Neanderthals Hunted Giant Elephants Much Larger Than The Ones Today

[Warpy]

A new analysis of 125,000-year-old bones from around 70 elephants has led to some intriguing new revelations about the Neanderthals of the time: that they could work together to deliberately bring down large prey, and that they gathered in larger groups than previously thought.

The bones belonged to straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), a now extinct species that stood nearly 4 meters (just over 13 feet) tall at the shoulder. That's nearly twice the size of the African elephants that are alive today, and around 4 tons of meat would have been taken from each carcass
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Evidence of charcoal fires around the archaeological site suggest that the meat would have been dried, which is one way of making it last for longer. The haul would have been enough to feed 350 people for a week, or 100 people for a month, according to the researchers – that counters the conventional narrative of Neanderthals living in smaller groups of around 20.

The ages of the animals are telling too. These were almost all adult males – if the hominins were scavenging meat from dead elephants, children and females would be expected. Here, it looks as though they deliberately targeted the larger males for the extra meat, perhaps by driving them into mud or trapping them in pits.

https://www.sciencealert.com/neanderthals-hunted-giant-elephants-much-larger-than-the-ones-today

Personally, I've long thought that ambush hunters with thrusting spears hunted from above, in trees or on cliffs, the non hunting part of the group driving the selected animal toward the ambush point. Examination of mammoth skeletons that weren't butchered, meaning they'd died away from humans, has shown some with bone infections of the spine and adjacent ribs indicating penetrating injury from above. If I were an ancient hunter, that's what I'd do, it would have been insanity (and futile) to approach them on the ground and pits would have taken a huge amount of time to dig when your shovel was the scapula of an aurochs or deer.

[brewens]

1. Those people had PHDs in big game hunting in their environment. They would have thought of

anything we could come up with. You're probably right. Guys in the trees and people driving them down the trail into the ambush.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. Perhaps this is why so many of the mega-sized animals disappeared, not because of the Ice Ages,

since they occurred over millions of years, but because Mankind was a factor by then and hunted them to extinction.

[Warpy]

4. Even megafauna not susceptible to active hunting disappeared

in the Younger Dryas event. Loss of megafauna was planet wide, extending to Australia and New Zealand, as well as N. America, Asia and Europe.

Hunting might have helped deliver the final coup de grace on them, but their numbers had started to dwindle, especially in North America, before sufficient numbers of humans arrived.

What is known for certain is that there were megafauna below the black mat marking the beginning of the Younger Dryas and none above it. With them went the Clovis culture in North America, the survivors shifting their hunting practices to smaller prey.

So we're not wholly responsible for the disappearance of giant and even large species. While we likely finished off the few stragglers during a period of climatic catastrophe they wouldn't have survived in any case, we were incapable of doing it planet wide. We just didn't have sufficient numbers to accomplish it all by ourselves.

[Chainfire]

3. We really guess about the Neanderthal's ability to think and plan.

They were smart enough to hunt that beast without losing the ability to procreate. They may not have had all of the abilities that we do, but they didn't have to figure their income tax either...I will bet that when or if the truth is discovered, the Neanderthals will get more respect than they do today.

Perhaps we should ask MGT how they did it, as she is as close as we have to a living Neanderthal.

[Warpy]

5. I disagree, Neanderthals weren't nitwits

and most likely would have regarded MTG with the contempt she deserves.

Their culture was certainly different, but our ancestors regarded them as people, worthy of interbreeding.

We were probably more alike than we were different. Here's food for thought: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/neanderthals-were-artists-and-thought-symbolically-new-studies-argue/

Interbreeding was likely more difficult than in species breeding. I know I'd find a Neanderthal teddy bear attractive if I wanted my sweets without any sours 9 months later.