Neanderthals surprisingly cooperated in the hunt for a colossal elephant

Neanderthals had a much greater knack for collaboration than scientists previously thought, a new study shows. About 125,000 years ago they already hunted in an organized context on forest elephants, the largest land animals of the past 3 million years.

After studying a large amount of bone remains from forest elephants, researchers conclude that the Neanderthals hunted collectively to kill adult forest elephants. Then they also worked together to dry the huge amounts of meat from the killed animal so that it could be preserved for a longer period of time. Not only were early humans active in larger groups than previously thought, they also stayed in one place longer than previously believed. Because killing, cutting into pieces and drying the thousands of kilos of meat that such an elephant yielded must have taken a lot of time. The study is published in Science Advances.

It is the next step in the ’emancipation’ of the Neanderthal man, who, in our eyes, was still a stupid, primitive man about twenty years ago. We now know that this early man mastered fire, made cave paintingsburied the dead and passed DNA on to us.

The new study, in which Dutch archaeologist Wil Roebroeks also contributed, adds new elements to this modern image. The researchers examined 3,122 remains of forest elephants found in Germany, ranging from nearly complete skeletons to loose bone remains. It was already known from previous research that these bones mainly came from adult males. The researchers conclude from this that the Neanderthals did not wait for the huge forest elephants to die, but actively hunted the animals in groups.

Almost all elephant skeletons were covered with carving marks from stone tools. “These traces indicate that they had access to very fresh carcasses, which they completely boned,” says Roebroeks. The animals can hardly have died of natural causes: “In that case you would expect many young and old animals, because they have the greatest chance of dying.”

So there must have been hunting, the researchers conclude. But catching a forest elephant, you don’t just do that. Roebroeks: “An adult male could weigh about 13 tons. That’s about ten passenger cars in a pile.”

Then why not hunt a female, which weighed barely half? “They were even more difficult to hunt, because they lived in groups with other females and also aggressively protected their young. The adult males often lived partly solitary.” The double amount of meat was of course also not to be sneezed at.

Catching such a gigantic animal therefore required a lot of cooperation. And that was just the first step. “It is estimated that a group of 25 people can easily process such an enormous amount of meat and fat in less than a week,” says Roebroeks.

The cut marks make it clear that the fat of the animals was very popular. The meat of wild animals is very lean, in contrast to the much fatter meat that we eat today. “The forest elephants had a lot of fat at the bottom of their legs, which acted as a kind of shock absorber. Really all foot bones contain cut marks.”

To make all that meat last, Neanderthals must have dried it. They may have done so through exposure to air, as well as fire. “They certainly had that,” says Roebroeks. “In Europe, fire was already used 300,000 to 400,000 years ago. They sometimes also kept the landscape open by burning away trees and other vegetation. But of course you can also smoke the meat with it.”