Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125,000 years ago (2025)

irdc

This pairs nicely with the recent publications around Neanderthal cognitive abilities and how there likely similar to ours ( https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/neanderthal-brains-m... ).

kioleanu

If I enable reader mode on this article on my iPhone, I get an AI summary instead of the article text. I’d it the sure doing that or my phone? I hate it either way as there’s no way to read the article in reader mode

ewy1

university of leiden is a great institution and i am blessed for having studied there despite dropping out!

JackFr

“Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”

Neywiny

Do we know how many people were in the community? Maybe I missed it in the article? 2000 people worth it food a day is hard to put into perspective otherwise. Though it's all very impressive regardless

russellbeattie

Here's something random about "Neanderthal". The word comes from the Neander Valley (Neander-thal) where their fossils were originally discovered. It was named after Joachim Neander, a 17th-century German pastor. Neander is a latinization of his family name Neumann, meaning "new man". So not only did we discover a new type of man in a valley named new man, but the computers that are used for artificial intelligence (a future type of new man) all use the von Neumann architecture. I found that amusing. (Other random detail: The word "dollar" is derived from "thal". The Holy Roman Empire first minted standardized 1 ounce coins made out of silver from mines in Joachimsthal ("Joachim's Valley") and so were called Joachimsthalers. That got shortened to "thaler", then through Low German "daler" then Dutch to English.)

nntwozz

And that's how Toyota eventually got to lean manufacturing, impressive!

paulgerhardt

Pretty clever solution to rabbit starvation.

xp84

> the tip of the proverbial ice-berg of Neanderthal impact on herbivore populations, especially on slowly-reproducing taxa, could have been substantial during the Last Interglacial.’ translation: the Neanderthals probably completely wiped out a ton of the species of big animals that once existed in these regions. Homo sapiens isn’t the only hominid to do that…

amitbidlan

Planning ahead, bulk processing, storing for later. Sounds less like primitive survival and more like logistics. Every time we dig deeper the gap between them and us gets smaller.

sandworm101

Question: why do we know this was about food? Bones are boiled for other reasons. Boiling down bones is how you make basic glue. Could this have been something more industrial, the creation of a useful ingredient for weapon making?

myspeed

I like the explanation of Neil Tyson on Neanderthal's research.

askos

Fascinating. Considering the industrial scale fat production that the neanderthals managed to operate according to this article, it makes me wonder even more whether we still understand why exactly they went extinct in 80 thousand years later.

netcan

There is evidence for neanderthals making gum/glue from birch bark. It's useful for hating stone onto wood for tool making. I wonder if this bone grease was an edible product or something else. Oils have many uses.