New evidence suggests Neanderthals were rendering fat nearly 100,000 years before other early humans

The hunting and gathering activities of early humans required a high-calorie diet consisting of a variety of macronutrients—protein, carbohydrates, and fat. While hunting big-game animals—like deer, horses and animals ...

Scientists estimate that protein intake above around 1,200 calories per day for Neanderthals would have led to a form of protein poisoning, referred to as "rabbit starvation," which could be fatal. Since caloric requirements for early hunter-gatherers like Neanderthals would have been much higher than 1,200 calories per day, they had to find ways to increase their fat and carbohydrate intake in order to survive. In winter and early spring , carbohydrate-rich plants were harder to find, and fat would have been an important source of survival food.

New archaeological research, published in Science Advances , provides evidence that Neanderthals were rendering fat from crushed animal bones around 125,000 years ago in the Neumark-Nord region in Germany. This is the first evidence showing that Neanderthals practiced this more sophisticated kind of food processing. Prior to this finding, the earliest evidence of this kind of fat rendering dated back to only 28,000 years ago, thousands of years after Neanderthals disappeared from the fossil record.

From complete bones to tiny fragments. At the Neumark-Nord 2/2B sites, imported bones were initially smashed open to extract marrow from the hollow cavities (see A; arrows indicate hammerstone impacts on an aurochs humerus). Afterward, the bones were crushed and chopped into smaller pieces (shown in B to F, again from a humerus as seen in A) to facilitate the extraction of grease from both the spongy and compact bone tissue. Approximately 2,000 tiny bone fragments accidentally came into contact with fire after boiling, resulting in typical coloration (ranging from dark brown and black to white) and texture commonly found in heated bones. Credit: Kindler, LEIZA-Monrepos Read more

Massive bone processing. At the Neumark-Nord 2 site, near the margin of a shallow pool, there is a dense concentration of bones from more than 170 larger mammals (highlighted in blue), mixed with flint artifacts (red) and hammer stones (red). All bones larger than 3 cm were carefully recorded during excavation and plotted together, creating the impression of a “bone floor” produced by Neanderthal activity at the site. Many of the bones were found in rounded depressions at the base of the excavation layer, as shown in the insets. These depressions represent the final stage of excavation, when most of the bones had already been removed, leaving only the remaining bone fragments at the bottom. Credit: Kindler, LEIZA-Monrepos Read more

Location of Neumark-Nord (Germany). The site’s position is depicted relative to the maximum extent of the Saalian and Weichselian glaciations. Credit: Kindler et al., Sci. Adv. 11, eadv1257 Read more

Year -round excavations. The Neumark-Nord 2/2B site was excavated through year-round campaigns by a core team from 2004 to 2009, alongside an international field school that included more than 175 students in total. Credit: Roebroeks, Leiden Univ Read more

Examples of cut marks in the NN2/2B faunal assemblage. Images obtained through three-dimensional microscans (LIM ToolScan R360), texture-free mode. Credit: Kindler et al., Sci. Adv. 11, eadv1257 Read more