A reconstruction of a Neanderthal family in a cave, notice the alpha male Neanderthal asleep in the background, exhausted from a day of hunting, with a child watching over him.
A Neanderthal skull (left) compared to a Cro-Magnon skull, a Cro-Magnon is the first early modern humans (Homo sapiens) that lived in Europe during the Upper Paleolithic period (roughly 40,000 to 10,000 years ago).
A Neanderthal brain (left) compared to a modern human brain. Neanderthal and modern human brains are nearly identical in overall size, but fundamentally different in shape, internal organization, and development. While Neanderthal brains were slightly larger, human brains evolved to favor globular, highly connected structures for advanced social learning, abstract thought, and communication.
Neanderthals were highly skilled, apex predators who relied on cooperative, close-range ambush tactics to hunt megafauna. Using thrusting spears, extensive landscape knowledge, and complex social groups, they successfully hunted massive prey like woolly mammoths, straight-tusked elephants, and even cave lions for their meat and hides. Look at the size of this woolly mammoth next to the Neanderthal, just wow.
Neanderthals were exceptionally skilled toolmakers. Rather than being primitive, they mastered advanced flint-knapping techniques, created specialized bone implements, and even used pine resin glue to attach stone blades to wooden handles. They used techniques like the Levallois method, requiring high levels of planning and spatial cognition to predetermine the shape and size of flakes before striking them from a stone core..Neanderthals carved animal bones into lissoirs (smooth, polished tools used to make leather waterproof). They even independently developed these techniques before modern humans arrived in Europe. They fashioned thrusting spears out of wood and attached sharpened stones to handles using a mixture of pine resin and beeswax, a process that requires a multi-step engineering mindset. Studies show their core-reduction techniques generated more cutting edge per rock and wasted less raw material than the blade techniques used by early modern humans.
A 65,000-Year-Old Hearth Reveals Evidence That Neanderthals Produced Tar for Stone Tools in Iberia
While Neanderthals have been found to create glue-like substances with other materials, this finding, if confirmed, would be the first sign of Neanderthals burning the rockrose plant to make tar
By: Alexa Robles-Gil
December 2, 2024
Scientists created a spear using tar they produced from a makeshift hearth to test whether Neanderthals might have used similar methods to obtain tar
When fire was invented, it changed the course of human evolution. It provided warmth, enabled cooking and facilitated the creation of more advanced tools. For instance, one pivotal tool, the stone-tipped spear, might have been assembled using tar and other adhesives. While early tar production remains largely a mystery, scientists have now uncovered a 65,000-year-old hearth that appears to have functioned as a small-scale “tar factory.”
In a new study published in Quaternary Science Reviews in November, scientists describe a 65,000-year-old hearth found in Gibraltar on the Iberian Peninsula. The fire pit was theoretically used to make tar—and if that conclusion is proven true, it also represents the first evidence of the use of the plant rockrose, Cistus ladanifer, for obtaining tar.
“For this reason, it can be said that it was unexpected,” says Juan Ochando, lead author of the study and a biologist at the University of Murcia in Spain, to Discover magazine’s Paul Smaglik.
Scientists already knew that Neanderthals made adhesives using other materials like ocher and naturally sticky substances to haft stone tips onto wooden shafts to create weapons. The newly described hearth in Gibraltar represents a “specialized burning structure” for tar production, the researchers write in the study.
“Stone Age adhesives are an important and still much understudied aspect of early humans,” says Patrick Schmidt, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany who was not involved with the study, to Science’s Taylor Mitchell Brown.
Still, Schmidt says that although the study points to wood burning in the hearth, more evidence is needed to conclude for certain that Neanderthals used the hearth to make tar.
The ancient hearth was uncovered in the Vanguard Cave, part of the Gorham’s Cave Complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Gibraltar. This area is renowned for its rich history of Neanderthal findings, including tools and cave art. Research in the Vanguard Cave began in 2012, and since then, scientists have revealed several new findings in its passageways and chambers.
One such discovery was a cave chamber full of ancient hearths and stone tools dating to the time of Neanderthals, uncovered in 2021 by Clive Finlayson, an evolutionary biologist and director of the Gibraltar National Museum. He told the Guardian’s Sam Jones at the time that the “caves have been giving us a great deal of information about the behavior of these people.”
That remains true today with the discovery of the prehistoric hearth, where researchers found charcoal and remnants of the rockrose plant. Chemical analysis of the hearth’s contents revealed burning residues and traces of wax from leaves, suggesting the controlled use of fire—and possibly the production of tar. The team also found guano, or bat and bird poop, in the hearth. They suggest Neanderthals used guano with a mix of sand to cover the plant materials, allowing them to heat up and melt without fully catching fire.
A series of six images showing scientists' hands and a makeshift hearth as they re-create the hypothesized Neanderthal tar-making methods
The researchers used the same materials and methods that would have been available to Neanderthals at the time to recreate the prehistoric hearth and produce tar. Ochando et al., Quaternary Science Reviews, 2024
To prove it is possible to produce a significant amount of tar from rockrose resin, Ochando and his team set out to make a similar hearth. They intended to do so with materials and techniques that would’ve been available to Neanderthals in the area at the time.
