Footprints discovered in France reveal how Neanderthals lived
WASHINGTON: Like modern humans and primates, Neanderthals - our closest evolutionary cousins - are thought to have lived in groups, but their size and composition have been difficult to infer from archaeological and fossil remains.
Now, scientists have reported the discovery of 257 footprints along the Normandy shore in France that were preserved over 80,000 years, offering major new clues into the social structures of its prehistoric inhabitants.
Their work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, suggests the band numbered 10 to 13 individuals, mostly children and adolescents, along with a few very tall, likely male adults, who could have been up to 190 cm in height, judging from foot size.
Jeremy Duveau, a doctoral student at France’s National Museum of Natural History and one of the study’s co-authors, told AFP the footprints were left in muddy soil, then quickly preserved by winddriven sand when the area was part of a dune system, creating a snapshot in time.
The Rozel site was discovered by amateur archaeologist Yves Roupin in the 1960s, but it was not until 2012, when it was faced with the twin dangers of wind and tidal erosion, that annual excavations began with government support. The footprints were found among what the team called “abundant archeological material” indicating butchery operations and stone tool production, and date back to a time when only Neanderthals, not anatomically modern humans, lived in western Europe.