Around 125,000 years ago, Neanderthals may have had an impact on their environment that can still be proven today. This is suggested by a new study, according to which the landscape around a former Neanderthal settlement in Saxony-Anhalt was noticeably less densely forested than comparable areas in the vicinity at the time of its settlement. According to the researchers, activities of early humans could have been responsible for this, including the making of tools and the use of fire.
Today humans are one of the greatest influencing factors on the biology, geology and atmosphere of our planet. As a result of human activities, species are becoming extinct, glaciers are melting and the CO2 content of the atmosphere is rising. But when did people first start making sustainable changes to their environment? Many researchers previously assumed that early hominin communities were too small and insignificant to leave lasting ecological changes behind. Others argued that prehistoric hunters helped to significantly decimate the population of certain species of megafauna.
Notes from pollen analyzes
A team led by Wil Roebroecks from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands has now found evidence at the Neumark-Nord site in Saxony-Anhalt that Neanderthals were already shaping their environment around 125,000 years ago. “Among the factors that have shaped the vegetation structure in this lake landscape, we identify a significant ecological footprint of human activities, including the use of fire,” the researchers report.
In the Neumark-Nord area, around ten kilometers south of Halle, groups of Neanderthals lived for a period of around 2,000 years during the last interglacial period around 125,000 years ago. “The presence of hominins in Neumark-Nord is evidenced by large amounts of stone artifacts and modified bone fragments,” the researchers explain. To find out to what extent the presence of our early relatives influenced the landscape in which they lived, Roebroecks and his colleagues carried out sediment and pollen analyzes, among other things. These suggest how the vegetation has changed over the millennia. They compared their results with samples from other, nearby locations where the Neanderthals were less present according to previous knowledge.
Noticeably open vegetation over two millennia
The result: At the comparison locations of Gröbern and Grabenschütz, the pollen analyzes indicated a closed, wooded area. The landscape in Neumark-Nord, however, did not match the rest of the region. Here the landscape was noticeably open for two millennia – exactly at the time when the archaeological finds show that Neanderthals lived there. Charcoal deposits also showed the researchers that the forests were at least partially burned.
“The data is not precise enough to determine whether Neanderthals immigrated to the area because it was opened by natural fires, or whether the initial removal of the forested vegetation was actually caused by Neanderthal fires,” the researchers explain. However, since the vegetation remained open for two millennia and thus formed an exception to the generally dense vegetation pattern of the region, they assume that the Neanderthals at least contributed to the preservation of the open landscape – possibly partly unintentionally by trampling plants in their daily activities . But possibly also deliberately through clearing.
Possibly the oldest traces of early human influences
“Repeated lighting of campfires around the lakes, as well as other minor burning activities and hunting for wild animals, could over time have altered the vegetation structure and ecological communities in the area in such a way that the available food resources increased over several generations,” they suggest Researcher. “Whether or not the Neanderthals played a role in the original opening of the vegetation, these conditions must have been beneficial to them, as they offered a wide range of useful and necessary resources that may have lured them into the area, and them to do so caused to contribute to the maintenance of these conditions. “
If further studies confirm that it was actually Neanderthals who changed the landscape over the millennia, this would be the earliest evidence of a formative influence of early humans on their environment. The oldest traces of human influence on the vegetation structure so far came from Lake Malawi in East Africa. They are around 85,000 years old and come from Homo sapiens – our species.
Source: Wil Roebroeks (University of Leiden, Netherlands) et al., Science Advances, doi: 10.1126 / sciadv.abj5567