First, they filled their replica hearth with rockrose leaves, then covered them with sand and soil. They built a small fire with grass and rockrose wood and let it burn for two hours. Afterward, the result was a mixture of rockrose leaves dripping with labdanum, a sticky resin, that the scientists used to haft arrowheads to wood in a type of makeshift spear.
For Neanderthals, this effort might have been a cooperative process, as study co-author Francisco Jiménez-Espejo, a scientist at the Andalusian Earth Sciences Institute in Spain, tells Live Science’s Kiona Smith. On either side of the hearth, the researchers found a pair of straight furrows cut in the ground, where he suggests two Neanderthals might have dug into the hearth to remove the hot leaves from opposite sides. Separating the tar from the leaves is much harder when the leaves have cooled, so they had to work quickly, he adds.
Although this production of tar will require further study, Ochando says the work aligns with the current suppositions about tar production. As he tells Science, Ochando hopes the findings “may serve as a starting point for other researchers when identifying these structures in other archaeological sites.”
65,000 years ago Neanderthals from the Swabian Jura hunted horses and reindeer with hafted leaf-shaped stone points. This leaf point was discovered in a cave at Hohle Fels in 2021.
The oldest confirmed fossils representing the Neanderthal lineage are from the Sima de los Huesos site in Atapuerca, Spain. Dating to roughly 430,000 years ago, these "proto-Neanderthals" possessed distinct Neanderthal features and yielded the oldest human DNA ever recovered. The Sima de los Huesos hominins are a 430,000-year-old population of pre-Neanderthals from the archeological site of Atapuerca, Spain. They are in the "Neanderthal clade", but fall outside Homo neanderthalensis. When first reported in 1993, these 29 individuals were about 80 percent of the human fossil record of the Middle Pleistocene. Every bone is preserved, and the unprecedented completeness of the remains sheds light on Neanderthal evolution, the classification of contemporary fossils, and variations in a single Middle Pleistocene population. Exhumation of the Sima de los Huesos hominins began in the 1980s under the direction of Emiliano Aguirre and, later, Juan Luis Arsuaga, Eudald Carbonell, and José María Bermúdez de Castro. They have a mosaic of "classic" Neanderthal traits (apomorphies) and more "archaic" traits (plesiomorphies). Like Neanderthals, the brow ridges are inflated; the skull is not as robust in the rear, however, and has a pointed "house-like" profile instead of a rounded "bomb-like" one. Brain volume averages 1,241 cc (75.7 cu in), on the lower end of the Neanderthal range. The teeth are Neanderthal-like, with shovel-shaped incisors and taurodontism, but differ in cusp morphology. The chest and waist are broad and robust like Neanderthals, but the limbs are longer. They may have been large-bodied overall, like other archaic humans, with a height of about 170 cm (5 ft 7 in) and a weight of 90 kg (200 lb) in both sexes. The Sima de los Huesos (bone pit) is a chamber in the Cueva Mayor–Cueva Silo cave complex at Atapuerca, and may have been a natural trap for the cave bear Ursus deningeri in particular. The Sima de los Huesos hominins may have been deposited in the pit by other humans, based on the quality of preservation and the predominance of adolescents and young adults over children and the elderly. All were buried at about the same time, and one individual may have been killed with a blunt tool. Some with severe health issues survived for a while, suggesting group care. Many individuals (especially adolescents) exhibited metabolic and nutritional diseases consistent with insufficient fat reserves during hibernation; any hibernation presumably lasted for four months. This population produced Acheulean stone tools, as well as an industry apparently transitioning to the typically-Neanderthal Mousterian culture. They used these tools in butchering and hide- and woodworking, with the mouth as a third hand. The Sima de los Huesos hominins were buried with a single, large Acheulean handaxe, possibly a grave good with symbolic significance. Symbolic thought could indicate use of an early form of language. They may have been efficient hunters — possibly outcompeting local cave hyenas — who pursued deer, rhinoceros, horses, bison, and (sporadically) cave lions in an open woodland environment. They probably ate roots regularly, habitually squatted, and did not use fire. Here are some photos of the excavations at the bone pit at the Sima de los Huesos site in Atapuerca, Spain.
Let me make something perfectly clear, these caves are no joke, it's pitch dark, the passages are deep and narrow, there's always a risk of a cave-in that will leave you buried alive, and you better not have a problem with claustrophobia. This is a diagram of the cave at Sima de los Huesos. This is what it takes to find Neanderthal fossils, you're literally risking your life.
Check this out, this is how they reconstruct the faces of these fossils, this is a reconstruction from the skull of a Homo heidelbergensis found at Sima de los Huesos.
