Paul; Macphail, Richard I.; Pettitt, Paul; Stringer, Chris

doi:10.1017/s0003598x00087809

Cited by 83 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…), strawberry tree fruit (Arbutus unedo) and pine nuts (Pinus spp.). Furthermore, other studies have also indicated that plants were important parts of Neanderthal diets not only in southernmost parts such as at Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar (Barton et al, 1999), but even in northern parts of Spain (Hardy et al, 2012). Therefore, plant foods may have been especially important in Neanderthal diets in southeastern Iberian refugia.…”

Section: Evidence Of Neanderthal Plant Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Neanderthal diets in central and southeastern Mediterranean Iberia

Salazar‐García

Power

Serra³

et al. 2013

Quaternary International

112

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a b s t r a c tDuring recent decades, Neanderthal diet has been a major research topic in palaeoanthropology. This has been accelerated by the maturation of different techniques, which have produced a plethora of new information. However, this proliferation of data has led to confusing and contradictory results. Furthermore, most of the ecological dietary studies have been carried out on specimens drawn from different time periods and regions, almost exclusively those characterized by cold, open environmental conditions. Subsistence models based on these fragmentary data have been applied to Neanderthals living in a variety of different regions and environments, even though their dietary strategies may have been as variable as regions they inhabited. In this paper we integrate different dietary approaches (studies of the zooarchaeology, stable isotopes and plant remains) from the central and southeastern Mediterranean coast of Iberia in order to develop a broader and more complex picture of Neanderthal diet in different Mediterranean environmental conditions. Our results suggest that there may have been some minor dietary variation due to climatic or environmental differences, but that Neanderthal diet focussed on large terrestrial game, supplemented by plant foods when these were available.Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Neanderthal dietary ecologyThe dietary behaviours of Neanderthals and the relationship between their diet and their social organization, technological abilities, and even their eventual disappearance, have been hotly debated in the anthropological literature. Examining the diets of Neanderthals requires the synthesis of data that have been collected by numerous researchers over the last 150 years. In many cases, the differences between Neanderthal and early modern human diets have been emphasized, at the expense of cogent discussion of the variation within each group. Early modern humans lived in a wide variety of environmental contexts and likely pursued a variety of behaviours throughout this range of environments. The exclusively Eurasian distribution of Neanderthals did not include as many environments, but neither was it the exclusively cold Arctic climate that many have supposed it to be. A more detailed examination of the Neanderthal range and the effects of shifting global climates reveals that this group would have been exposed to a diverse range of environments (Hoffecker, 2009;MacDonald et al., 2009). Just as modern human dietary behaviour likely varied with environments, so, too, can we predict that Neanderthals had different diets in different environments.Our understanding of the diets of Neanderthals comes from three main lines of evidence. The first is the study of the human remains themselves, including the isotope signal recorded in their bones, the microwear on their teeth, and how factors of their lifehistory are related to diet. The second line of evidence includes the study of the remains of their food, in the form of animal and plant remains preserved ...

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Section: Evidence Of Neanderthal Plant Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Neanderthal diets in central and southeastern Mediterranean Iberia

Salazar‐García

Power

Serra³

et al. 2013

Quaternary International

112

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“…Nuts and other large seeds, though energyrich, long lasting, and locally common in temperate forests, are relatively expensive to process, and snow cover greatly raises the winter search costs of these resources. Seed and nut hull fragments are occasionally found in Lower and Middle Paleolithic sites (e.g., Barton et al, 1999), but there are no archaeological indications of stockpiled plant foods or the grinding equipment necessary to increase their digestibility. Meat was likely to have been the critical food source in winter, even if a wider variety of foods were consumed in other seasons of the year.…”

Section: Paleolithic Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in the ‘Connectedness’ and Resilience of Paleolithic Societies in Mediterranean Ecosystems

2006

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“…on the Iberian Peninsula (36). Dates on levels containing Mousterian cultural remains, but no human fossil remains at Zafarraya, Spain (36), Caldeirão, Figueira Brava, and Foz de Enxarrique in Portugal (37), and Gorhams Cave in Gibraltar (38) suggest that Neandertals may have existed in the latter region until Ϸ30 ka B.P. In addition, level G 1 at Vindija Cave in northern Croatia yielded fragmentary, but clearly Neandertal, human remains that were dated to this same time span (see below).…”

Section: Chronology and Perspectives On Neandertal Phylogenymentioning

confidence: 99%

Direct radiocarbon dates for Vindija G ₁ and Velika Pećina Late Pleistocene hominid remains

Smith

Trinkaus

Pettitt

et al. 1999

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

180

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New accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dates taken directly on human remains from the Late Pleistocene sites of Vindija and Velika Pećina in the Hrvatsko Zagorje of Croatia are presented. Hominid specimens from both sites have played critical roles in the development of current perspectives on modern human evolutionary emergence in Europe. Dates of Ϸ28 thousand years (ka) before the present (B.P.) and Ϸ29 ka B.P. for two specimens from Vindija G1 establish them as the most recent dated Neandertals in the Eurasian range of these archaic humans. The human frontal bone from Velika Pećina, generally considered one of the earliest representatives of modern humans in Europe, dated to Ϸ5 ka B.P., rendering it no longer pertinent to discussions of modern human origins. Apart from invalidating the only radiometrically based example of temporal overlap between late Neandertal and early modern human fossil remains from within any region of Europe, these dates raise the question of when early modern humans first dispersed into Europe and have implications for the nature and geographic patterning of biological and cultural interactions between these populations and the Neandertals.Neandertals ͉ early modern humans ͉ Croatia ͉ Europe

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Gibraltar Neanderthals and results of recent excavations in Gorham's, Vanguard and Ibex Caves

Cited by 83 publications

References 8 publications

Neanderthal diets in central and southeastern Mediterranean Iberia

Neanderthal diets in central and southeastern Mediterranean Iberia

Changes in the ‘Connectedness’ and Resilience of Paleolithic Societies in Mediterranean Ecosystems

Direct radiocarbon dates for Vindija G ₁ and Velika Pećina Late Pleistocene hominid remains

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Gibraltar Neanderthals and results of recent excavations in Gorham's, Vanguard and Ibex Caves

Cited by 83 publications

References 8 publications

Neanderthal diets in central and southeastern Mediterranean Iberia

Neanderthal diets in central and southeastern Mediterranean Iberia

Changes in the ‘Connectedness’ and Resilience of Paleolithic Societies in Mediterranean Ecosystems

Direct radiocarbon dates for Vindija G 1 and Velika Pećina Late Pleistocene hominid remains

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Direct radiocarbon dates for Vindija G ₁ and Velika Pećina Late Pleistocene hominid remains