The North Neanderthals show tolerance for changing environmental conditions.

Multidisciplinary research teams from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig, Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen–Nuremberg and the Leuphana University Leburg, as well as other partner institutions, investigated whether Neanderthals could live in cold environments or prefer more temperate environments. Based on research in Lichtenberg, Lower Saxony, Germany, the researchers found that Neanderthals visited northernmost settlement areas during the last Ice Age. However, they preferred to be there during warmer months.

Is it possible that Neanderthals were not as well adapted for cold conditions as previously thought, or did they prefer temperate environments during the last Ice Age? To answer these questions, it’s worth visiting Neanderthal sites at the northern edge of their range. It is here that environmental fluctuations are most apparent, especially after repeated ice advances by Scandinavia. Northern Germany is a good region for such investigations, due to its many documented Neanderthal sites.

A recent study published in Quaternary Science ReviewsResearchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (University Erlangen-Nuremberg), the Leuphana University Leneburg, and the Leibniz Institute for Applied Geophysics (partner institutions) have begun to investigate the remains of Neanderthals found at a former lakeshore near Lichtenberg, Lower Saxony. The team used an integrative research approach to combine analytical methods from archaeology and luminescence dating, sedimentology and micromorphology with the study pollen and phytoliths to examine in detail the relationship between human presence and changing environmental conditions.

A window into environmental history

Michael Hein, a geographer with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology says that archaeological excavations provide a window into past environmental history. “We can reconstruct the environment and vegetation of the time using the sediments and pollen grains they contain,” he said. This requires the most accurate dating, which is still lacking in Central Europe for many climatic periods of the last Ice Age. Archaeology and paleoenvironmental researchers are both interested in gathering environmental information and performing independent dates.

Hein says that Lichtenberg has now been able to accurately date the end of a warm phasethe so-called Brrup interstadialto 90,000. years.” “Thus, the cooling on the continent would have coincided the climate change in Greenland ice or the North Atlantic. It was only suspected that there had been a direct coupling, but it has not been proven.

Even during the cold phase, northern areas may be settled

The study also found out that Neanderthals lived in a lightly wooded area on the shore of a lake around 90,000 year ago in a fairly temperate climate. Stone tools from the former campsite show a wide variety of activities, including woodworking as well as plant processing. Already between 1987 and 1994, the Landesmuseum Hannover excavated a site close to Lichtenberg containing bifacial backed knives, so-called “Keilmesser”specialized cutting tools.

The layers of the former campsite were discovered above the lakeshore campsite. These layers are associated with a temperate period and date to about 70,000 years before the last Ice Age’s cold maximum. Researchers were able prove that Neanderthals did indeed live in the northern regions, even during cold periods.

Flexible adaptation to environmental circumstances

Marcel Wei, an archaeologist from the University Erlangen–Nuremberg, says that changes in stone tools suggest that Neanderthals adapted to changing environmental conditions. “In Lichtenberg we were able show that they frequently visited northern Central Europe which evolved from a heavily forested environment at the end of the last warm period to sparser forest during the cold-moderate climate period at beginning of the last Ice Age to the cold tundra in the first cold maximum.”

This is why the Neanderthals may have used the lakeshore site to house a hunting party. Evidence from other sites during the same period shows that Neanderthals most likely visited their northern dwelling areas during cold phases.