Prehistoric Site Shows Modern Humans Weren’t First to Change the World

These hominins hunted and butchered animals, produced tools, collected firewood and built campfires in the Neumark-Nord region for about 2,000 years, in turn modifying the local ecosystem for the duration of the Neanderthals’ stay, a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances says.

“Initially a forested area, the area became open when Neanderthals arrived, and stayed open for about 2,000 years. Upon their leaving, the forest closed in again,” said Wil Roebroeks, a professor of Paleolithic archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the study.

The research suggests our species isn’t the first to have modified their landscape.

“Modern humans today are impacting ecosystems on a global scale with severe consequences for biodiversity and habitats around the world,” said Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in Germany who wasn’t involved in the study.

The new study is “pointing to a significant impact of human activities on ecosystems even by small hunter-gatherer groups predating the arrival of modern Homo sapiens,” she added.

“It adds an important aspect to early human (including Neanderthals) behavior, with them impacting ecosystems very far into the past, even though we do not know whether this was intentional behavior intended to make and keep the landscape open,” Dr. Roebroeks said.

Archaeologists first identified Neumark-Nord as a hotbed of hominin occupation in 1985. Excavations in the late 1990s expanded the site and continued between 2003 and 2008.

To confirm that it was indeed the Neanderthals’ presence that affected this landscape 125,000 years ago, Dr. Roebroeks’s group compared evidence, including pollen data, found in the Neumark-Nord area to evidence found from two similar lake basins nearby that dated to the same time for the new study.

By looking at pollen preserved in the lake sediments, the researchers reconstructed changes in the local plant life over time. They found birch and pine trees initially dominated the landscape, but were replaced by herbs that aren’t typical of a closed-canopy forest at around the same time hominins arrived in the area.

In a 61-acre region of Neumark-Nord, the researchers found scores of clues pointing to our ancestors’ activities there year-round.

“Tens and thousands of stone artifacts, hundreds of thousands of bone fragments, the remains of many hundreds of butchered animals as a result of countless Neanderthal hunting episodes, in combination with abundant traces of fire use,” Dr. Roebroeks said. The study also described charred seeds, heated stone tools and burned wood.

He added that the shores of Neumark-Nord’s ancient lakes were still “a far cry” from the first villages or towns.

While the Neanderthals that used the area may have been less mobile, and possibly lived in larger groups, they remained hunter-gatherers who traveled from place to place during that last interglacial period, Dr. Roebroeks said.

The other lakes, between 20 and 34 miles away, lacked traces of significant Neanderthal presence. And pollen data showed closed forests perpetually dominated the environment there.

Both Neumark-Nord and the comparative lakes are in the eastern region of Germany’s Harz Mountains, suggesting that a difference in rainfall or temperature between the areas didn’t explain the differences in the respective landscapes.

That is suggestive of a “hominin ecological footprint” at Neumark-Nord, Dr. Roebroeks’s group said, revealing that the Neanderthals’ repetitive campfires and repetitive trampling of the area while hunting there may have reshaped the local vegetation.