Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125,000 years ago
Source: Hacker News
Fat Extraction in the Past
Fat is a very valuable food component, packed with calories—especially important when other resources might be scarce. Our earliest ancestors in Africa already cracked open bones to extract the fatty marrow from bone cavities.
A new study published in Science Advances shows that our distant cousins, the Neanderthals, pushed fat extraction from bones much further.
From complete bones to tiny fragments.
Neanderthal Food Strategies
The evidence comes from the Neumark‑Nord 2 site in central Germany, dating back 125 000 years to an interglacial period when temperatures were similar to those of today. The site was situated in a lake landscape. Researchers found that Neanderthals not only broke bones to extract marrow but also crushed large mammal bones into tens of thousands of fragments to render calorie‑rich bone grease by heating them in water. This discovery substantially shifts our understanding of Neanderthal food strategies, pushing the timeline for this kind of complex, labour‑intensive resource management back tens of thousands of years.
The findings, led by archaeologists from MONREPOS (Leibniz‑Zentrum Archaeology, Germany) and Leiden University (The Netherlands), in cooperation with the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony‑Anhalt (Germany), indicate that Neanderthals operated what can be described as a prehistoric “fat factory.” They carefully selected a lakeside location to systematically process bones from at least 172 large mammals, including deer, horses, and aurochs. These activities, previously believed to be limited to later human groups, now appear to have been part of Neanderthal behaviour as early as 125 000 years ago.
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). Photo: Kindler, LEIZA‑Monrepos.
Key References
- Neanderthals hunted giant elephants – Leiden University News, 2023.
- Neanderthals changed ecosystems 125 000 years ago – Leiden University News, 2021.
- Neanderthal spears and deer butchery – Leiden University News, 2018.
Landscape Preservation
This discovery builds on decades of research at the ca. 30 ha large Neumark‑Nord site complex, first identified in the 1980s by Jena archaeologist Dietrich Mania. From 2004 to 2009, the Neumark‑Nord 2 site was excavated in year‑round campaigns by a team led by MONREPOS and Leiden archaeologists. The excavations included a field school that trained more than 175 international students, including dozens of participants from Leiden.
In 2023 the team published evidence that Neanderthals hunted and butchered straight‑tusked elephants—animals weighing up to 13 tons and capable of providing over 2 000 adult‑daily food portions. Their use of fire to manage vegetation and the diversity of processed species across different locations reveal a level of planning and ecological engagement previously underestimated in Neanderthals.
“What makes Neumark‑Nord so exceptional is the preservation of an entire landscape, not just a single site,” notes Leiden‑based author Prof. Wil Roebroeks. “We see Neanderthals hunting and minimally butchering deer in one area, processing elephants intensively in another, and—as this study shows—rendering fat from hundreds of mammal skeletons in a centralized location. There’s even some evidence of plant use, which is rarely preserved. This broad range of behaviours in the same landscape gives us a much richer picture of their culture.”
Organised and Strategic
“This was intensive, organised, and strategic,” says Dr. Lutz Kindler, the study’s first author. “Neanderthals were clearly managing resources with precision – planning hunts, transporting carcasses and rendering fat in a task‑specific area. They understood both the nutritional value of fat and how to access it efficiently – most likely involving caching carcass parts at places in the landscape for later transport to and use at the grease‑rendering site.”
“Indeed, bone‑grease production requires a certain volume of bones to make this labour‑intensive processing worthwhile; hence the more bones assembled, the more profitable it becomes,” adds co‑author Prof. Sabine Gaudzinski‑Windheuser.
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. Photo: Wil Roebroeks, Leiden University
Survival Strategies
The Neumark‑Nord discoveries are reshaping our view of Neanderthal adaptability and survival tactics. The evidence shows that Neanderthals could plan ahead, process food efficiently, and make sophisticated use of their environment.
Key Findings
- Massive herbivore exploitation – At the small Neumark‑Nord 1 lake site alone, at least 172 large mammals were processed in a very short period during the early Last Interglacial (a warm‑temperate phase).
- Diverse prey spectrum – Hundreds of herbivores, including straight‑tusked elephants, were butchered. Nearby sites (Rabutz, Gröbern, and Taubach) provide corroborating evidence:
- Taubach yielded cut‑marked remains of 76 rhinos and 40 straight‑tusked elephants.
- Potential ecosystem impact – Roebroeks (2023) notes that “assuming we are only seeing the tip of the proverbial iceberg of Neanderthal impact on herbivore populations—especially on slowly‑reproducing taxa—their effect could have been substantial during the Last Interglacial.”
Expert Commentary
“The sheer size and extraordinary preservation of the Neumark‑Nord site complex gives us a unique chance to study how Neanderthals impacted their environment, both animal and plant life,” said Dr. Fulco Scherjon, data manager and computer scientist on the project.
“That’s incredibly rare for a site this old—and it opens exciting new possibilities for future research.”
Further Reading
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Article: Neanderthal hunting and ecosystem engineering in the early Last Interglacial – Science Advances
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Related study: Late Pleistocene megafaunal exploitation at Taubach – PNAS