Neandertals in Denmark? Maybe not...

There has been quite a bit of discussion about the range and, thus, the colonization abilities of Neandertals. Traditionally, the Neandertal world was thought to be limited to western, central, and eastern Europe, north Africa, and western Asia, with Uzbekistan representing the group's easternmost outpost. However, more recent mitochondrial DNA analyses of human fossils from Siberia effectively extended the known Neandertal range some 2,000 km to the northeast, and excavations at other sites now show that they inhabited a wide variety of habitats, including coastal areas and relatively rugged mid-altitude zones. Basically, Neandertals appear to have been much more adaptable that we've historically given them credit for.

My colleagues and I just published a study, which was funded by Aarhus University, on some ~120,000-year-old fallow deer skeletons from Denmark that were thought for many years to have been butchered. Butchered animals bones, of course, mean that humans were around and, given the age of the finds, Neandertals were considered the most likely culprit. If the remains were indeed butchered, this would have been the earliest and best evidence for a human presence in the region before the end of the last Ice Age (about 18,000 years ago).

After having looked the bones over, however, we were forced to conclude that there is no definitive evidence that Neandertals, or anyone else for that matter, butchered these animals. The bones are indeed broken, and one of them does show marks that could be interpreted as originating from a stone knife. The reason we're so cautious is that no compelling reason exists to attribute the breakage or the mark to anything other than natural processes.

Reconstruction of a rather sunburned Neandertal (courtesy of Berlingske Tidende)

Although this isn't huge, international news, it did make quite a splash in the Danish media. You can check out some of these stories (if you don't speak Danish, I suggest Google Translate, it does a fair job):

• Here's the Aarhus University press release
• Stories from the larger national newspapers Berlingske Tidende and Politiken, and the smaller, regional newspaper Jyske Vestkysten

One of the main problems here is that Danish archaeology has traditionally been dominated by later prehistoric and Medieval research. So, no one has really take the time to look for well-preserved Paleolithic sites. Luckily, Trine Kellberg Nielsen, a Ph.D. student at Aarhus and one of the co-authors on our fallow deer study, has recently received support to systematically examine the issue of a Neandertal occupation of Denmark. Hopefully her work will help turn up definitive evidence...

UPDATE 3.28.13

Here is a poster that Trine recently presented highlighting her plans for future work in Denmark. The most interesting aspect will involve paleoenvironmental reconstructions that will attempt to highlight areas most likely to have been occupied by Neandertal groups.