Here's a scene guaranteed to melt the popular stereotype of Ice Age Neandertals as spear-wielding mammoth hunters confined to Eurasia's frigid inner core. New illustrations depict what's currently known about the temperate environment inhabited by Neandertals in Iberia, or what's now Spain and Portugal, a couple hundred thousand years ago. Gabriela Amoros Seller, a paleoartist at the University of Murcia in Spain, used colored pencils to illustrate an idyllic view (above) of a Neandertal man and child lounging on flat ground downslope from Bolomor Cave, near the Mediterranean coast of eastern Spain. She also illustrated the cave's Neandertal-era entrance and surrounding greenery (right). Excavations in the cave have produced evidence of the animals, trees and other plants shown in the drawing, presented in the March 15 Quaternary Science Reviews. The adult munches on a hazelnut, from local hazel shrubs. Strawberry trees, Mediterranean hackberry trees, myrtle shrubs and chestnut trees - all shown - were also present, say University of Murcia botanists Jose Carrion and Juan Ochando. The child, meanwhile, watches a tortoise inch its way forward. Tortoises were cooked and eaten at Bolomor Cave, along with rabbits, birds and deer as well as occasional larger animals such as horses and hippos. Mild temperatures may have led the locals to wear few or no clothes, researchers suspect.
展开▼