It's a well known fact that Neanderthals had to endure some of the harshest weather the planet can muster, in particular, the dreaded Ice Age. Based on discoveries at the Sims de los Huesos site, it is actually believed that early Neanderthals may have attempted to hibernate through Ice Ages. Neanderthals lived through multiple ice ages spanning nearly 400,000 years. They didn't simply "ride out" one continuous freeze; rather, they endured massive, repeated climate swings. They survived these harsh glacial cycles by adapting physically and developing advanced tools. The popular image of the Ice Age is a period of unremitting freezing conditions, but the reality was much more dynamic. The period was characterized by dramatic, rapid fluctuations rather than a single, long-lasting deep freeze. Extremely cold, dry stretches with expanding ice sheets, warmer, milder periods—sometimes even hotter than our current climate. How they survived these shifting environments for roughly 350,000 years required incredible resilience and adaptation. They had stocky, muscular bodies with shorter limbs, which helped retain body heat much better than taller, leaner hominids. They were apex predators who thrived by hunting large Ice Age megafauna. They crafted specialized wooden spears, controlled fire, and used animal hides for clothing and shelter. Rather than sitting idly through the bitterest cold, they frequently relocated to warmer refuges—such as woodlands in southern Europe or coastal caves like Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar. Ultimately, their era came to a close roughly 40,000 years ago, as climate change and competition from incoming modern humans pushed them into smaller, fragmented populations. But I could imagine at the beginning, before they were able to adapt, Ice Age weather pushed them to the brink. Fossil evidence from the 430,000-year-old Sima de los Huesos site suggests these early human relatives may have used a hibernation-like state, or torpor, to survive harsh Ice Age winters. However, this theory is highly debated by the scientific community.
Deep in northern Spain, Atapuerca’s Sima de los Huesos (“Pit of Bones”) has yielded thousands of human fossil fragments from more than 400,000 years ago—often described as early Neanderthals or their close predecessors. It’s one of Europe’s richest windows into Ice Age humanity, and it has produced a strange question: were these people doing something that sounds almost impossible?
Researchers Juan-Luis Arsuaga and Antonis Bartsiokas proposed that certain skeletal changes—lesions and growth disruptions seen in some of the fossils—might fit a pattern similar to what doctors and zoologists observe in animals that hibernate or enter torpor. Their argument is basically this: during extreme cold and food scarcity, some mammals reduce metabolic activity for long periods, and the stress can leave traces in bone development. The Sima remains, they suggest, show signs consistent with repeated seasonal hardship—potentially reflecting long winter “shutdowns” rather than continuous, normal metabolism.
It’s an arresting idea because it flips the usual story. We typically picture Neanderthals (and their kin) surviving with fire, clothing, social cooperation, and high-calorie diets—not by slipping into a months-long physiological low-power mode. But the hypothesis tries to explain how large-bodied humans could endure brutal winters when resources crashed, especially in a landscape where reliable fat-rich food might not always be available.
And yet: the theory is openly disputed. Critics point out that bone lesions can have other causes—including nutritional deficiencies and disease—and that “true” hibernation (deeply lowering body temperature) is not what large mammals typically do anyway. Even bears, the classic example, are better described as entering torpor, and big-brained hominins would still require significant energy to stay alive. In other words, the bones may be telling a story of stress—but not necessarily a story of hibernation.
So the real takeaway is not “Neanderthals hibernated.” It’s this: their bodies may preserve hints of just how close to the edge Ice Age life could be—and how many survival strategies we still don’t fully understand.
You can't talk about this period of time without mentioning a few of the beasts that roamed the Earth, the Sabertooth Tiger. Neanderthals and sabertooth cats (such as the Homotherium) shared the Earth. They coexisted for hundreds of thousands of years. In fact, archaeological sites in Europe—like the Schöningen coal mine in Germany—have preserved the remains of both Neanderthals and sabertooth cats in the exact same 200,000 to 300,000-year-old sediment layers. The Schöningen site in Germany (dating back 200,000 to 300,000 years ago) provides crucial evidence that Neanderthals lived alongside and competed with formidable predators. Fossils of the extinct saber-toothed cat (Homotherium latidens) were discovered in the exact same archaeological layer as the world-famous Schöningen wooden hunting weapons.
The most famous of the saber-toothed cats was the Smilodon, these beasts grew their teeth faster than humans grow their fingernails, at a rate of 6mm per month. The teeth reached a length of 7 inches when fully grown. In August 1971, construction workers excavating a downtown Nashville, Tennessee, site discovered a cave containing Smilodon fatalis (saber-toothed cat) bones. Dating back roughly 11,000 years, this significant find later inspired the name and logo of the NHL's Nashville Predators.
