Remains of twelve individuals from 49,000 years ago were found at El Sidrón, in the Cantabrian range of Asturias in northern Spain. That’s during the devastating cold spell mentioned in the post for 29 July. Evidence suggests the Neanderthals were eaten, and their bones left together. They later fell through an opening when the limestone cave’s roof collapsed, probably during a flood.
The twelve must have been members of a single band composed of three adult men and three adult women, along with two teenage males, and a male child. The genders of the other adult, the other teenager and the infant couldn’t be determined.
The three men were brothers. The women were not related, and had come to live with the band. One adolescent and one of the children were brothers, born about three years apart. No comment has been made on the absence of young girls in the group.
It’s likely the band had moved outside its ancestral range in northern Europe, and interbred with people already in the south. A jaw bone had the character of northern Neanderthals, while the faces showed the broadness and lowness associated with southern ones.
The climate was cold and dry. In Catalonia to the east, Francesc Burjachs and Ethel Allué found pollens from composites, sage brushes, and grasses in those millennia. Scattered Scots pines survived in the dry steppes.
Yarrow was surely one of the composites. One subspecies, Ceretanica, is a relic of the Pleistocene Pyrenees. Achillea millefolium spread into North America from a refuge in Bergenia and, today, grows nearly everywhere from the far north of the Yukon to Honduras. You sometimes see it here along the roadside.
Few animal bones were found among the litter at El Sidrón. Antonio Rosas’ team identified a red deer with "very few small mammals and gastropods." When Karen Hardy’s group examined plaque from the Neanderthals’ teeth, they found "few lipids or proteins from meat."
The teeth showed signs of dietary deprivation, often from the fourth and twelfth years of life. The enamel of five individuals indicated they’d been malnourished twice and one person had suffered four times. One of the adolescents had lived through "an exceptionally severe episode of physiological stress"
In the absence of meat they were relying on plants. Hardy’s team found the plaque contained "a
range of carbohydrates and starch granules." They also found "evidence for inhalation of wood-fire smoke and bitumen or oil shale." The starches were so changed by roasting, they couldn’t be identified.
Roasting requires close contact with fire. Perhaps they used sticks to manipulate foods. Yarrow is slow to ignite, and stays green in most winters. It might have been grasped like a potholder for protection.
No wooden tools have survived from El Sidrón. The ones found were stone. The only adaptation to changed circumstances was most used local chert. A few were fashioned from quartzite.
Burns must have been a problem. The two plants Hardy’s team could identify, yarrow and camomile, have both been used to treat burns and other skin injuries. They were probably chewed raw and either spat onto the wound, or the wounded finger was sucked. It’s been used that way in recent times by the Zuñi in New Mexico, the Crow of Montana, the Cree of Saskatchewan, and the Bella Coola of British Columbia.
The chewed plant has been used to treat toothaches by the Cree and Paiute. Rosas’ colleagues found one of the El Sidrón individuals at had had an abscess caused by periodontitis associated with biting hard. They noted, "This sort of lesion is common among Neandertal lineage populations."
The other physical problem Neanderthals were known to have, broken bones, wasn’t mentioned for El Sidrón. Elsewhere, Thomas Berger and Erik Trinkas found nearly all the bodies that survived showed signs of fracture and healing. Most had three or four wounds, primarily to the upper body. The trauma pattern closely resembled injuries suffered by today’s rodeo competitors.
Trinkas noted, they didn’t find any broken leg bones among the Neanderthal relics. That kind of injury must have been fatal in a mobile band. No broken bones in a band meant they either weren’t eating meat, were left behind or, possibly, were eaten.
Notes: Red deer is Cervus elaphus, sage bush is Artemisia, Scots pine is Pinus sylvestris, chamomile is Anthemis nobilis. Generic yarrow is Achillea millefolium, the Pyrenees subspecies is Achillea millefolium ceretanica.
Aleksoff, Keith C. "Achillea millefolium," 1991, in U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Fire Effects Information System.
Burjachs, F. and E. Allué. "Paleoclimatic Evolution During the Last Glacial Cycle at the NE of
the Iberian Peninsula," in María Blanca Ruiz Zapata, et alia, Quaternary Climatic Changes and Environmental Crises in the Mediterranean Region, 2003.
Hardy, Karen, Carles Lalueza-Fox, et alia. "Neanderthal Medics? Evidence for Food, Cooking, and Medicinal Plants Entrapped in Dental Calculus," Naturwissenschaften 99:617-626:2012; quotation on smoke.
_____. Discussed by Matt Kaplan in "Neanderthals Ate Their Greens," Nature website, 18 July 2012; quotations on lipids and starches.
Hirst, K. Kris. "El Sidrón - Evidence for Neanderthal Cannibalism in Spain," About Archaeology website.
Lalueza-Fox, Carles, Antonio Rosas, et alia. "Genetic Evidence for Patrilocal Mating Behavior among Neandertal Groups," National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings 108:250-253:2011.
Moerman, Dan. Native American Ethnobotany, 1998, summarizes data from a number of ethnographies.
Rosas, Antonio, Carles Lalueza-Fox, et alia. "Paleobiology and Comparative Morphology of a Late Neandertal Sample from El Sidrón, Asturias, Spain," National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings 103:19266-19271:2006; quotation on dietary stress.
Trinkas, Erik. Quoted in "Evidence Suggests Skulduggery among the Neanderthals," The Washington Post, 23 April 2002.
_____ and T. D. Berger. "Patterns of Trauma among Neadertals," Journal of Archaeological Science 22:841-852:1996
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