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Posted by andsoitis 16 hours ago

Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125,000 years ago (2025)(www.universiteitleiden.nl)
217 points | 105 commentspage 3
JackFr 13 hours ago|
“Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”
nntwozz 11 hours ago|
Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!
ncr100 6 hours ago||
I read this as 'RAT factories' - like Neanderthal decided to breed thousands of rats presumably for food. Assuming rats were meaty and not taboo then, as they are now.
aix1 5 hours ago||
Your comment reminded me of the Great Hanoi Rat Massacre (I won't spoil the punchline):

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-190...

el_io 5 hours ago||
I've heard exactly the same story about snakes, but that took place in British India.

Probably that (the one I heard) derived from this one.

biztos 5 hours ago|||
They’re still meaty and they aren’t taboo everywhere!

Whenever I go to the family farm I check to see if there are any fat juicy grilled rats at the local market. Alas, I’m still too squeamish to eat them, but I’m working up to it!

comandillos 4 hours ago|||
Same, and I also read Netherlands instead of Neanderthals.
DonHopkins 3 hours ago||
Yeah me to!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Rat%2C_IJlst

>De Rat (English: The Rat) is a smock mill in IJlst, Friesland, Netherlands, which was originally built in the seventeenth century at Zaanstreek, North Holland. In 1828 it was moved to IJlst, where it worked using wind power until 1920 and then by electric motor until 1950. The mill was bought by the town of IJlst in 1956 and restored in the mid-1960s. Further restoration in the mid-1970s returned the mill to full working order. De Rat is working for trade and is used as a training mill. The mill is listed as a Rijksmonument (No. 39880).[1]

card_zero 5 hours ago||
I keep reading Neanderthal rat factories too! HP Lovecraft would be pleased with us.
dr_dshiv 10 hours ago||
[flagged]
advisedwang 8 hours ago|
Any basis for this theory, or just your imagination?
kioleanu 15 hours ago|
If I enable reader mode on this article on my iPhone, I get an AI summary instead of the article text. I’d it the sure doing that or my phone? I hate it either way as there’s no way to read the article in reader mode
Tagbert 15 hours ago||
For some reason, Safari (on Mac) is only pulling two paragraphs from the source. it isn't AI generated but the parsing routine seems to break on this page. I don't see any particular properties that make these paragraphs stand out from the others.

<p><span><span><span><span><span>The Neumark-Nord discoveries are continuing to reshape our view of Neanderthal adaptability and survival strategies. They show that Neanderthals could plan ahead, process food efficiently and make sophisticated use of their environment.</span></span></span></span></span></p>

<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>The authors emphasise the sheer quantity of herbivores that Neanderthals must have routinely been ‘harvesting’ in this warm-temperate phase: beyond the remains of minimally 172 large mammals processed at that small site alone within a very short period, hundreds of herbivores, including straight-tusked elephants, were butchered around the Neumark-Nord 1 lake in the early Last Interglacial, within the excavated areas only. Other exposures in the wider area around Neumark-Nord have yielded more coarse-grained evidence of regular exploitation of the same range of prey animals, at sites such as Rabutz, Gröbern and <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2309427120">Taubach</a>. The last site contained cut-marked remains of 76 rhinos and 40 straight-tusked elephants. Roebroeks: ‘Safely assuming that with these sites we are only looking at 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.’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p>

rogerrogerr 15 hours ago|||
I assume you're seeing the text starting with "The authors emphasise the sheer quantity of herbivores"? I see that too in reader mode, both on my iPhone and Mac.

The text is in the article, second paragraph under "survival strategies". I don't see any obvious reason in the HTML why reader mode is skipping everything else.

Aardwolf 15 hours ago|||
Firefox reader view on PC shows the exact same text as is in the article
rolph 14 hours ago||
try this maybe?

https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adv1257

https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/sciadv.adv1257 [PDF]