By calculating the intensity and nutritional

 By calculating the intensity and nutritional

 yields of the Neanderthals’ well-documented butchering activities, the research team offers further proof that our hominid cousins were cooperative hunters who knew how to preserve meat and might have lived a settled existence in large groups. The findings challenge the assumption that Neanderthals were basically nomads who lived in bands of no more than 25, in isolation from one another.

Dr. Roebroeks said that group size was the “elephant in the room” in the field of Neanderthal studies. “The idea that Neanderthals roamed about in small bands has been around since the 19th century,” he said. “But the rich Neumark-Nord elephant record points to the possibility of sizable collective-subsistence events.”

He and Dr. Gaudzinski-Windheuser were part of a 2018 investigation that proposed that the punctured bones of two male fallow deer salvaged at Neumark-Nord were the oldest example of hunting marks in history, and that Neanderthals used sophisticated close-range hunting techniques to capture their prey.