The Neanderthal is the most famous of our extinct human relatives. Few people don't know the name, but fewer still know what their daily lives were like in the midst of the Ice Age. Thanks to an incredible number of scientific discoveries in recent decades, we now have a much clearer picture.
The day we learned that we had shared the planet with other humans, 167 years ago, a campaign began to differentiate them from us. The first known Neanderthal skeletal remains, which gave them their name, were discovered in the Neander Valley, Germany, in 1856.
For nearly 150 years, Neanderthals were differentiated from Homo sapiens in every way possible. However, in the past 20 years, the amount of knowledge we have acquired about them, both through fossil and archaeological discoveries and through the sequencing of their DNA, has allowed experts to understand what their daily lives were really like.
Neanderthals were skilled hunters and gatherers of a wide variety of foods. They controlled fire, which they used both for warmth and for cooking. They made sophisticated tools. They manufactured and wore clothing, and they also created ornamental objects and art. They cared for their sick and buried their dead. In other words, their daily lives differed little from those of our direct ancestors, the Homo sapiens of the Ice Age, who lived between 100,000 and 40,000 years ago.
Homo neanderthalensis and our species, Homo sapiens, share a common ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis. It is unclear when the divergence that led them down two quite different evolutionary paths occurred, but experts estimate that it happened between 800,000 and 400,000 years ago.
From the Cold They Came
The oldest Neanderthal fossil remains, dating back 430,000 years, were discovered in Sima de los Huesos, Spain. In contrast, the oldest Homo sapiens remains come from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and are around 300,000 years old. In essence, one species adapted to the frigid European climate, while the other evolved to thrive in Africa's diverse climatic conditions.
Experts widely agree that the ancestors of Neanderthals and sapiens became isolated during the onset of the Saale Ice Age, an extremely cold glacial period that favored the evolution of Neanderthals' most distinctive traits.
Their bodies were robust in every way, with thick bones, large muscles, and substantial fat reserves. They had broad chests, wide hips, short limbs, and significantly larger noses than ours. All these features are adaptations for coping with dry, cold air at temperatures far below those we experience today.
An incredible amount of Neanderthal fossil and archaeological evidence has been discovered, particularly from 130,000 years ago until their extinction around 40,000 years ago. This includes complete skeletons, stone and bone tools, ornamental objects, and even cave paintings. This wealth of data has allowed scientists to construct a detailed picture of the daily lives of humanity's most famous extinct relative.
Prey or Predator?
Until a little over 25 years ago, the prevailing expert opinion was that Neanderthals were primarily scavengers and gatherers, with limited hunting abilities. This view was rooted in prejudices against a species that was often considered inferior to our direct ancestors. These preconceptions were based on a lack of substantial evidence.
This initial image of Neanderthals was largely due to the fact that, until high-quality tools were discovered in association with Neanderthal fossils, any well-crafted stone tools were assumed to have been made by Homo sapiens.
Furthermore, the early discoveries of animal remains at Neanderthal sites revealed a notable absence of limb bones, which are typically rich in meat. This led to the belief that Neanderthals were scavengers, subsisting on the leftovers of carnivores like cave lions.
However, evidence has shown that these bones were missing because they were often shattered to extract marrow, a calorie-rich substance. It became clear that Neanderthals were not merely scavenging from lions but were actively hunting them, even using their skins as ornaments or for warmth.
Neanderthals also possessed the technology necessary for various hunting scenarios. They not only crafted stone tools with edges as sharp as iron swords but also used a type of adhesive made by heating birch bark to securely attach stone points to wooden spear shafts. They also hunted with simple wooden spears, with the tips hardened by fire.
Neanderthals were skilled and strategic hunters, capable of taking down a wide variety of prey, from small to large game.
Hunting Giants
One of the most majestic creatures of the last Ice Age was the Palaeoloxodon antiquus, elephants that could reach heights of 4 meters. That's almost equivalent to two adult Neanderthals standing on top of each other. The clearest evidence of hunting these mastodons comes from the Neumark-Nord 1 cave in Germany, which is 125,000 years old.
When experts discover evidence of bones from these magnificent prey animals with cut marks, dismemberment traces, or spear damage, it not only tells them that Neanderthals hunted them at that time but also paints a vivid picture of this human species' daily life.
Bringing down a 13-ton elephant, 4 meters tall, with tusks and legs much longer than those of modern elephants, was not a task for a solitary hunter, nor even a family or a small group. It required the collaboration of different Neanderthal groups, which typically consisted of around 25 individuals.
These communities not only came together to accomplish such a remarkable hunting feat but also to share the massive amount of meat that such a prey animal could provide. To give you an idea, it would be equivalent to two modern African elephants. With the amount of food this represented, four groups, or 100 Neanderthals, could survive for up to a month. Or, it could provide a week's worth of food for 12 Neanderthal groups, or 300 individuals.