The La Brea Tar Pits are a group of active, naturally occurring asphalt seeps in Hancock Park, Los Angeles. As the world's only active Ice Age fossil excavation site located in a major urban area, they have trapped, preserved, and provided millions of fossils over the last 50,000 years. The bubbling pools aren't actually tar, which is a man-made substance. Instead, they consist of naturally occurring asphalt (brea) that seeps up from a massive underground oil field. Over the centuries, herbivores would become stuck in the sticky asphalt. These struggling animals attracted hungry predators, which would then also become trapped in a continuous cycle, resulting in a fossil record with a highly disproportionate ratio of carnivores to herbivores. Millions of specimens have been discovered there, including saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, mastodons, and Columbian mammoths. Beyond large skeletons, the asphalt acts as a preservative for tiny clues—such as insects, small rodents, and pollen—that help researchers understand how ancient climates changed. The George C. Page Museum (now known as the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum) in Los Angeles, California sits at the center of the park and houses a massive display of the unearthed specimens, including the iconic fiberglass models of mammoths sinking into the Lake Pit. Paleontologists have excavated the fossilized remains of over 2,500 individual Smilodon (saber-toothed cats), from the La Brea Tar Pits and they are housed at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum. This massive collection—the largest in the world—consists of hundreds of pristine skulls and millions of individual bones representing all life stages.
The Smilodon populator, the largest species of Smilodon, resembled a heavily muscled, bear-like version of a modern big cat, with exceptionally long canine teeth. Instead of chasing prey, they were ambush predators designed to grapple and subdue large animals at close range. Their most famous feature was a pair of curved, flattened upper canines that could grow up to 8 inches long. They had stocky shoulders, a thick neck, and massive forelimbs. While some were shorter than a modern African lion, they weighed significantly more up to 1,000 lbs for the largest South American species. They had shorter, stout limbs and a short, bobbed tail like a modern lynx. This build was adapted for ambushing prey from cover rather than sprinting in open fields. While fossil bones don't preserve color, mummified remains and modern predator camouflage suggest they likely had unspotted dark brown fur or dappled, spotted coats to blend into ice-age environments. Their jaws could open to a massive 90 to 120 degree angle, allowing them to clear those enormous fangs and deliver a precise killing bite. In simple terms, the Smilodon populator was one bad MF'er.
Real Smilodon populator fossils and skulls are rare, most of the Smilodon fossils and skulls you see in museums are that of the smaller Smilodon fatalis. This is
the real deal, authentic Smilodon populator fossils and a skull at hall in Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy in Paris. discovered in the Province of Buenos Aires in 1843. At the time, it was the most complete Smilodon skeleton known.
Big cats are fascinating, my uncle that lives on Green mountain in Boulder, Colorado, actually has mountain lions up there, they see them every now and again. I'll tell you what, mountain lions can give you a look that will send chills up your spine.
Look at this absolute unit of a mountain lion. That's the thing, they climb trees and sit up on the branches, you wouldn't even know they were there, they can be on top of you in an instant.
The La Brea Tar Pits were known to Indigenous Native Americans for thousands of years, but first recorded in written history by a Spanish expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá in 1769. Geologist William Denton first recognized the ancient fossil bones in 1875, and William W. Orcutt recognized their scientific significance in 1901.
The La Brea Tar Pits are a famous Ice Age fossil site located in Hancock Park in urban Los Angeles. For tens of thousands of years, natural asphalt has seeped from the ground, creating sticky pools that trapped and perfectly preserved millions of animals, plants, and insects. The sticky substance is actually naturally occurring asphalt, a heavy, crude form of petroleum. Thousands of years ago, herbivores would wander into the sticky asphalt pools thinking they were watering holes. The trapped animals attracted predators (like saber-toothed cats and dire wolves), which then became stuck themselves. It is the only active, urban Ice Age paleontological research site in the world, with new discoveries being made daily.
The woolly mammoth is the most famous mammoth of the Ice Age because of its recent timeline and the incredible number of frozen specimens discovered in places like the Siberian permafrost. Because they lived alongside early humans, their popularity is cemented by several key factors: Woolly mammoths were actually hunted and revered by our ancestors. They are frequently depicted in Ice Age cave paintings and carvings. Thanks to the freezing climate, many mammoths have been found with intact DNA, skin, hair, and even stomach contents. This has allowed scientists to study them in far greater detail than most other extinct animals. While most died out around 10,000 years ago, isolated populations (such as those on Wrangel Island) survived until about 4,000 years ago. This means they were still alive when the ancient Egyptians were building the pyramids. Thanks to their iconic shaggy coats and long, curving tusks, they feature heavily in modern media, most notably as the beloved character "Manny" from the Ice Age films. Woolly mammoths were roughly the same size and mass as modern African elephants, a fully grown male adult measured up to around 11 feet tall and weighed up to around 17,000 lbs. Their iconic curved tusks could grow up to 12 to 14 feet long.
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A reconstruction of a Neanderthal family in a cave, notice the alpha male Neanderthal asleep in the background, exhausted from a day of hunting, with a child watching over him.
A reconstruction of a full-grown, male Neanderthal. Just look at him, what a beast.
A Neanderthal skull (left) compared to a Cro-Magnon skull, a Cro-Magnon is the first early modern humans (Homo sapiens) that lived in Europe during the Upper Paleolithic period (roughly 40,000 to 10,000 years ago).
A Neanderthal brain (left) compared to a modern human brain. Neanderthal and modern human brains are nearly identical in overall size, but fundamentally different in shape, internal organization, and development. While Neanderthal brains were slightly larger, human brains evolved to favor globular, highly connected structures for advanced social learning, abstract thought, and communication.
