Study provides oldest direct evidence of our ancient cousins killing the big cats, perhaps not just for their meat
Cut marks on a cave lion’s bones suggest Neanderthals butchered it for meat after hunting it with spears, as imagined in this artist’s reconstruction.On the day it was killed, the cave lion was old and probably starving. But the big cat was still formidable—more than 300 kilograms of muscle, teeth, claw, and bone. Yet wielding nothing more than a wooden spear, a Neanderthal hunter brought the beast down with a ferocious jab to the rib cage 48,000 years ago.
To reconstruct the hunt, researchers reexamined a complete cave lion skeleton excavated in the 1980s at a site called Siegsdorf in the Bavarian Alps near Salzburg, Germany. Along with cut marks indicating it was skinned, the big cat—closely related to but larger and heavier than a modern lion—had a round indentation on the inner side of one rib and scrapes on some bones.
Other clues helped reconstruct details of the hunt. The lion’s bones show it was an old male; in modern lion prides, males past their prime are often forced out to fend for themselves. University of Tübingen archaeozoologist Gabriele Russo says this individual might have been isolated and struggling to feed itself. Perhaps harassed by Neanderthals throwing wooden javelins, the angle of the injury shows the lion was lying on its side when the killing blow came., and bison.
That suggests use as a trophy or lion-skin rug, rather than a simple byproduct of skinning the animal for food. “It only makes sense if the pelt had some symbolic significance for them,” says Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist at the Lower Saxony State Office for Heritage who led the work at Unicorn Cave. “It’s more than just getting some meat—it’s a clear signal Neanderthals valued trophies of these animals.
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