The imprint is ghostly but undoubtedly: the shallow impression of the foot of a toddler, only 11 centimeters long, pressed in the wet sand. The heel is weak, the arc is not yet formed – the sign of a very young child finding their balance in the world. But this imprint was not on vacation at the beach. It was left around 80,000 years ago, on a dune swept by the wind in what is now Portugal. And its manufacturer was a Neanderthal.
This tiny track, alongside those of an older child and at least one adult, is at the heart of a remarkable discovery. For the first time on the Portuguese coast, scientists found neanderthal fossilized tracksites. The tracks preserve their presence not only, but an intimate and intimate overview of family life. It is not bones or dispersed tools, but a direct recording of action, an “instantaneous life” that calls into question the old stereotypes.
A unique discovery
For anthropologists, fossil fingerprints are a special type of evidence. They are extremely rarely preserved. Bones and tools generally survive much better, while PAS footprints need extremely specific conditions for fossil. They only survive when the ground is fair, quickly buried before erosion wipes them. But the footprints capture something different: a moment of life.
In Monte Clérigo, in southern Portugal, the researchers discovered a 22 square meter canvas of these frozen moments. The bass in a steep 35 -degree dune slope are the ways of at least three individuals. By studying their size and depth, the team could rebuild who left them: an adult man (about 1.7 meters, or 5’7 ”), a child from 7 to 9 years old, and the most remarkable, a child under two years of age.
The bass in a steep 35 -degree dune slope are the ways of at least three individuals. By analyzing the size and depth of the impressions, the team could paint a living image of the group. A set of tracks was made by an adult, probably a male located between 1.69 and 1.73 meters high (about 5 feet 7 inches). Another belonged to a child, estimated between 7 and 9 years old. More remarkably, a third set of tiny prints, only 11 centimeters long, reveals the presence of a neanderthal toddler under two years of age.
Be on the beach
We do not know if he was a father with his children or something else, but it suggests a small family situation. The very presence of a toddler rushing on a dune suggests that family campsite was probably nearby. You generally do not take a two -year -old child during a long distance shipment. Because fingerprints were going and since shore, they probably have food for food. He could also do something else (such as keeping surveillance, for example), but the presence of two children alongside adults suggests a relatively safe and carefree activity.
Toddles’ footprints are particularly revealing. They show a flatter foot, without the clearly defined arch seen in adult impressions. This is precisely what we see in modern human children, whose arches are only fully established after their first years of growth. The discovery strengthens that Neanderthal children have developed in a surprisingly similar way to ours.
The tracks show a remarkable level of foresight. Instead of directly loading the steepest part of the dune, the Neanderthals have taken a more strategic route, walking in a diagonal and curved trajectory which would have attenuated the slope and facilitates the climb.
But weren’t big game hunters from Neanderthals?
The diet of Neanderthals was much more sophisticated and diversified than it initially thought.
The first excavations through inner Europe constantly determined the sites dominated by the skeletal remains of large animals such as mammoths, horses and deer, proving that the Neanderthals were competent high level hunters. This created a strong story, which was also supported by stable isotopic analyzes of the Neanderthal remains of the northern regions. These first proofs suggested a diet where proteins came almost exclusively from large animal -based food sources.
It was such a convincing and simple story that it naturally ecludes more subtle clues. Naturally, this has led to the general scientific and popular image of a species which has substituted only on great terrestrial prey. This is not the case.
In Monte Clérigo, footprints were found crisscrossing the tracks of sabotaged animals, probably large red deer. This corresponds to the idea that the Neanderthals pursued and chased the deer. But the beach footprints show that Neanderthals were very flexible and opportunistic foragers with a much wider diet. They hunted the game and probably caught too. They sought skillfully mussels and crabs, capitalizing on local biodiversity and adapting their diet to the resources that their immediate environment offered.
Of course, the Neanderthals were good hunters, but they were not limited to that. The evidence shows them turtles, birds and a variety of marine life, including molluscs, crabs, fish and even seals. This adaptability was the key to their success.
The image of the neandertale brute must go
This new proof of Portugal powerfully refutes the obsolete image of Neanderthals as brutal and inflexible specialists who have been outdated by modern humans. It is far from the only study to suggest this.
An growing set of research shows that Neanderthals have systematically used various ecosystems and were just as sophisticated as the first humans. The evidence of their complex cognition extend beyond the subsistence, with other studies pointing towards their symbolic use of art and trinkets, a behavior formerly considered unique to modern humans. The Portuguese tracks are perfectly written in this revised understanding.
The Neanderthals prospered for tens of thousands of years in the coastal shelters of southern Iberia, a region which could have been one of their last bastions.
The ghostly prints of Monte Clérigo and Praia do Telheiro are more than simple fossils tell a part of this story. For a brief breathtaking moment, they fill the gap of 80,000 years between us, allowing us to see our old cousins not like primitive caricatures, but with family walking together on a beach, surviving, planning and perhaps even having fun.
The study was published in Nature.
