Archaeologists Announce Major Neanderthal 'Fat Factory'
They announced the finding in the journal Science Advances.
The scientists announced that they had discovered a "fat factory" at the edge of a German lake where they believe Neanderthals processed mammals for food 125,000 years ago.
"We present archaeological data from the lake landscape of Neumark-Nord (Germany), where Last Interglacial Neanderthals processed at least 172 large mammals at a water's edge site," they wrote.
"Their (partial) carcasses were transported to this location for the extraction of within-bone nutrients, particularly bone grease. This 'fat factory' constitutes a well-documented case of grease rendering predating the Upper Paleolithic, with the special task location devoted to extraction of nutritionally important lipids forming an important addition to our knowledge of Neanderthal adaptations," they added.
According to the researchers, "These hunter-gatherers, similar to recent foragers, already focused heavily on the exploitation of within-bone nutrients—and particularly on bone grease—125,000 years ago."
The time period in question was "an interglacial period when temperatures were similar to those of today," according to a news release on the findings issued by Universiteit Leiden.
"At this location, researchers found that Neanderthals not only broke bones to extract marrow but also crushed large mammal bones into tens of thousands of fragments to render calorie-rich bone grease through heating them in water," the release says. "This discovery substantially shifts our understanding of Neanderthal food strategies, pushing the timeline for this kind of complex, labour-intensive resource management back in time tens of thousands of years."
The researchers explained the importance of studying diet.
"Diet played a key role in human evolution, making the study of past diet and subsistence strategies a crucial research topic within paleoanthropology," they wrote in the July 2 article.
"Lipids are a crucial resource for hunter-gatherers, especially for foragers whose diet is based heavily on animal foods. Recent foragers have expended substantial amounts of energy to obtain this resource, including time-consuming production of bone grease, a resource intensification practice thus far only documented for Upper Paleolithic populations," they added.Archaeologists Announce Major Neanderthal 'Fat Factory' first appeared on Men's Journal on Jul 10, 2025
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