Neanderthals were highly skilled, apex predators who relied on cooperative, close-range ambush tactics to hunt megafauna. Using thrusting spears, extensive landscape knowledge, and complex social groups, they successfully hunted massive prey like woolly mammoths, straight-tusked elephants, and even cave lions for their meat and hides. Look at the size of this woolly mammoth next to the Neanderthal, just wow.
Neanderthals were exceptionally skilled toolmakers. Rather than being primitive, they mastered advanced flint-knapping techniques, created specialized bone implements, and even used pine resin glue to attach stone blades to wooden handles. They used techniques like the Levallois method, requiring high levels of planning and spatial cognition to predetermine the shape and size of flakes before striking them from a stone core..Neanderthals carved animal bones into lissoirs (smooth, polished tools used to make leather waterproof). They even independently developed these techniques before modern humans arrived in Europe. They fashioned thrusting spears out of wood and attached sharpened stones to handles using a mixture of pine resin and beeswax, a process that requires a multi-step engineering mindset. Studies show their core-reduction techniques generated more cutting edge per rock and wasted less raw material than the blade techniques used by early modern humans.
Smithsonian Magazine
A 65,000-Year-Old Hearth Reveals Evidence That Neanderthals Produced Tar for Stone Tools in Iberia
While Neanderthals have been found to create glue-like substances with other materials, this finding, if confirmed, would be the first sign of Neanderthals burning the rockrose plant to make tar
By: Alexa Robles-Gil
December 2, 2024
Scientists created a spear using tar they produced from a makeshift hearth to test whether Neanderthals might have used similar methods to obtain tar
When fire was invented, it changed the course of human evolution. It provided warmth, enabled cooking and facilitated the creation of more advanced tools. For instance, one pivotal tool, the stone-tipped spear, might have been assembled using tar and other adhesives. While early tar production remains largely a mystery, scientists have now uncovered a 65,000-year-old hearth that appears to have functioned as a small-scale “tar factory.”
In a new study published in Quaternary Science Reviews in November, scientists describe a 65,000-year-old hearth found in Gibraltar on the Iberian Peninsula. The fire pit was theoretically used to make tar—and if that conclusion is proven true, it also represents the first evidence of the use of the plant rockrose, Cistus ladanifer, for obtaining tar.
“For this reason, it can be said that it was unexpected,” says Juan Ochando, lead author of the study and a biologist at the University of Murcia in Spain, to Discover magazine’s Paul Smaglik.
Scientists already knew that Neanderthals made adhesives using other materials like ocher and naturally sticky substances to haft stone tips onto wooden shafts to create weapons. The newly described hearth in Gibraltar represents a “specialized burning structure” for tar production, the researchers write in the study.
“Stone Age adhesives are an important and still much understudied aspect of early humans,” says Patrick Schmidt, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany who was not involved with the study, to Science’s Taylor Mitchell Brown.
Still, Schmidt says that although the study points to wood burning in the hearth, more evidence is needed to conclude for certain that Neanderthals used the hearth to make tar.
The ancient hearth was uncovered in the Vanguard Cave, part of the Gorham’s Cave Complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Gibraltar. This area is renowned for its rich history of Neanderthal findings, including tools and cave art. Research in the Vanguard Cave began in 2012, and since then, scientists have revealed several new findings in its passageways and chambers.
One such discovery was a cave chamber full of ancient hearths and stone tools dating to the time of Neanderthals, uncovered in 2021 by Clive Finlayson, an evolutionary biologist and director of the Gibraltar National Museum. He told the Guardian’s Sam Jones at the time that the “caves have been giving us a great deal of information about the behavior of these people.”
That remains true today with the discovery of the prehistoric hearth, where researchers found charcoal and remnants of the rockrose plant. Chemical analysis of the hearth’s contents revealed burning residues and traces of wax from leaves, suggesting the controlled use of fire—and possibly the production of tar. The team also found guano, or bat and bird poop, in the hearth. They suggest Neanderthals used guano with a mix of sand to cover the plant materials, allowing them to heat up and melt without fully catching fire.
A series of six images showing scientists' hands and a makeshift hearth as they re-create the hypothesized Neanderthal tar-making methods
The researchers used the same materials and methods that would have been available to Neanderthals at the time to recreate the prehistoric hearth and produce tar. Ochando et al., Quaternary Science Reviews, 2024
To prove it is possible to produce a significant amount of tar from rockrose resin, Ochando and his team set out to make a similar hearth. They intended to do so with materials and techniques that would’ve been available to Neanderthals in the area at the time.
First, they filled their replica hearth with rockrose leaves, then covered them with sand and soil. They built a small fire with grass and rockrose wood and let it burn for two hours. Afterward, the result was a mixture of rockrose leaves dripping with labdanum, a sticky resin, that the scientists used to haft arrowheads to wood in a type of makeshift spear.