Such simple evidence as a giant elephant bone bearing marks of being butchered with a sharp tool or damaged by a spear tells experts that there was coordination among different Neanderthal groups. This suggests that they might have gathered once or twice a year for a meat feast, as they could bring down several animals if they cornered them with over 100 Neanderthals.
The Woman as Hunter
Just as Neanderthals were often portrayed as the most brutish and clumsy humans of prehistory due to scientific prejudices, the role of women during that time was similarly misrepresented.
Being primarily men, with a macho ideology, those who first dedicated themselves to studying our extinct relatives, from the late 19th century and much of the 20th century, assumed that men were the hunters, while women stayed in the camp caring for children and gathering food.
However, scientific evidence began to challenge this view from the 1970s onwards, as women also brought their perspectives to the interpretation of the fossil and archaeological record. Today, experts no longer envision the caveman hunter with his woman following closely behind, burdened with children.
The current image is one of a mixed group of hunters, both men and women, surrounding their prey, crafting stone tools in the camp, or gathering food. This is supported by scientific evidence, and in the case of Neanderthals, as the most extensively studied extinct human species, it provides a clear picture of this equality.
The study of Neanderthal bones has revealed the harshness of these hunters' lives, evident in the numerous injuries found on these bones, both healed over a lifetime and some that may have caused death. And there is no significant difference between men and women in this regard.
Their skeletons show marks that tell a story. They are the marks left by working muscles, constant activity, and fractures resulting from a life spent in the mountains and hunting dangerous animals.
This shows experts that men and women were doing the same things, from pursuing, cornering, and hunting large animals to processing their hides and making tools. In other words, women were attacking giant elephants with spears, and men were making clothing from bear or lion skins.
From Crabs to Lions
Neanderthals didn't just feast on giant elephants. Their diet was incredibly varied and even changed from region to region, much like human diets today. For instance, in Spy Cave, Belgium, one of the first to be studied, paleoanthropologists discovered a population that was primarily carnivorous, focusing on woolly rhinoceroses and mouflon (wild sheep). In El Sidrón Cave, northern Spain, evidence of gathering fungi, moss, and nuts has been found. Meanwhile, in Figueira Brava Cave, near Lisbon, Portugal, Neanderthals cooked crabs.
Experts can determine these dietary details by studying dental remains. Preserved dental calculus can provide DNA, revealing the genes of microorganisms, viruses, or, in this case, living beings that were consumed by the individual while they were alive.
Another way to learn about their diet is by analyzing the animal remains found in caves. For example, recent discoveries in Siegsdorf and Einhornhöhle, Germany, show that Neanderthals hunted and ate lions between 190,000 and 48,000 years ago.
"This is the oldest evidence of humans hunting such a large predator," said Gabrielle Russo, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and lead author of a study published in the journal Scientific Reports in October 2023.
The lion is arguably the most charismatic enemy that humans have encountered throughout their evolutionary history. And it remains so today. However, the cave lion, which lived across Europe during the last Ice Age, was considerably larger than modern lions, reaching up to 2.5 meters in length and 1.2 meters in height.
Neanderthals hunted them with wooden spears, as evidenced by the marks left on the bones where the spears were thrust. There is also evidence of dismemberment and even the use of the skins, not only for protection from the cold but also with some cultural significance. This leads us to another characteristic that Neanderthals shared with our ancestors, Homo sapiens: symbolic thought.
Making Sense of the World
Cave paintings like those in Altamira and magnificent carvings such as the Venus of Willendorf, both created by Homo sapiens around 25,000 years ago, are famous. However, Neanderthals were also capable of symbolic thought and expressed it through art and ornamental objects.
Hunting was a prominent theme in these early examples of symbolic thought among Neanderthals, as it was a crucial part of their lives. This is reflected in cave art, bone carvings, and the preservation of lion skins as adornments.
In Einhornhöhle, Germany, the oldest evidence of the latter was discovered. Marks on the bones indicate that the animal was skinned in a way that left the paw and claws attached to the skin. This suggests that they were not only interested in the skin as a way to insulate themselves from the cold but also wanted to display the fact that it came from a lion.
Neanderthals possessed a sophisticated cultural thought as early as 190,000 years ago, and they maintained it until their extinction around 40,000 years ago, as evidenced by their collection and modification of prey skulls, such as those found in the Des-Cubierta cave in the Lozoya river valley, Spain.
They were a human species that must have been culturally rich, as much as our direct ancestors, Homo sapiens, who occupied the space that Neanderthals left behind around 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals are perhaps the other humans with whom we have the closest connection, to the extent that today we carry between 2 and 4 percent of their genes in our DNA.
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