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125,000-year-old ‘fat factory' reveals Neanderthals crushed bones for precious protein
A recent excavation at the Neumark-Nord 2 site in central Germany has witnessed stunning revelations regarding how Neanderthals tackled cold, brutal winters.
Researchers have found that humans in those times used to crack open bones to extract fatty marrow from bone cavities more than 1.5 million years ago.
Beyond these activities, Neanderthals also crushed large mammal bones from at least 172 large animals into thousands of fragments to render calorie-rich bone grease by heating them in water.
Dr Geoff Smith, co-author from the University of Reading, said: 'This discovery shows that Neanderthals at Neumark-Nord 2 conducted sophisticated resource management tens of thousands of years earlier than previously thought."
"These weren't simple hunter-gatherers just getting by day to day—they were master planners who could look ahead, organise complex tasks, and squeeze every last calorie from their environment,' he continued.
The findings led by archaeologists across different universities have indicated that Neanderthals ran a 'fat factory' by selecting a lakeside location specifically for this purpose.
The location was chosen to process bones from 172 large mammals, including deer, horses, and aurochs.
These activities were previously said to be limited to later human groups. However, current findings suggest they could be dated back to Neanderthals as early as 125,000 years ago.
The Neumark-Nord site in Germany has been studied for many years, starting in the 1980s. From 2004 to 2009, archaeologists from MONREPOS and Leiden University dug at one part of the site all year round. They also ran a field school there, training over 175 students from around the world.
In 2023, researchers found strong evidence that Neanderthals hunted and cut up straight-tusked elephants—huge animals weighing up to 13 tons, which could feed more than 2,000 adults in one go.
They also used fire to manage the land and processed many different animals at different spots. All of this shows that Neanderthals were much better at planning and using their environment than we used to think.
Neumrk-Nort site was first excavated from 2004 to 2009 by a group of researchers hailing from different parts of the world.
"What makes Neumark-Nord so exceptional is the preservation of an entire landscape, not just a single site,' noted Leiden-based author Prof. Wil Roebroeks.
"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 centralized location. There's even some evidence of plant use, which is rarely preserved," he added.
That Neanderthals lived an organized lifestyle would seem like an overstatement. However, the findings of researchers do suggest that might have been the case.
"Neanderthals were clearly managing resources with precision—planning hunts, transporting carcasses, and rendering fat in a task-specific area," said Dr. Lutz Kindler, the study's first author.
"They understood both the nutritional value of fat and how to access it efficiently - most likely involving caching carcass parts at places in the landscape for later transport to and use at the grease rendering site." he said, stating his observations.
A brief overview of the study suggests that Neanderthals practiced resource intensification by saving materials and getting more out of them. Before this study, the first proof of resource intensification being used by humans dated back to 28,000 years ago.
The study also revealed that the process of extracting grease from bones could have saved Neanderthals from protein poisoning, also known as rabbit starvation, since they continuously ate meat.
This study was published in the Science journal.
