Archaeologists armed with spears demonstrate how Neanderthals hunted

A new experimental archaeology study reconstructs Neanderthal hunting tactics.
KIONA N. SMITH - 6/28/2018, 8:30 AM

How did Neanderthals hunt?
Animal bones at several Neanderthal sites bear the telltale marks of butchery, but there’s little evidence of how, exactly, Neanderthals brought down their prey.

“We have hardly any evidence for weaponry before 40,000 years ago. The only obvious evidence so far—and even here not all archaeologists agree—are wooden spears or lances known from three sites only. Considering that hominins probably started hunting as early as 1.8 million years ago, evidence is meager,” Johannes Gutenberg–University Mainz archaeologist Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser told Ars Technica.

Archaeologists found the pointed tip of a 400,000-year-old wooden staff at a site in Clacton, England, once inhabited by Neanderthals’ earlier relatives, Homo heidelbergensis, and several sharpened wooden sticks turned up at a 300,000-year-old site in Schöningen, Germany. But archaeologists aren’t sure exactly how Neanderthals and H. heidelbergensis would have used their early weapons or how their approach would have compared to early Homo sapiens tactics.

Some modern hunter-gatherers still wield very similar wooden spears, which they either thrust or throw at their prey, depending on the terrain and the situation. Archaeologists are fairly sure that’s what early H. sapiens were doing, too. Understanding more about how Neanderthals hunted—not just the weapons they used, but their techniques and tactics—could help us better understand how competition for food and territory played out when humans and Neanderthals met.

More:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/06/archaeologists-armed-with-spears-demonstrate-how-neanderthals-hunted/