Family Portrait: The Good Life of Neanderthals

We are not so different. Neanderthals also longed for a warm climate so that they could live as a family. Not everything for them was survival in the steppe, conquered by the glacial cold of the Ice Age. It is not surprising that for most of their existence in geological time they lived in areas with a Mediterranean and subtropical climate.

In the Spanish Levant, Neanderthals at some stages enjoyed a mild climate and an abundance of food, both animal and vegetable. Every stroke in the image above, every detail of this family portrait in a heavenly landscape, could be a reflection of the reality of a Neanderthal father and son two hundred thousand years ago.

To construct this moment from the distant past of the Neanderthals, the paleoartists used the results of research by the ECCE HOMO group led by José Carrión of the University of Murcia and, in particular, a monograph whose first author is an expert in the field of analysis. pollen, Juan Ochando, Silvery Neanderthals in the Far West: A Middle Pleistocene Paleoecological Sequence of Bolomor Cave (Valencia, Spain), published in Quaternary Science Reviews.

Near the Bolomorskaya cave

We are in a cave off the east coast of Spain called Cova del Bolomor, overlooking the Mediterranean, exactly where the Carrión team did their research. There, the local Neanderthals lived in a forested environment that remained virtually unchanged from 350,000 to 100,000 years ago. Four Neanderthal fossils were found at the Bolomor site: a piece of a leg bone, two teeth, and part of a skull. In addition, countless remains of the Mousterian culture, typical of the Neanderthals of Western Europe, have been preserved here.

Due to the great paleobotanical interest shown by the finds in this cave, we decided to do a landscape reconstruction with a selection of plants that were part of this environment and that have the most value for defining the ecosystem at the moment. Palynology, or the analysis of fossil pollen found and studied by the ECCE HOMO group at the University of Murcia, has provided us with information about the plants that grew there, about a large number of plant species, many of which have edible fruits. To our knowledge, there are no similar records of a forest landscape described in a glacial context. At least not with such a density and diversity of woody plants.

Life in the shade of an ash tree

Thus, we know that the Neanderthal families that inhabited the environment of the Bolomorskaya cave probably ate the fruits and seeds of plants, such as hazelnuts or walnuts. Around this cave they were able to enjoy the shade of pine and oak forests and green holm oaks that grew alongside carob, strawberry, chestnut, walnut, birch and myrtle trees. There were also rhododendrons and rockroses, which alternated with ash trees, carcass, and many other types of trees, shrubs and herbs in a greater variety than in the same region.

They ate hazelnuts, olives and turtles

Neanderthals in the area hunted and processed the meat of numerous mammals of various sizes, and undoubtedly also ate turtles, as evidenced by the abundance of charred shell remains found in the layers of the site.

Bolomor is also particularly important because it is the first Iberian site where the controlled presence of fire by the human species is evident. Turtles were cooked in fire pits, along with frequent prey such as hares, rabbits, birds, and deer, and sometimes large animals such as horses and hippos.

This natural environment could become an idyllic place for the Neanderthals to live, because the gastronomic offer was very rich. Part of the diet of the Neanderthals undoubtedly favored the number of edible plants they discovered, which they probably knew very well.

There, Neanderthals could have eaten hazelnuts, chestnuts, carob, olives, carcass, holly, or elderberries. The area provided them with plenty of food, the richness of the fauna and forested environment facilitated hunting strategies, and the plant cover provided the security and stability necessary for survival.

In harmony with nature

The landscape of that good Neanderthal life must have had great visual exuberance. To recreate it, we had to combine art and science, select each plant, evaluate its abundance and place it in the landscape. We have taken into account leafy plants during leaf fall and have not forgotten to depict some shrubs with their fruits to highlight the diet of the Neanderthals.

We also recreated the entrance to the cave and the types of plants that might have surrounded it.

Backed by science, we wanted to portray a moment of a group of Neanderthals, a moment of rest and relaxation between a father who throws a spear on the ground, indulging in the taste of hazelnuts, and his son, engulfed in the taste of hazelnuts. turtle passage Both integrate perfectly into the environment and use it peacefully. Family portrait in harmony with paradise.

Gabriela Amoros Celler, Paleoecology and Paleoart, University of Murcia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.

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