For Neanderthals, this effort might have been a cooperative process, as study co-author Francisco Jiménez-Espejo, a scientist at the Andalusian Earth Sciences Institute in Spain, tells Live Science’s Kiona Smith. On either side of the hearth, the researchers found a pair of straight furrows cut in the ground, where he suggests two Neanderthals might have dug into the hearth to remove the hot leaves from opposite sides. Separating the tar from the leaves is much harder when the leaves have cooled, so they had to work quickly, he adds.
Although this production of tar will require further study, Ochando says the work aligns with the current suppositions about tar production. As he tells Science, Ochando hopes the findings “may serve as a starting point for other researchers when identifying these structures in other archaeological sites.”
65,000 years ago Neanderthals from the Swabian Jura hunted horses and reindeer with hafted leaf-shaped stone points. This leaf point was discovered in a cave at Hohle Fels in 2021.
Neanderthal wooden tools found in the Iberian Peninsula.
Music break. Love this band.
The oldest confirmed fossils representing the Neanderthal lineage are from the Sima de los Huesos site in Atapuerca, Spain. Dating to roughly 430,000 years ago, these "proto-Neanderthals" possessed distinct Neanderthal features and yielded the oldest human DNA ever recovered. The Sima de los Huesos hominins are a 430,000-year-old population of pre-Neanderthals from the archeological site of Atapuerca, Spain. They are in the "Neanderthal clade", but fall outside Homo neanderthalensis. When first reported in 1993, these 29 individuals were about 80 percent of the human fossil record of the Middle Pleistocene. Every bone is preserved, and the unprecedented completeness of the remains sheds light on Neanderthal evolution, the classification of contemporary fossils, and variations in a single Middle Pleistocene population. Exhumation of the Sima de los Huesos hominins began in the 1980s under the direction of Emiliano Aguirre and, later, Juan Luis Arsuaga, Eudald Carbonell, and José María Bermúdez de Castro. They have a mosaic of "classic" Neanderthal traits (apomorphies) and more "archaic" traits (plesiomorphies). Like Neanderthals, the brow ridges are inflated; the skull is not as robust in the rear, however, and has a pointed "house-like" profile instead of a rounded "bomb-like" one. Brain volume averages 1,241 cc (75.7 cu in), on the lower end of the Neanderthal range. The teeth are Neanderthal-like, with shovel-shaped incisors and taurodontism, but differ in cusp morphology. The chest and waist are broad and robust like Neanderthals, but the limbs are longer. They may have been large-bodied overall, like other archaic humans, with a height of about 170 cm (5 ft 7 in) and a weight of 90 kg (200 lb) in both sexes. The Sima de los Huesos (bone pit) is a chamber in the Cueva Mayor–Cueva Silo cave complex at Atapuerca, and may have been a natural trap for the cave bear Ursus deningeri in particular. The Sima de los Huesos hominins may have been deposited in the pit by other humans, based on the quality of preservation and the predominance of adolescents and young adults over children and the elderly. All were buried at about the same time, and one individual may have been killed with a blunt tool. Some with severe health issues survived for a while, suggesting group care. Many individuals (especially adolescents) exhibited metabolic and nutritional diseases consistent with insufficient fat reserves during hibernation; any hibernation presumably lasted for four months. This population produced Acheulean stone tools, as well as an industry apparently transitioning to the typically-Neanderthal Mousterian culture. They used these tools in butchering and hide- and woodworking, with the mouth as a third hand. The Sima de los Huesos hominins were buried with a single, large Acheulean handaxe, possibly a grave good with symbolic significance. Symbolic thought could indicate use of an early form of language. They may have been efficient hunters — possibly outcompeting local cave hyenas — who pursued deer, rhinoceros, horses, bison, and (sporadically) cave lions in an open woodland environment. They probably ate roots regularly, habitually squatted, and did not use fire. Here are some photos of the excavations at the bone pit at the Sima de los Huesos site in Atapuerca, Spain.
Let me make something perfectly clear, these caves are no joke, it's pitch dark, the passages are deep and narrow, there's always a risk of a cave-in that will leave you buried alive, and you better not have a problem with claustrophobia. This is a diagram of the cave at Sima de los Huesos. This is what it takes to find Neanderthal fossils, you're literally risking your life.
Some of the discoveries at the Sima de los Huesos site in Atapuerca, Spain.
Look at how complete this skeleton is. Now keep in mind, this is an early, early form of human that lived 430,000 years ago.
Check this out, this is how they reconstruct the faces of these fossils, this is a reconstruction from the skull of a Homo heidelbergensis found at Sima de los Huesos.
