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Experts Uncover Traces of Neanderthals 100 Thousand Years Ago

Jakarta, CNN Indonesia

The research team has reportedly succeeded in analyzing fossil footprints on a beach visitor in what is now southern Spain. They said it was a footprint primordial man Neanderthal.

Researchers say a large family of 36 Neanderthals walked along the coast about 100,000 years ago. He was in the group there were children jumping and playing in the sand.

“We have found several areas where some of the small footprints appear to cluster in a chaotic arrangement,” said Eduardo Mayoral, a paleontologist at the University of Huelva. Live Science.

In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, Mayoral et al. Said the footprints could indicate the traveling area of ​​very young individuals, as if they were playing or wandering on the shore of a waterlogged area nearby.

In June 2020, two biologists found traces on the coast of Matalascanas, in Donana National Park, after a period of intense storms and high tides. Biologists first saw traces of petrified animals, some of which were made long ago by large animals, such as deer or wild boar.

Only later, after Mayoral’s team analyzed the tracks, did anyone realize that some were Neanderthal footprints.

“Nobody recognized the presence of hominid footprints at the time, which my team discovered only two months later, when we began to study the entire surface in detail,” he said.

In the journal described, Mayoral and colleagues identified 87 Neanderthal footprints in sedimentary rock on the coast of Matalascanas. The entire trail is claimed to come from 36 individuals.

The exposed surface dates from the Upper Pleistocene period, about 106 thousand years ago, when ancient stone tools found nearby indicate that the area was inhabited by Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis).

These hunter-gatherers lived in Europe and the Middle East between 400,000 and 40,000 years ago, while early modern humans (Homo sapiens) arrived there about 80,000 years ago. In fact, researchers think they could be the oldest Neanderthal footprints ever found in Europe.

More specifically, Mayoral conveyed that all the footprints found came from 11 children and 25 adults, consisting of five women, 14 men and six individuals of unknown sex.

From the analysis, most adults walking on the beach would be between 4 and 5 feet (1.3 to 1.5 meters) tall, but the four prints appear to have been made by someone over 1.8 m tall. It was higher than the estimated height of Neanderthals, so the prints were probably made by shorter individuals with a heavy gait, write the researchers.

In addition, there are also two smallest footprints, about 6 inches (14 cm) long, which are estimated to be made by a child about 6 years old. There is a suspicion they are playing in the sand by the water hole.

(jps / mik)

[Gambas:Video CNN]


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