Neanderthals left their mark suggesting they knew how to knock up a mammoth buffet
THE site of Britain’s oldest “buffet” may have been discovered after scientists examined axes and bones left behind by a likely Neanderthal mammoth hunt.
Bones from the four-metre-tall animals unearthed in Wiltshire have been found to be 215,000 years old. The discovery of stone axes near the mammoth bones could indicate it was the site of a “massive buffet”, experts have said, and the tools they used to carved up the feast suggest that Britain’s Neanderthals had outdated tools compared with their continental cousins.
Research into the site features in a BBC documentary featuring Sir David Attenborough and Prof Ben Garrod, of the University of East Anglia.
Prof Garrod said: “This is gold dust. It could be that Neanderthals were camping there, maybe they caused the deaths of these animals, chasing them into the mud and enjoying a massive buffet. Maybe they found them there already and got a free meal.”
Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard, due to be broadcast on BBC1 on Dec 30, reveals that the site was on a slow-moving section of the prehistoric course of the Thames, and treacherous enough to trap the mammoths that may have been corralled into the river.
The silty conditions of the waterway have left the site perfectly preserved. Prof Garrod said: “It is like a crime scene, nothing has been moved.
“We have these stone tools, we have these bodies, and we do have evidence of what looks like [butchery] marks on the bones – but we have to be very careful that we eradicate all other suspects.
“If the lab shows the cut-marks are human-made, our site will be one of the oldest scientifically excavated sites with Neanderthals butchering mammoths in Britain.”
While experts will assess whether the mammoths were butchered in situ on the banks of the river, early analysis has indicated that the stone axes used by the Neanderthals were not as advanced as similar tools found elsewhere in Europe. Prof Garrod said: “What we have found is that these Neanderthals in Britain were using stone tools that were, you could say, ‘old fashioned’ compared to the technology you would expect from that time and place.
“It was a bit like my parents using an old Nokia when I’m using an iPhone.
“It might have been a case of if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, or it could indicate they were quite separate from other tool-making cultures.”
Neville and Sally Hollingworth, two amateur palaeontologists, dug the objects out of a gravel pit outside Swindon four years ago. The site is one of only a handful of its kind in Europe – most mammoth finds are only tens of thousands of years old.
In the documentary, Sir David will explore how the mammoth bones were found, what the site reveals about early humans in Britain and the impact of climate change on them.
Prof Garrod said: “It may tell us what is in store for us in the British Isles.”