Rhein-Main Universitäten (RMU)

Neumark-Nord in northeastern Germany was a lake landscape in the last interglacial period. It is rich in archeological finds discovered during lignite mining. The area in Saxony-Anhalt is one of the most important European paleontological sites for the European straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus. Fossil remains of more than 70 elephants have been found there – animals that were once hunted in this region by Neanderthals. Because of this unusually large number of finds, the site provides a unique insight into the relationship between these massive animals and the humans of the Pleistocene.

An international research team from Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States has now examined the teeth of four of these elephants in greater detail. Using an innovative approach that combines the analysis of isotopes (Carbon, Oxygen, and Strontium) and proteins (palaeoproteomics), the researchers reconstructed migration behavior, diet, and even the sex of several individuals. Strontium isotope analyses along the direction of growth of the molars showed that the elephants had spent several years in different regions of Europe. The data were collected in Frankfurt by Elena Armaroli and Federico Lugli under the supervision of Prof. Wolfgang Müller, one of the directors of the Frankfurt Isotope and Element Research Center (FIERCE) at Goethe University. The Carbon and Oxygen isotope analyses were conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz.

Elena Armaroli, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE) in Italy and the study's first author, explains: “Thanks to isotope analyses, we can trace the movements of elephants almost as if we had a travel diary that has been preserved in their teeth for more than one hundred thousand years."

“Some of the elephants we studied were animals that did not stay in just one area," says Federico Lugli, associate professor at UNIMORE and, like Armaroli, a corresponding author of the study. “Their teeth show that they traveled very long distances – up to 300 kilometers – before reaching what is now Neumark-Nord. This allows us to reconstruct their home ranges and understand how these animals used the landscape.

The research team also identified the sex of the four elephants: three males and – most likely – one female. Two of the males show isotope signatures that differ significantly from those expected for local bed rocks in the area of Neumark-Nord. This suggests that the males, much like modern elephants, ranged over larger territories than the females.

Elena Armaroli concludes: “The concentration of remains and the isotope profile of the animals suggest that Neanderthals did not kill the elephants merely when a favorable opportunity arose. Everything points to organized hunting in which even such enormous prey animals could be deliberately targeted. For this, Neanderthals must have known the landscape well, cooperated, and planned."

“This study also marks an important methodological advance," emphasizes Federico Lugli. “For the first time, paleoproteomics has been applied to European straight-tusked elephants, allowing us to determine the sex of individual animals from proteins preserved in tooth enamel."

The study is the latest in a series of ongoing scientific analyses of material from the former Neumark-Nord lignite mine. The research projects are conducted by a joint team from MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution in Neuwied – a department of Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA) –, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), and Leiden University. They have been made possible through the continuous support of the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt.

The aim of these research projects is to better determine the different dimensions of the Neanderthals' ecological footprint. The results show that Neanderthals were active gatherers and hunters operating within a rich lakeshore ecosystem. The site provides evidence that people systematically butchered animal carcasses at different locations and extracted fat from large mammals on a large scale. They also consumed plant foods such as hazelnuts and acorns. Neanderthals appear to have repeatedly used the resources of this ecosystem and may even have modified the landscape through the use of fire. They were likely organized in larger social groups than previously assumed.

“What we see at Neumark-Nord is not a picture of mere survival, but of a population that understood its environment and interacted with it actively and in complex ways over a period of at least 2,500 years," says study author Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, professor of prehistoric and protohistoric archeology at JGU and head of institute at MONREPOS.

“At least some of male elephants uncovered at Neumark spent some of their adolescence and young adulthood away from the Neumark lake land. If Neumark was a point of attraction for elephants from different regions aggregating here or the Neumark area was the homeland of an elephant population, with individuals leaving the area for a certain time span, we can't extract from isotopes alone", says co-author Professor Thomas Tütken from the Applied and Analytical Paleontology Group at JGU. “To understand the population dynamics of the Neumark elephants and with that Neanderthal hunting at Neumark, we have started a genetic study of the Neumark elephants", adds Lutz Kindler, member of the Neumark-Nord team and researcher at MONREPOS and JGU.