Hunting and processing of straight-tusked elephants 125.000 years ago: Implications for Neanderthal behavior

Abstract

Straight-tusked elephants ( Palaeoloxodon antiquus ) were the largest terrestrial mammals of the Pleistocene, present in Eurasian landscapes between 800,000 and 100,000 years ago. The occasional co-occurrence of their skeletal remains with stone tools has generated rich speculation about the nature of interactions between these elephants and Pleistocene humans: Did hominins scavenge on elephants that died a natural death or maybe even hunt some individuals? Our archaeozoological study of the largest P. antiquus assemblage known, excavated from 125,000-year-old lake deposits in Germany, shows that hunting of elephants weighing up to 13 metric tons was part of the cultural repertoire of Last Interglacial Neanderthals there, over >2000 years, many dozens of generations. The intensity and nutritional yields of these well-documented butchering activities, combined with previously reported data from this Neumark-Nord site complex, suggest that Neanderthals were less mobile and operated within social units substantially larger than commonly envisaged.

Perception versus reality: Implications of elephant hunting by Neanderthals

“…Scavenging is typically the null hypothesis because megafauna hunting is difficult to substantiate. In this issue of Science Advances , Gaudzinski-Windheuser and colleagues ( 3 ) provide compelling evidence of Neanderthals hunting megafauna, specifically straight-tusked elephants ( Palaeoloxodon antiquus ) 125,000 years ago in Germany.…”

“…A challenge with establishing demographic profiles is that a large sample size of individuals is necessary, which is also rare among megafauna assemblages. Uniquely, Neumark-Nord 1 in Germany has a large enough sample ( 3 ).…”

“…Palombo and colleagues ( 6 , 7 ) previously studied the elephants from a paleontological perspective and, in doing so, established that the demographics of the animals at the site skewed disproportionately toward adult males. Gaudzinski-Windheuser and colleagues ( 3 ) argue that this constellation of elephants would not have resulted from natural deaths, and the combined age and sex data point to Neanderthals targeting solitary bull males. Further, the authors present taphonomic data (e.g., carnivore bite marks or cut marks from stone tools) for 57 different individuals.…”

“…They find butchery damage on most individuals, repetitive cut marks on the left and right body parts of the same animal, and cut mark damage that indicates that hominins accessed the carcasses before carnivores. Considering both the demographic and cut mark data, Gaudzinski-Windheuser and colleagues ( 3 ) suggest that Neanderthals at Neumark-Nord 1 hunted straight-tusked elephants and followed a butchery strategy meant to maximize carcass exploitation ( 8 ).…”

“…For comparison, eight midsized cars weigh 12 tons. Gaudzinski-Windheuser and colleagues ( 3 ) calculate the amount of meat available from the elephants at the site. Based on this, a 10- ton elephant would have taken 200 to 600 person-hours to process, which, at the average, hunter-gatherer group size of 25 people ( 9 ) would mean 3 to 5 days.…”