That also must mean that Neanderthals must have been very clever, early on. We already knew they were clever, but 125.000 years ago is really pushing that further. Now the main question is still why and how they went extinct. We have some pieces of the puzzles (mitochondrial DNA found in human mitochondrial DNA) but not a complete picture yet (or, somewhat more complete; we can obviously never reconstruct all pieces of the puzzle).

I like the explanation of Neil Tyson on Neanderthal's research.

Some would argue they still do. ;)

university of leiden is a great institution and i am blessed for having studied there despite dropping out!

Pretty clever solution to rabbit starvation.

Question: why do we know this was about food? Bones are boiled for other reasons. Boiling down bones is how you make basic glue. Could this have been something more industrial, the creation of a useful ingredient for weapon making?

Maybe when megafauna disappeared, so too the Neanderthals because their survival strategy was too dependent on them.

> the tip of the proverbial ice-berg of Neanderthal impact on herbivore populations, especially on slowly-reproducing taxa, could have been substantial during the Last Interglacial.’

translation: the Neanderthals probably completely wiped out a ton of the species of big animals that once existed in these regions.

Homo sapiens isn’t the only hominid to do that…