‘Neanderthal bone flutes’: simply products of Ice Age spotted hyena scavenging activities on cave bear cubs in European cave bear dens

Cajus G Diedrich

doi:10.1098/rsos.140022

Abstract

Punctured extinct cave bear femora were misidentified in southeastern Europe (Hungary/Slovenia) as ‘Palaeolithic bone flutes’ and the ‘oldest Neanderthal instruments’. These are not instruments, nor human made, but products of the most important cave bear scavengers of Europe, hyenas. Late Middle to Late Pleistocene (Mousterian to Gravettian) Ice Age spotted hyenas of Europe occupied mainly cave entrances as dens (communal/cub raising den types), but went deeper for scavenging into cave bear dens, or used in a few cases branches/diagonal shafts (i.e. prey storage den type). In most of those dens, about 20% of adult to 80% of bear cub remains have large carnivore damage. Hyenas left bones in repeating similar tooth mark and crush damage stages, demonstrating a butchering/bone cracking strategy. The femora of subadult cave bears are intermediate in damage patterns, compared to the adult ones, which were fully crushed to pieces. Hyenas produced round–oval puncture marks in cub femora only by the bone-crushing premolar teeth of both upper and lower jaw. The punctures/tooth impact marks are often present on both sides of the shaft of cave bear cub femora and are simply a result of non-breakage of the slightly calcified shaft compacta. All stages of femur puncturing to crushing are demonstrated herein, especially on a large cave bear population from a German cave bear den.

Highlights

Cave bear femora show smaller round–oval tooth marks, or on the shaft ends only half of the puncture mark is on the margin (e.g. Sophie’s Cave and Divje Babe 1 Cave bear cub femora; figures 3(3) and 4)
All ‘cave bear cub femora bone flute’ sites failed to date into the ‘Neanderthal times’ because all are not of Neanderthal (Middle Palaeolithic) human, but are instead from modern human Aurignacian occupations in ‘archaeological layers’ at entrances of cave bear dens, cf. [1,7,9], or deeper in caves due to cave bear hunt [23]
The pseudo-bone flutes all come from layers of the MIS3–5d and are from smaller early cave bear forms of Ursus spelaeus subsp. (i.e. U. s. eremus, U. s. spelaeus sensu taxonomy of Stiller et al [58]); interestingly though, alpine Late Pleistocene cave bear forms (U. s. ladinicus) do not show such holes in femora

Summary

Introduction

This was a larger cave bear den (cf [2,3]) and Late Palaeolithic Aurignacian (not Neanderthal) used rock shelter camp site at the entrance (cf [1]; figure 1). In this cave, cave bear hunts by Cro-Magnon humans seem to be indicated on a cave bear shoulder blade pathology (large diagonal impact hole, partly healed diagonal hole) that seems to have been made by a probable Mladecprojectile bone point [5]

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