It's a well known fact that Neanderthals had to endure some of the harshest weather the planet can muster, in particular, the dreaded Ice Age. Based on discoveries at the Sims de los Huesos site, it is actually believed that early Neanderthals may have attempted to hibernate through Ice Ages. Neanderthals lived through multiple ice ages spanning nearly 400,000 years. They didn't simply "ride out" one continuous freeze; rather, they endured massive, repeated climate swings. They survived these harsh glacial cycles by adapting physically and developing advanced tools. The popular image of the Ice Age is a period of unremitting freezing conditions, but the reality was much more dynamic. The period was characterized by dramatic, rapid fluctuations rather than a single, long-lasting deep freeze. Extremely cold, dry stretches with expanding ice sheets, warmer, milder periods—sometimes even hotter than our current climate. How they survived these shifting environments for roughly 350,000 years required incredible resilience and adaptation. They had stocky, muscular bodies with shorter limbs, which helped retain body heat much better than taller, leaner hominids. They were apex predators who thrived by hunting large Ice Age megafauna. They crafted specialized wooden spears, controlled fire, and used animal hides for clothing and shelter. Rather than sitting idly through the bitterest cold, they frequently relocated to warmer refuges—such as woodlands in southern Europe or coastal caves like Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar. Ultimately, their era came to a close roughly 40,000 years ago, as climate change and competition from incoming modern humans pushed them into smaller, fragmented populations. But I could imagine at the beginning, before they were able to adapt, Ice Age weather pushed them to the brink. Fossil evidence from the 430,000-year-old Sima de los Huesos site suggests these early human relatives may have used a hibernation-like state, or torpor, to survive harsh Ice Age winters. However, this theory is highly debated by the scientific community.
Deep in northern Spain, Atapuerca’s Sima de los Huesos (“Pit of Bones”) has yielded thousands of human fossil fragments from more than 400,000 years ago—often described as early Neanderthals or their close predecessors. It’s one of Europe’s richest windows into Ice Age humanity, and it has produced a strange question: were these people doing something that sounds almost impossible?
Researchers Juan-Luis Arsuaga and Antonis Bartsiokas proposed that certain skeletal changes—lesions and growth disruptions seen in some of the fossils—might fit a pattern similar to what doctors and zoologists observe in animals that hibernate or enter torpor. Their argument is basically this: during extreme cold and food scarcity, some mammals reduce metabolic activity for long periods, and the stress can leave traces in bone development. The Sima remains, they suggest, show signs consistent with repeated seasonal hardship—potentially reflecting long winter “shutdowns” rather than continuous, normal metabolism.
It’s an arresting idea because it flips the usual story. We typically picture Neanderthals (and their kin) surviving with fire, clothing, social cooperation, and high-calorie diets—not by slipping into a months-long physiological low-power mode. But the hypothesis tries to explain how large-bodied humans could endure brutal winters when resources crashed, especially in a landscape where reliable fat-rich food might not always be available.
And yet: the theory is openly disputed. Critics point out that bone lesions can have other causes—including nutritional deficiencies and disease—and that “true” hibernation (deeply lowering body temperature) is not what large mammals typically do anyway. Even bears, the classic example, are better described as entering torpor, and big-brained hominins would still require significant energy to stay alive. In other words, the bones may be telling a story of stress—but not necessarily a story of hibernation.
So the real takeaway is not “Neanderthals hibernated.” It’s this: their bodies may preserve hints of just how close to the edge Ice Age life could be—and how many survival strategies we still don’t fully understand.
You can't talk about this period of time without mentioning a few of the beasts that roamed the Earth, the Sabertooth Tiger. Neanderthals and sabertooth cats (such as the Homotherium) shared the Earth. They coexisted for hundreds of thousands of years. In fact, archaeological sites in Europe—like the Schöningen coal mine in Germany—have preserved the remains of both Neanderthals and sabertooth cats in the exact same 200,000 to 300,000-year-old sediment layers. The Schöningen site in Germany (dating back 200,000 to 300,000 years ago) provides crucial evidence that Neanderthals lived alongside and competed with formidable predators. Fossils of the extinct saber-toothed cat (Homotherium latidens) were discovered in the exact same archaeological layer as the world-famous Schöningen wooden hunting weapons.
The most famous of the saber-toothed cats was the Smilodon, these beasts grew their teeth faster than humans grow their fingernails, at a rate of 6mm per month. The teeth reached a length of 7 inches when fully grown. In August 1971, construction workers excavating a downtown Nashville, Tennessee, site discovered a cave containing Smilodon fatalis (saber-toothed cat) bones. Dating back roughly 11,000 years, this significant find later inspired the name and logo of the NHL's Nashville Predators.
The La Brea Tar Pits are a group of active, naturally occurring asphalt seeps in Hancock Park, Los Angeles. As the world's only active Ice Age fossil excavation site located in a major urban area, they have trapped, preserved, and provided millions of fossils over the last 50,000 years. The bubbling pools aren't actually tar, which is a man-made substance. Instead, they consist of naturally occurring asphalt (brea) that seeps up from a massive underground oil field. Over the centuries, herbivores would become stuck in the sticky asphalt. These struggling animals attracted hungry predators, which would then also become trapped in a continuous cycle, resulting in a fossil record with a highly disproportionate ratio of carnivores to herbivores. Millions of specimens have been discovered there, including saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, mastodons, and Columbian mammoths. Beyond large skeletons, the asphalt acts as a preservative for tiny clues—such as insects, small rodents, and pollen—that help researchers understand how ancient climates changed. The George C. Page Museum (now known as the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum) in Los Angeles, California sits at the center of the park and houses a massive display of the unearthed specimens, including the iconic fiberglass models of mammoths sinking into the Lake Pit. Paleontologists have excavated the fossilized remains of over 2,500 individual Smilodon (saber-toothed cats), from the La Brea Tar Pits and they are housed at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum. This massive collection—the largest in the world—consists of hundreds of pristine skulls and millions of individual bones representing all life stages.
