Clues to Neanderthal hunting tactics hidden in reindeer teeth

PhysOrg ^ | May 16, 2011 | Sara Coelho

[decimon]

Scientists have found that our cousins the Neanderthal employed sophisticated hunting strategies similar to the tactics used much later by modern humans. The new findings come from the analysis of subtle chemical variations in reindeer teeth.

Reindeer and caribou are nowadays restricted to the northernmost regions of Eurasia and America. But many thousands of years ago, large reindeer herds roamed throughout Europe and were hunted by the Neanderthal people.

Kate Britton, an archaeologist now at the University of Aberdeen, and her colleagues were part of a team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, that studied the Jonzac Neanderthal site in France - a rock shelter believed to have been used over a long period of time as a hunting camp. The Jonzac site has many layers of flints from stone-tools and the bones of butchered animals riddled with cut marks.

One of the oldest layers, from about 70,000 years ago, is exceptionally rich in adult reindeer bones. Britton wanted to find out more about these reindeer and their migratory behaviour to understand Neanderthal hunting strategies better. And the way to do that is to look at the teeth and their chemical composition.

The reindeer teeth are made of calcium, phosphorus, oxygen, strontium and other elements. But not all the atoms of each element are the same. Some atoms, or isotopes, are heavier than others and may have slightly different chemical properties.

"Strontium isotope analysis is an effective way of looking at animal and human movements in the past," says Britton. "Strontium in your bones and teeth is related to the food and water you consume, and ultimately to the underlying soil and rocks of a particular area."

[decimon]

Via SunkenCiv via Renfield.

[decimon]

Neandeerthrall ping.

[muawiyah]

Hmmmm, Reindeer!!!!!!!!

[Scythian]

Seen here, this early creature would evolve into a serious killing machine ...

[muawiyah]

My thesis: Neanderthals were better hunters than /Cro-Magnons.

This enabled the Neanderthals to keep the herds thin enough so that competitors could not move in.

Once the Neanderthals were out of the way the Cro-Magnons moved in ~ at once demonstrating that they had an inferior hunting technique. They didn't gain the upper hand over the reindeer, cattle, elk and deer for another 30,000 years.

It is known that the Sa'ami, Yakutz and Chug-chi hunters developed a method for using "tame reindeer" to attract wild reindeer who were then easily killed. The Sa'ami went further and invented skis, and that put them right up at the top of the top predator pile and drove out the large cats AND wolves from the regions they hunted. (A Sa'ami skiing downhill into a reindeer heard is faster than a wolf, or a reindeer BTW)

There are a couple of claims about where the "tame reindeer" came from ~ it's pretty sure the Sa'ami didn't domesticate them, but the Chug-chi may have, and quite possibly the Nenets and others could very well have done so in the era before the tame wolf (aka "dog").

I'd like to propose that the Neanderthals figured out how to "tame" a reindeer to attract the herds. That gave them a LOCK on the livestock! In the meantime the Cavebears dealt with the Sabre-tooths ~ in a deadly long term balance which benefited the smaller predators ~ to wit, the wolves, foxes, humans.

[KrisKrinkle]

The Neanderthal living at the time were probably aware of the reindeer migration patterns and planned their stays in Jonzac to make the most out of the moving herd.

"This sophisticated hunting behavior..."

Doesn't that kind of describe Grizzly bears and Salmon runs? Are Griz sophisticated?

[decimon]

Are Griz sophisticated?

Unbearably so.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Doesn’t somebody normally put up a picture of the cavemen from the TV commercials whenever a Neanderthal story appears? Or is this a “serious” historic/scientific story, unworthy of humor and satire? Just wondering...........

[blueunicorn6]

These people should enter the olympics. You have to have strong leg muscles to leap this far for conclusions.

[decimon]

Doesn’t somebody normally put up a picture of the cavemen from the TV commercials whenever a Neanderthal story appears?

Some think that's supposed to be done.

[SunkenCiv]

· GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach · · join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
	Antiquity Journal  & archive  Archaeologica  Archaeology  Archaeology Channel  BAR  Bronze Age Forum  Discover  Dogpile  Eurekalert  Google  LiveScience  Mirabilis.ca  Nat Geographic  PhysOrg  Science Daily  Science News  Texas AM  Yahoo  Excerpt, or Link only?	Thanks decimon, Renfield, and muawiyah! The Neandertal Enigma by James Shreeve in local libraries Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127] To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
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[Flag_This]

"Doesn't that kind of describe Grizzly bears and Salmon runs? Are Griz sophisticated?"

Go where the food is? Inconceivable!

[muawiyah]

Neanderthals had constructed small handheld bone moon cycle clocks. They appear to have carved holes in granite rocks up on hillsides to provide some sort of base for game surveys.

Just spent a few minutes trying to find the carved holes on the net but couldn't find it ~ will need to think of the words for that one first but it first appeared way back in Scientific American before it turned into a rag.

Again, my thesis is the Neanderthals weren't supermen but they were successful at hunting game, particularly reindeer. This depleted the supply available to other invading people of a different variety, and effectively kept them out of Europe. Europe was short serious quantities of food in the last glacial period.

Then, one day the Neanderthals died out ~ a disease possibly ~ maybe the Mother Ship ~ whatever, once they were gone, the game recovered and the Cro-Magnon people could hunt their way into Europe.

[null and void]

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

[ZULU]

Every time these scientists discover something new about Neanderthals that surprises them about how close they actually were to us, gives me a big laugh.

I think that essentially, Neanderthals and modern man were very close in most respects that any differences between us were minimal indeed - not they were insignificant.

In biology, we have “lumpers” and “splitters”. Lumpers are taxonomists or systematic zoologists who minimize the differences between populations and tend to have a broader definition of a species that includes more individuals despite minor differences in appearance, etc. The Splitters want to emphasize the distinctions and create more taxa.

I think, that when dealing with human populations in the fossil record, anthropologists tend to be splitters. If they were studying populations of say, rats or birds, I think the distinctions would be minimized.

A recent article posted on this forum indicated a new theory is that the European Neanderthals actually died out as a breeding population BEFORE the appearance of modern man. The same article indicated that relict populations of Neanderthals in the Middle East interbred with newly arriving “modern” man and contributed 1-3% of the genes of modern Europeans.

My guess is that if a Neanderthal was given a bath, a shave, taught to speak English and put in a suit, he would just look like a very strong, stocky, rough modern man to the casual observer.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Arnold Schwartzenegger?

[colorado tanker]

Here ya go. Our suave and sophisticaed cavemen bagging their food.

[ZULU]

EXCELLENT!!!!!