Stable isotopes reveal patterns of diet and mobility in the last Neandertals and first modern humans in Europe

Christoph Wißing,Dorothée G Drucker,Chris Baumann,Cosimo Posth,Yuichi I Naito,Tim Matthies,Asier Gómez-Olivencia,Patrick Semal,Mietje Germonpré,Hélène Rougier,Johannes Krause,Alexander Comeyne,Isabelle Crevecoeur,Martin Street,Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser,Hervé Bocherens

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-41033-3

Abstract

Correlating cultural, technological and ecological aspects of both Upper Pleistocene modern humans (UPMHs) and Neandertals provides a useful approach for achieving robust predictions about what makes us human. Here we present ecological information for a period of special relevance in human evolution, the time of replacement of Neandertals by modern humans during the Late Pleistocene in Europe. Using the stable isotopic approach, we shed light on aspects of diet and mobility of the late Neandertals and UPMHs from the cave sites of the Troisième caverne of Goyet and Spy in Belgium. We demonstrate that their diet was essentially similar, relying on the same terrestrial herbivores, whereas mobility strategies indicate considerable differences between Neandertal groups, as well as in comparison to UPMHs. Our results indicate that UPMHs exploited their environment to a greater extent than Neandertals and support the hypothesis that UPMHs had a substantial impact not only on the population dynamics of large mammals but also on the whole structure of the ecosystem since their initial arrival in Europe.

Highlights

Possibly included more aquatic resources than that of Neandertals
The Troisième caverne of Goyet site (Belgium) provides a unique opportunity to fill the gap because skeletal remains of both types of humans representing several individuals have been recovered, directly radiocarbon dated, and their taxonomic attribution confirmed by palaeogenetic analysis[27,28] (Fig. 1 and Supplementary Data 1)
A key assertion resulting from this study is an estimation of the ecological impact that each type of human had on the ecosystem. For this we considered faunal remains from the sites of Troisème caverne of Goyet, Spy and Scladina, contemporaneous with the Neandertals occupation of Belgium approximately 39,000 to 47,000 years ago (Supplementary Data 1, 2 3 and 4) as well as some Upper Palaeolithic (UP) sites resulting from the presence of Upper Pleistocene modern humans (UPMH) in Germany

Summary

Introduction

Possibly included more aquatic resources than that of Neandertals This was suggested based on higher nitrogen isotopic ratios (δ15N) of bone collagen for UPMHs in comparison with late Neandertals[8,9,10], with the latter supposedly having had a diet whose protein part consisted purely of terrestrial herbivorous mammal meat[11,12,13,14]. A key assertion resulting from this study is an estimation of the ecological impact that each type of human had on the ecosystem For this we considered faunal remains from the sites of Troisème caverne of Goyet, Spy and Scladina, contemporaneous with the Neandertals occupation of Belgium approximately 39,000 to 47,000 years ago (Supplementary Data 1, 2 3 and 4) as well as some Upper Palaeolithic (UP) sites resulting from the presence of UPMHs in Germany.

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion