Neanderthal the Hunter 
He was a superpredator. He was stunningly strong. He killed mammoths and woolly rhinos 
at close quarters. But he was finished when the climate turned warm 
by Valerius Geist 
When examining the fossils of some 
long-extinct creature, paleontologists 
accept the proposition that its manner 
of living and the food it ate are ex- 
pressed in the shapes and dimensions 
of its bones. If the fossilized cheek 
teeth of an herbivorous mammal, for 
example, are long, open rooted, and 
wide, the animal lived on abrasive for- 
age. If the body size of the animal 
is small, we can safely assume that 
the forage consumed was highly di- 
gestible. Therefore, the abrasiveness 
of the forage could not be due to a 
high fiber content, but must result 
from sand and dust particles adhering 
to the exterior of the plant material. 
Also, most modern small-bodied un- 
gulates occur in warm regions. It fol- 
lows then that the extinct ungulate 
in question occupied a habitat that 
was most likely a warm, dusty, wind- 
swept, sparsely vegetated steppe. 
To test this proposition, the skull 
and postcranial skeleton should be ex- 
amined. Are the eye orbits large? Is 
the skeleton that of a cursorial form? 
Are the tarsals and carpals fused into 
long, slender bones and the lateral dig- 
its greatly reduced to facilitate fast 
running over hard ground? The weap- 
on system and the relative size of the 
sexes are other anatomical clues useful 
in determining the type of animal in- 
volved. If the hornlike organs are as 
complex as those used in wrestling 
and pushing matches by most con- 
temporary deer and antelopes, we are 
OA 
likely dealing with a highly gregarious 
animal. The same conclusion can be 
reached if the weapons are greatly 
reduced or absent. Weapons that are 
used only to damage body surfaces, 
and thereby maximize pain, are in- 
compatible with gregariousness. If the 
differences in body size between sexes 
are also negligible, we can be quite 
certain that the sexes lived together 
year-round in large herds. 
Each conclusion is based on par- 
allels with living forms, while the va- 
lidity of the reconstruction is derived 
in good measure from the fact that 
each adaptation fits logically into a 
pattern. Such a pattern is called a 
strategy, or more precisely, an adap- 
tive strategy. A strategy is composed 
of tactical components that must fit 
flawlessly with one another. The more 
components and the more complex 
their mutually supporting web, the 
more likely is the envisioned adaptive 
strategy. Microfossils and pollen 
found in association with the bones 
can further test the reconstruction. 
I would like to use the same pro- 
cedure to reconstruct the basic adap- 
tive strategy of one of the most enig- 
matic humans from the past — Nean- 
derthal. To do this, I shall attempt 
to link into one logical pattern the 
anatomical peculiarities of Neander- 
thal people, the characteristics of their 
tools, their large hearths filled with 
bone ash, their kill patterns of large 
mammals, and their precipitous dis- 
appearance. The information pains- 
takingly assembled by archeologists 
will be useful, but an understanding 
of the peculiar periglacial landscapes 
Neanderthals inhabited and of the bi- 
ology of large, dangerous mammals — 
their chief food — is crucial. 
Periglacial landscapes, land greatly 
affected by the edges of continental 
and cordilleran glaciers, were often 
characterized by a mosaic of produc- 
tive habitats with cold climate floras. 
The major habitats were fertile, dusty, 
loess steppes and rich grasslands on 
moist sites. These owed their existence 
to huge amounts of rock flour ground 
by the ice masses and spewed out with 
meltwater. This highly fertile ground- 
up rock was deposited as silt by melt- 
waters from the glaciers, and wherever 
it was desiccated by exposure to sun 
and air, it was carried away as loess 
by the strong winds coming from the 
ice masses. The annual pulses of 
ground rock and water created what 
is technically called a pulse-stabilized, 
immature ecosystem. This ecosystem, 
with its different habitats, was host 
to a highly diverse, dense megafauna 
of large grazers and large carnivores. 
It is no accident that in colonizing 
cold landscapes, humans inhabited the 
rich periglacial landscapes first and 
the unproductive tundra (a major in- 
terglacial habitat) tens of thousands 
of years later, in fact only within his- 
toric times. Nor is it an accident that 
the major breadbaskets of today are 
