A coastal cave with turquoise water witness in western Portugal may have once serve as a sportfishing hub and homesite for Neanderthals between 86,000 and 106,000 years ago . The uncovering of charred pine tree , marine mammal clay , and shells from sea invertebratesadd to the evidenceNeanderthals hunted , fished , and assemble seafood like early Modern humans .
Modern humans , our closest relatives , adapt to coastal life in southerly Africa as long ago as 160,000 years , an adaptation to seafood rich in fatty pane that some enquiry suggests lead to enhanced cognitive development in our early relatives . This , in turn , helped to advance engineering science and ethnical innovations during the Middle Stone Age , allowing our antecedent to flesh out out of Africa and outcompete other early human race .
" The possibility is that the usance of aquatic foods by masses experience in Africa 100,000 to 200,000 ago would have conduce to brain development and more in advance intelligence , which in good turn would excuse why their descendant fan out into Eurasia would have easily ' overtook ' Neandertals and ' overpower ' their territory , leading them to defunctness , " report source João Zilhao told IFLscience .
But did Neanderthals also divvy up this love of the sea and its nutrient - productive food ?
To retrieve out , an international team of researchers excavated the Portuguese Figueira Brava site , a three - entranced coastal cave scheme . Here they happen an “ exceptionally well - bear on phonograph record of Neanderthal coastal resource development ” evidenced by the remains of mollusks , crustaceans , fish , boo , tortoise , and both devil dog and res publica mammalian . The record usher a history of intense , systematic use by Neanderthals during the Last Interglacial period that go over the course of K of age .
Other Neanderthal sites with mollusc remains have been discovered in Europe , include one in Gibraltar along Spain ’s southerly Mediterranean coast , and Grotta dei Moscerini on the west coast of Italy . These web site curb scatters of artefact , mollusc , and some marine mammals go steady to between 100,000 year and 40,000 class ago , suggesting Neanderthals did indeedutilize the seas as a resourcefulness , longbefore modern man showed upin these parts . The amount of food residual found at Figueira Brava exceeds level found at other sites and provides evidence of marine adaptation mostly only seen in contemporary mod humans know in southern Africa .
The findings , which are report inScience , add “ to the evidence that no categorical distinction in behavior , cognition , culture , subsistence or technology exists between Neandertals and coeval African populations , which , combined with the evidence for extensive interbreeding at the time of contact and the persistence among present - twenty-four hours humans of up to 70 percentage of the Neandertals ’ genome , implies that we are dealing with populations of the same species , " sound out Zilhao .
" Put another way , Neanderthal areHomo sapienstoo . "
The investigator add that their finding close up a behavioural opening between modernistic humans and their closest evolutionary cousins , both of whom relied on the sea in much the same room during the Middle Stone Age . These fisher - Orion - gatherers were not only far-flung but they also in all probability relied on the sea earlier than previous records indicate . As some Neanderthal mathematical group were able to live in Mediterranean climate take away from mammoth steppes , their memory access to honest resourcefulness may have set off growth and made group more socially complex .
This rise in modern world has helped to excuse the out - of - Africa expanding upon of mod human and its theatrical role in the disappearance of Neanderthals and other “ primitive Eurasiatic humans ” . But knowing that Neanderthals also relied to a great extent on marine resourcefulness may influence what we know about the extinction of such species .
An psychoanalysis of when mollusc were gather is anticipated as a next stone’s throw by the researchers in watch the vital role nautical resources may have played in the evolution and daily lives of Neanderthals .