The Smilodon populator, the largest species of Smilodon, resembled a heavily muscled, bear-like version of a modern big cat, with exceptionally long canine teeth. Instead of chasing prey, they were ambush predators designed to grapple and subdue large animals at close range. Their most famous feature was a pair of curved, flattened upper canines that could grow up to 8 inches long. They had stocky shoulders, a thick neck, and massive forelimbs. While some were shorter than a modern African lion, they weighed significantly more up to 1,000 lbs for the largest South American species. They had shorter, stout limbs and a short, bobbed tail like a modern lynx. This build was adapted for ambushing prey from cover rather than sprinting in open fields. While fossil bones don't preserve color, mummified remains and modern predator camouflage suggest they likely had unspotted dark brown fur or dappled, spotted coats to blend into ice-age environments. Their jaws could open to a massive 90 to 120 degree angle, allowing them to clear those enormous fangs and deliver a precise killing bite. In simple terms, the Smilodon populator was one bad MF'er.
Real Smilodon populator fossils and skulls are rare, most of the Smilodon fossils and skulls you see in museums are that of the smaller Smilodon fatalis. This is
the real deal, authentic Smilodon populator fossils and a skull at hall in Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy in Paris. discovered in the Province of Buenos Aires in 1843. At the time, it was the most complete Smilodon skeleton known.
This is another real, authentic Smilodon populator skull, housed at the Copenhagen museum.
One last photo of an authentic Smilodon populator skull.
A mounted Smilodon populator skeleton at Tellus Science Museum. What a beast.
The film 10,000 B.C. (2008) was phenomenal, this is my favorite Smilodon populator (saber-tooth) scene from the film.
Of course, the Smilodon populator in the film 10,000 B.C was a Hollywood exaggeration, they weren't that large, but they were large.
Big cats are fascinating, my uncle that lives on Green mountain in Boulder, Colorado, actually has mountain lions up there, they see them every now and again. I'll tell you what, mountain lions can give you a look that will send chills up your spine.
Look at this mountain lion, letting the photographer know he's aware of his presence with a subtle and intimidating glance.
Look at this absolute unit of a mountain lion. That's the thing, they climb trees and sit up on the branches, you wouldn't even know they were there, they can be on top of you in an instant.
The stare of a cougar.
The La Brea Tar Pits were known to Indigenous Native Americans for thousands of years, but first recorded in written history by a Spanish expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá in 1769. Geologist William Denton first recognized the ancient fossil bones in 1875, and William W. Orcutt recognized their scientific significance in 1901.
The La Brea Tar Pits are a famous Ice Age fossil site located in Hancock Park in urban Los Angeles. For tens of thousands of years, natural asphalt has seeped from the ground, creating sticky pools that trapped and perfectly preserved millions of animals, plants, and insects. The sticky substance is actually naturally occurring asphalt, a heavy, crude form of petroleum. Thousands of years ago, herbivores would wander into the sticky asphalt pools thinking they were watering holes. The trapped animals attracted predators (like saber-toothed cats and dire wolves), which then became stuck themselves. It is the only active, urban Ice Age paleontological research site in the world, with new discoveries being made daily.
A display at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum shows how Ice Age animals became stuck in the pits.
Early photos of excavations at the La Brea Tar Pits.
Fossils of Ice Age animals discovered in the La Brea Tar Pits in the early days of excavations.
The La Brea Tar Pits today.
Excavations at the La Brea Tar Pits continue to this day.
The woolly mammoth is the most famous mammoth of the Ice Age because of its recent timeline and the incredible number of frozen specimens discovered in places like the Siberian permafrost. Because they lived alongside early humans, their popularity is cemented by several key factors: Woolly mammoths were actually hunted and revered by our ancestors. They are frequently depicted in Ice Age cave paintings and carvings. Thanks to the freezing climate, many mammoths have been found with intact DNA, skin, hair, and even stomach contents. This has allowed scientists to study them in far greater detail than most other extinct animals. While most died out around 10,000 years ago, isolated populations (such as those on Wrangel Island) survived until about 4,000 years ago. This means they were still alive when the ancient Egyptians were building the pyramids. Thanks to their iconic shaggy coats and long, curving tusks, they feature heavily in modern media, most notably as the beloved character "Manny" from the Ice Age films. Woolly mammoths were roughly the same size and mass as modern African elephants, a fully grown male adult measured up to around 11 feet tall and weighed up to around 17,000 lbs. Their iconic curved tusks could grow up to 12 to 14 feet long.
This is a complete, real Woolly Mammoth skeleton displayed before its auction by Aguttes auction house in Lyon, France. It sold for $645,000.