Climate change caused famine and cannibalism among Neanderthals,

[DetlefK]

https://gizmodo.com/climate-change-drove-neanderthals-to-cannibalism-new-r-1833671963

New research published this week in the Journal of Archaeological Science suggests the crushing impact of the Last Interglacial Period, also known as the Eemian period, forced Neanderthals into cannibalism. This era of prehistory, between 128,000 to 114,000 years ago, saw global temperatures rise to about 2 degrees Celsius higher that the average global temperature in the 20th century. The archaeologists who authored the new study, Alban Defleur and Emmanuel Desclaux from French National Center for Scientific Research, presented new evidence showing how the sharp spike in temperature reshaped the Eurasian environment, and by consequence, the animals upon which the Neanderthals depended.

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“There is convincing circumstantial evidence throughout Europe that Neanderthals occasionally engaged in cannibalism,”

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That said, Kurin said there isn’t enough evidence to support the assertion that Neanderthals practiced ritualistic cannibalism, such as during funerals. And in fact, the trauma patterns described in the new study are more consistent with nutritional cannibalism, she said.

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Where grasslands once dominated the landscape, temperate forests crept in. Large prey animals such as mammoths, giant deer, straight-tusked elephants, and narrow-nosed rhinos were replaced by rodents, porcupines, snakes, and reptiles (including tortoises), many of which migrated north up from the Mediterranean region.

Homo neanderthalensis went extinct some 80,000 years later, due to complicated reasons involving homo sapiens.

[customerserviceguy]

1. "Nutritional cannibalism"

There's two words I never thought I'd see together.