It is called “ancient elephant”, but sometimes also “elephant with straight tusks”, according to its English name. now gone, Palaeoloxodon ancient was a beautiful beast, in truth the largest terrestrial animal to have surveyed Europe 800,000 to 100,000 years ago. The heaviest males were over four meters at the shoulder and weighed up to thirteen tons, more than woolly mammoths and twice as much as African elephants.
The impressive build of the ancient elephant, however, did not prevent Neanderthal man from hunting it, reveals a German-Dutch study published on 1is February in Science Advances.
This took place in what is now Germany, at the site of Neumark-Nord, not far from Leipzig. 125,000 years ago, during the last interglacial period, whenA wise man was still frolicking in Africa, we were in Neanderthal territory, in a landscape dotted with lakes. The archaeological site “is very well known for the fauna associated with it. It is quite exceptional in terms of preservation, age and abundance of material”, emphasizes Stéphane Péan, lecturer in archaeozoology and prehistory at the National Museum of Natural History.
In addition to the remains of horses, bovids or deer, Neumark-Nord has delivered more than 3,000 bones of ancient elephants, which corresponds to several dozen individuals, some of which were grouped together in real “fields of bones “.
The authors of the study Science Advances worked on the remains of fifty-seven of these prehistoric pachyderms. They first noted that these bones showed little or no evidence of animal scavenging, hence the idea that Neanderthals were first on the carcasses. Above all, these scientists discovered a multitude of cut marks, while the meat was still fresh, on the different parts of the body, which indicates a systematic exploitation of these proboscideans.
adult males
Let us judge. The skulls and mandibles were given special attention, showing that parts like the tongue and the brain were targeted. The ribs were separated from the vertebrae, the viscera, the flesh and the fat, taken wherever possible. Neanderthal showed a marked interest in the feet of Palaeoloxodon ancient, which were meticulously dissected, presumably to recover the fat deposits that were there. These fatty tissues, serving as shock absorbers when these heavy animals moved, were also appreciated in Africa by indigenous elephant hunters.
You have 38.18% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.