Neanderthals had ‘factories' up and running 125,000 years ago
They may have been rendering fat from crushed animal bones in the Neumark-Nord region in central Germany, according to archaeological research, published in Science Advances.
While many bones that contained less marrow were spread out across the archaeological site, researchers observed that many of the marrow-rich bones were located in clusters – sites they call 'fat factories'.
The process required careful planning, specialised tools and detailed knowledge of nutrition.
Its use challenges long-held assumptions about Neanderthal capabilities, the study, commissioned at Leiden University in The Netherlands, found.
Prof Wil Roebroeks, the study's co-author said: 'This attitude that Neanderthals were dumb – this is another data point that proves otherwise.'
Dr Lutz Kindler, the study's first author, added: 'Neanderthals were clearly managing resources with precision – planning hunts, transporting carcasses and rendering fat in a task-specific area.'
Prior to this finding, the earliest evidence of this kind of fat rendering dated back to only 28,000 years ago, thousands of years after Neanderthals disappeared from the fossil record.
The Neumark-Nord 2/2B site was excavated through year-round campaigns from 2004 to 2009.
Researchers found more than 118,000 bone fragments alongside 16,500 flint tools, hammerstones and abundant signs of fire use.
Two thirds of the bone material measured smaller than 3cm – the tiny fragments used for grease extraction.
Like humans, fat was a crucial survival resource for Neanderthals particularly for hunter-gatherers dependent on animal foods, and bone grease provided a calorie-dense solution during periods when other fat sources became scarce.
Analysis also found that they had built fires, with evidence of heating bones, stones and charcoal from controlled fires.
The Neanderthals had positioned themselves on the edge of a lake, which would have given them direct access to water, the study found.
Researchers have also proposed that Neanderthals may have operated sophisticated caching systems.
Caching was essential for northern latitude hunter-gatherers, who could not survive without stored foods.
The concentration of 172 large mammals in such a small area suggests bones were stored across the landscape and later transported to the processing site during intensive rendering periods.
Prof Sabine Gaudzinksi-Windheuser, the co-author of the study, said: 'Indeed, bone grease production requires a certain volume of bones to make this labour-intensive processing worthwhile and hence the more bones assembled, the more profitable it becomes.'
The study found that the Neumark-Nord lakes could have facilitated 'pond storage' – a method where carcasses were submerged in cold water for preservation.
Prof Roebroeks said: 'What makes Neumark-Nord so exceptional is the preservation of an entire landscape, not just a single site.
'We see Neanderthals hunting and minimally butchering deer in one area, processing elephants intensively in another, and – as this study shows – rendering fat from hundreds of mammal skeletons in a centralised location.'
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