In new research, scientists examined chemical properties locked inside tooth enamel of two Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals and a Magdalenian human from the Almonda karst system, Torres Novas, Portugal. The findings show Neanderthals in the region were hunting fairly large animals across wide tracts of land, whereas humans living in the same location tens of thousands of years later survived on smaller creatures in an area half the size.
“Understanding the mobility patterns of Middle and Upper Paleolithic human populations can aid in the reconstruction of their subsistence behavior, cognitive ability, geographical range, and group size,” said study’s first author Dr. Bethan Linscott, who conducted the research while at the University of Southampton and who now works at the University of Oxford, and colleagues.
“In particular, comparisons of landscape use and subsistence strategies of anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals may provide insights into the factors that led to the assimilation of the latter in Europe approximately 45,000 to 40,000 years ago.”
“The Iberian Peninsula occupies a central position in debates concerning the interaction between these two human groups around the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition, but direct isotopic studies of Middle and Upper Paleolithic human and animal mobility from this region have so far been limited.”
In the study, the authors used a technique which laser samples enamel and makes thousands of individual strontium isotope measurements along the growth of a tooth crown.
Samples were taken from two Neanderthals, dating back about 95,000 years, and from a more recent human who lived about 13,000 years ago, during the Magdalenian period.
The researchers also looked at isotopes in the tooth enamel of animals found in the Almonda karst system.
Alongside strontium, they measured oxygen isotopes, which vary seasonally from summer to winter.
This enabled them to establish not only where the animals ranged…
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