Neanderthals cooked crab and created artwork, however additionally they might have haunted cave lions and used their skins. Some 48,000 year-old puncture wounds on a cave lion’s ribcage counsel that the massive cat was killed by a Neanderthal’s picket spear. The findings are described in a research printed October 12 within the journal Scientific Reports and may be the earliest recognized instance of lion searching and butchering by these extinct people.
[Related: Sensitive to pain? It could be your Neanderthal gene variants.]
For about 20,000 years, cave lions had been probably the most harmful animals in Eurasia, with a shoulder top of about 4.2 toes excessive. They lived in a number of environments and hunted massive herbivores together with mammoth, bison, hose, and cave bear. They get the title cave lions attributable to the truth that most of their bones have been present in Ice Age caves. The fearsome creatures went extinct on the finish of the final Ice Age, however dwell on by way of their bones and the 34,000 rock artwork panels at Grotte Chauvet in France.
In 1985, an nearly full cave lion skeleton was uncovered in Siegsdorf, Germany. The bones are believed to be from an outdated, medium-sized cave lion. There are minimize marks throughout bones together with two ribs, some vertebrae, and the left femur, which lead scientists to consider that historic people butchered the massive cat after it died.
However, the authors on this new research took one other have a look at the stays. They describe a partial puncture wound situated on the within of the lion’s third rib. The wound seems to match the impression mark left by a wooden-tipped spear. The puncture is angled, which means that the spear entered the left of the lion’s stomach and penetrated its important organs earlier than impacting the third rib on its proper aspect.
“The rib lesion clearly differs from bite marks of carnivores and shows the typical breakage pattern of a lesion caused by a hunting weapon,” Gabriele Russo, a research co-author and zooarchaeology PhD scholar at Universität Tübingen in Germany, mentioned in a press release.
The traits of the puncture wound additionally resemble the injuries discovered on deer vertebrae that are recognized to have been made by Neanderthal spears. The new findings might symbolize the earliest proof of Neanderthals purposely searching cave lions.
“The lion was probably killed by a spear that was thrust into the lion’s abdomen when it was already lying on the ground.” research co-author and University of Reading paleolithic archaeologist Annemieke Milks mentioned in a press release.
[Related: How many ancient humans does it take to fight off a giant hyena?]
The staff additionally analyzed the findings from a 2019 excavation on the Unicorn Cave–or Einhornhöhle–within the Harz Mountains in Germany. The stays of a number of animals courting again to the final Ice Age or about 55,000 to 45,000 years in the past had been discovered, together with some cave lion bones. They checked out bones from the toes and decrease limbs of three cave lion specimens. These bones additionally had minimize marks which are according to the markings generated when an animal is skinned.
The minimize marks counsel that nice care was taken whereas skinning the lion to make sure that the claws remained preserved inside the fur. This discovering might be the earliest proof of Neanderthals utilizing a lion pelt, probably for cultural functions.
“The interest of humans to gain respect and power from a lion trophy is rooted in Neanderthal behavior and until modern times the lion is a powerful symbol of rulers!” Thomas Terberger, a research co-author and archaeologist on the Universität Göttingen in Germany mentioned in a press release.
Future research of cave lion bones might reveal extra particulars of extra advanced Neanderthal behaviors and the way the animal may have laid the idea for cultural growth by our personal species—Homo sapiens.